The stage director of the first Porgy and Bess production recalls hearing the score in Gerswhin's New York apartment: They both blissfully closed their eyes before they continued with the lovely "Summertime" song.  George played with the most beatific smile on his face.  He seemed to float on the waves of his own music with […]

In the 1960s, the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer founded the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University.  The research group explored the sonic environment.  Later projects would include  The Vancouver Soundscapes of Canada (1973), European Sound Diary, and Five Village Soundscapes.  In his book on the subject, The Tuning of the World, Schafer wrote […]

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German poet and philosopher Cited at: QuotationsBook

Title: Elegie I Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE:

“It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet

How do you rate your music? We’re not good musicians.  Just adequate. Then why are you so popular? Maybe people like adequate music. – Interviewer and the Beatles. Cited in: Jarski, Rosemarie (2005) Great British Wit.  London: Ebury Press, p. 203.

Pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy on his colleague Sviatoslav Richter: Richter magnetized me, like he did so many others, and I wouldn’t have missed his concerts for anything. I think he communicated more than anyone else complete devotion and sincerity to his art. When I look back, this is what attracted me most to him […]

E. T. A. Hoffmann wrote in 1813 that instrumental music is the most romantic of all the arts  – one might almost say, the only genuinely romantic one – for its sole subject is the infinite.  The lyre of Orpheus opened the portals of Orcus – music discloses to man an unknown realm, a world […]