Irish pianist and composer George Alexander Osburn (1806-93) was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music and a director of the Philharmonic Society. One of his most popular compositions was La Pluie de Perles (The Shower of Pearls). At a fashionable party, at which he arrived very late, he was invited to play, and […]

Elgar loved his football, particularly the Wolverhampton team.  His friend Dorebella recalled the first match he attended at Wolverhampton: It all delighted him. The dense crowd flowing down the road like a river; the roar of welcome as the rival teams came on to the ground; the shouts of men calling to their player friends […]

“The point is, art never stopped a war and never got anybody a job. That was never its function. Art cannot change events. But it can change people. It can affect people so that they are changed…because people are changed by art – enriched, ennobled, encouraged – they then act in a way that may […]

“The advice I am giving always to my students is above all to study the music profoundly.  Because the music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees, or the contrary.” Andrés Segovia, guitarist.  Cited in: Cited in: Kimball, K., Petersen, R., Johnson, K. […]

Benjamin Britten wrote the score to Instruments of the Orchestra, which would become the concert work, Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra. The theme to the score was based on a hornpipe from Purcell’s Abdelzer. Britten commented to the producer, Basil Wright, that “I was never really worried that it was too sophisticated for kids […]

“Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.” Martin H. Fischer, German born American physician and author. Encore : A Continuing Anthology‬ (March 1945) edited by Smith Dent, “Fischerisms” p. 309.

In a surprise union of two quintessentially American composers from different eras, one the 1960s mastermind of “Good Vibrations,” the other the Jazz Age creator of “Rhapsody in Blue,” former Beach Boy Brian Wilson has been authorized by the estate of George Gershwin to complete unfinished songs Gershwin left behind when he died in 1937. […]

“During a very busy life I have often been asked, How did you manage to do it all? The answer is very simple. It is because I did everything promptly.  Procastination … is fatal.” Richard Tangye (1833-1903), British manufacter of engines and other heavy equipment. Thomas Sharper Knowlson, The Art of Success, London: F. Warne […]

What is luck?  Is it being in the right place at the right time?  I think it is something more.  Luck is the active process of creating the life you want.  So don’t just sit back and hope that good things will happen to you.  Be courageous and go after what you want.  Commit to […]

In 1893, Tchaikovsky was awarded an honorary doctorate at Cambridge University. Charles Villiers Stanford was involved organising the occasion. He recalled: “In the spring of 1892 we set on foot the organization of the movement to celebrate the Jubilee of the University Musical Society in 1893. The first step taken was the invitation of Verdi […]