Welcome to Wedgebill Music, the home page of Greg Smith, Australian composer and pianist.

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– Quotes
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COLLABORATIVE PIANO
– Accompaniment and solo performance

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Featured content

Music with no boundaries
Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange “abnormal” events can lead to the feeling that anything can happen, and you have a music with no boundaries. – Morton Feldman, American composer Cited in Tom Johnson, Remembrance, September 1987. Accessed 13 May 2013.
The essence of music
I believe that there is no one the world so insensitive, so leaden, that he is not moved by song. Theophrastus rightly said in the second book concerning music that the essence of music is the movement of the soul, driving away the evils and troubles that have invaded it. If music did not have […]
Life is green
“All theory is grey, but the precious tree of life is green.” Maurice Ravel to Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, describing Schoenberg’s intellectualism.  Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, Ravel et nous (Geneva, 1945), p. 104.  Cited in:  Nichols, Roger (1987) Ravel Remembered.  London: Faber & Faber., p. 61.
Bugs Bunny can save classical music
“The future of classical music lies with the younger generation, which must be weaned away from the cacophony of rock and the neon glitter of “American Idol”-type TV shows. Instead of dragging children to concerts, where they squirm with boredom, rent some old movies featuring soundtracks of classical music. Even toddlers can be exposed to […]
Prokofiev is evicted
Sergey Prokofiev was once evicted from his apartment for playing the same chord 218 times.  A tally was kept by the downstairs tenant. Source: Lawrence, Christopher (2001) Swooning.  Sydney: Random House, p.69.
Malcolm Sargent on Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony
Conductor Malcolm Sargent on Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony: A frightening symphony. For a symphony to be frightening is perhaps a good thing. Here we have the complete testament of a man who, in his seventies, looks back on the human sufferings of his time. I never conduct the Sixth without feeling that I am walking […]
The first soundtrack: Snow White
The first soundtrack to be commercially released was Disney’s 1938 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The songs were written by Frank Churchill (music) and Lary Morey (lyrics). The score was written by Churchill and Leigh Harline, with some additional music by Paul Smith. Although Churchill and Morey originally wrote 25 songs for the […]
Freedom for music
“In order for music to free itself, it will have to pass over to the other side – there where territories tremble, where the structures collapse, where the ethoses get mixed up, where a powerful song of the earth is unleashed, the great ritornelles that transmutes all the airs it carries away and makes return.” […]
Paderewski, the dandy
Overheard in a New York street car:— Average Young Man (to neighbour): “Everything they say about Paderewski is true. He’s a perfect genius. Why, he played fourteen pieces and did not once look at the programme. Yet he played straight ahead and never once forgot what piece was to come next. I tell you the […]
The tone of the piano at the turn of the nineteenth century
In 1796, the piano maker Johann Andreas Streicher sent Beethoven one of his pianos as a gift.  Beethoven's reply sheds some interesting light on the tone of the piano at this time: There is no doubt that so far as the manner of playing is concerned, the pianoforte is still the least studied and developed […]