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."

rlA bit dense but interesting.rl

A nice balanced response.

To borrow from his own site and Wiki:
1 Oscar (Best Original Song) + 2 nominations
1 Golden Globe (Best Original Song) + 1 nomination
7 Tony awards
7 Laurence Olivier awards
3 Grammy awards
14 Ivor Novello awards
The Triple Play award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
American Songwriters’ Hall of Fame
Praemium Imperiale award for music 1995
Richard Rodgers award for Excellence in Musical Theatre 1996
London Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical 2000 (I'm assuming Minty didn't vote for him)
2 International Emmy Awards
Knighted in 1992 for services to the theatre throughout the world.
Early in 1998, Andrew was honoured with Variety’s first British Entertainment Personality Of The Year Award.
Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for live theatre (1993)
Kennedy Honors 2006
Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service 2008
1988 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations for The Phantom of the Opera

Cats, together with Starlight Express and Jesus Christ Superstar, gave Andrew the three longest-running musicals in British theatre history. Andrew is also the first person to have a trio of musicals running in London and New York.

Many of those awards are voted for and decided on by experts in the same field. Not bad for a non-credible plagiarist.

The only comment I have about Webber is that when I was 11 'ish we did a production of Jesus Christ Superstar at my school (not long after it was written I guess). Our school couldn't afford to pay the large chunk of cash required to be allowed to perform all the music so we had to read out 70% of the musical and act it without music. We were only allowed to perform the clearly defined "songs" with the music. It was excrutiating.
Money raised went to the school fund, Webber's production company made no exceptions. The Lord was getting his cut.

If only there had been millions of other musicals your school could have chosen to put on.

Reminds me of Robert Palmers legal defence to charges that he had plagiarised "Some Guys Have All The Luck", not just the tune but the title too, he surmised that he must have heard the original tune when walking past an open window somewhere

Paul McCartney too is said to have played the tune "Yesterday" to several people before recording it as he had woken up one morning with the tune in his head and was convinced that it wasn't his tune but one that he must have overheard.

And I'll throw my professional guitarist cousin into the mix as he was actually sued for plagiarism after he wrote and recorded one of those novelty football songs for Leeds Utd (when they had a football team), had a deal with the club, had some of the team in the chorus, was all set to sell at least 40 thousand copies to the supporters when someone in Manchester claimed that it was his chorus, it went to a pre-trial hearing and he had to pay for a professor of music from Manchester to testify that the sequence of notes in the chorus were not similar enough to be plagiarised - by the time the legal case was conceeded (to him) he'd lost the window of opportunity to release the record and it was dropped.

I helped him produce 70 demo tapes of his single one night, it was cr@p, the world was saved from earache.

Now if you want to hear Nelson Riddle fronted by a truly great voice, look no further than the three albums by Linda Ronstadt

And now that you mentioned Robert Palmer, have a listen to his Riding High album, especially his duet with Carnie Wilson, the very best version of Baby It's Cold Outside ever recorded

Quite ironic that a true muso like Palmer would be accused of plagiarism. In fact, there's only 7 notes and every tune there is or ever will be is made up of them. All you can change is the combinations. Bearing this in mind it never ceases to amaze me how we keep on and on hearing new music but it keeps on coming.

I am not happy with the way music copyright is defended, usually by people who are not the composer or artists but just "own the rights". One good example was The Verve having to give up every penny from the superb Bittersweet Symphony, which is now perversely credited to Jagger and Richards. (And I'm sure The Verve would have won that one if they'd had the cash to fight it to a hearing).

I could write the catch to a hit tune tomorrow by hitting say teh notes BCF#AbCDB#. I could then find some guy claimed he actually wrote that sequence of notes in a work in 1987 and so I breached his copyright even though his tune may never have been released.

I even remember a song with a track containing a period of silence. Litigation ensued by some dozy muppet who insisted he had recorded a silent track so the copyright to silence was his.

Have an old vinyl album by Linda Ronstadt, "Heart like A Wheel", classy stuff.