Listening to music should always be an active process, and those who attend – pregnant verb – concerts, who listen, who respond, who treasure what they hear there, are musicians. They are the ones who do not let music wash over them like a bubble bath but who actively swim in the water. When vibrations in the air create vibrations in your soul, you’re a member of this club.
Stephen Hough (2019) Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More. London: Faber & Faber, p. 28.
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My tempo must be followed
Ravel was very particular about how his works were performed. Ravel always insisted that the tempo for Boléro should be moderate and rigorously maintained throughout. He made a recording of that, too establishing his requirement. Toscanini took it much faster and made an accelerando towards the end. Ravel, who was in the audience, objected. He […]
Alleluia! Sing to Jesus (Hyfrydol) – SATB, brass, and organTitle: Alleluia! Sing to Jesus (Hyfrydol) Composer: Rowland Prichard; arr. Greg Smith Text: Rev 5:9; William C. Dix Instrumentation: SATB, brass (hrn, tpt, 2 tb), and organ Product medium: PDF score and parts Samples:
“Didn’t you like it?”Leonard Bernstein and Mildred Spiegel attended the Boston Symphony Orchestra season in 1933. They sat, she remembers, in the second balcony “under one of the male Greek nude statues.” One evening, during a standing ovation for the orchestra’s music director, Serge Koussevitzky, Lenny “just sat there” clapping very softly. “What’s the matter,” I asked, “didn’t […]
DaydreamTitle: Daydream Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE:
Tchaikovsky and the village childrenTchaikovsky lived in a village Maidanovo. When Tchaikovsky would go for works, he would also be hailed by groups of village children. As Sofya Nikolayevna recalled: “They had discovered the times he went out and, as he always liked to gave them something, sweets or a coin, they used to lie in wait for him.” […]
Violoncello piccoloA violoncello piccolo is a violin-sized instrument tuned like a cello. It is held horizontally, slung from a from a strap over the shoulder lika guitar. Some of Bach’s cantatas specifically written for this instrument. It is possible that Bach wrote the cello suites for the instruments (no instrument was specified on the manuscripts). Source: […]
The meaning of American PieWhen questioned about the meaning of American Pie, Don McLean would quip. “It means I’ll never have to work again.” Rob Walker, “Don McLean on the tragedy behind American Pie: ‘I cried for two years’”, The Guardian, 22 October 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/oct/22/don-mclean-american-pie-its-meaning-family-deaths-tragedy-60s?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
A courteous conductorBrucker was invited by Hans Richter to conduct one of his symphonies with the Vienna Society of Friends of Music. At the rehearsal he stood on the conductor’s platform, stick in hand, with a beatific smile on his face. The orchestra were all ready to begin, but he would not lift his stick to give […]
Too much pedalJohannes Brahms could be incredibly rude, even to his friends. While playing a Beethoven sonata with a cellist friend one day, he applied his piano’s pedals with more enthusiasm than the friend had hoped. “Softer,” he pleaded, “I can’t hear my cello.” “You are lucky,” Brahms replied. “I can.” Source: N. Slonimsky, Book of Musical […]
Conducting glovesThe practice of wearing white gloves whilst conducting was common in the nineteenth century. The Musical times reported in July 1884 that: “A German conductor,” we are told, “in order that the public may be more deeply impressed with the feeling of grief intended to be produced by the Funeral March in Beethoven’s ‘Eroica Symphony,’ wears […]