That's pretty much my take on it, though I do enjoy a bit of musical theatre now and then. A junior school production of Joseph was my first break into music - I was 'spotted' and asked along to a local music school. I played in various orchestras and brass bands and toured the USA, Canada, some of Europe and much of the UK playing festivals and competitions. I still play various instruments and compose stuff for my own entertainment - from classical to heavy metal.

Webber has composed some dross, but also some absolute epics. So have most composers and musicians - every band has album fillers, every composer has a few 'lesser' numbers. To call him 'not credible' is frankly ridiculous. He has nothing to prove. He has a remarkable talent to engage audiences, move them and bring them back again and again to his productions. It may be a more 'popular' form of musical theatre but that's down to personal taste.

R&H and some of the names on this thread were indeed at the top of the field though despite their classics I can take or leave much of their work. Much of it just doesn't engage me, though I can appreciate its quality and how it works with the wider production. If I'm honest some of it seems to belong to a bygone era and hasn't aged well. That's just down to my own taste, with my roots firmly entrenched elsewhere.

On a serious note, I'd happily travel back in time and shoot them both for The Sound of Music.

Someone posted 'there's a light at the end of the tunnel' on the 'good management' thread. The first thing popped into my head was a song from Starlight Express and I've only seen that once, around 1986.

Nah, I'd let them live simply for letting Sinatra record "This nearly was mine" from South Pacific, a wonderfully under-played, subdued, recording in which music and vocal are seemingly sung to different tempos but merge together sublimely - have a listen on Spotify, but pick Sinatra/Nelson Riddle's version.

We must be back to snobbery then!

Cheers, enjoyed that.

Perhaps just a little mild torture for Sound of Music then.

OK Minty, just to save me the trouble, cos I can't be bothered and this is your bag anyway...........
Since this seems to be key to what makes someone great in an objective way, what do the 'experts' say about Lloyd Webber?

To borrow from Wikipedia

In interviews promoting Amused to Death, Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd, claimed that Lloyd Webber had plagiarised short chromatic riffs from the 1971 song "Echoes" for sections of The Phantom of the Opera, released in 1986; nevertheless, he decided not to file a lawsuit regarding the matter.

The songwriter Ray Repp made a similar claim about the same song, but insisted that Lloyd Webber stole the idea from him. Unlike Roger Waters, Ray Repp did decide to file a lawsuit, but the court eventually ruled in Lloyd Webber's favour.

Rick Wakeman, on his Grumpy Old Rockstar tour of 2008, accused Lloyd Webber of borrowing the main riff for the Phantom of the Opera tune from a section of his 1977 work "Judas Iscariot" from the album Criminal Record.

Lloyd Webber has also been accused of plagiarising Puccini, most notably in Requiem and The Phantom of the Opera. In the Program Guide for the San Francisco Opera's performance (2009–2010 season) of Puccini's Girl of the Golden West, on page 42, it states: "The climactic phrase in Dick Johnson'a aria, "Quello che taceta," bears a strong resemblance to a similar phrase in the Phantom's song, "Music of the Night," in Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical The Phantom of the Opera.

Following the musical's success, the Puccini estate filed suit against Lloyd Webber accusing him of plagiarism and the suit was settled out of court.

Lloyd Webber has also been accused of plagiarism by Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, who described him as "yet to think up a single note; in fact, the poor guy's never invented one note by himself."