Satie’s ballet Relâche (1924) had trouble pulling a crowd: the title translates as “this performances is cancelled”. Source: Lawrence, Christopher (2001) Swooning.  Sydney: Random House, p.70.

The composer Burton Lane describes George Gershwin’s playing: You could feel the electricity going through the room when he played.  He could transpose into any key with the greatest of ease.  He had total command of what he was doing.  Musical surprises, unusual changes of keys.  He was one of the few composers who had […]

Samuel Sebastian Wesley received great reviews for his conding at Gloucester’s annual Three Choir Festivals in 1865. An critic in The Musical Times wrote in the October issue: We have said nothing of the orchestra during these performances, for in truth the perfect manner in which the whole of the instrumental portions of the works […]

Title: Beauty Around Us Composer: Greg Smith Based on text by: Bernhard Severin Ingemann Instrumentation: Piano (easy) Product medium: PDF score     Related products:     – Beauty Around Us (piano version)     – Beauty Around Us (easy piano version)     – Beauty Around Us (mp3) SAMPLE:    

(250, 308, ‘How Caffeine Can Cramp Creativity’, ‘how-caffeine-can-cramp-creativity’, ‘ Caffeine can boost energy, reduce fatigue, and increase short term concentration and problem solving skills. However, creativity is haboured in a less focused mind: Creative insights and imaginative solutions often occur when we stop working on a particular problem and let our mind move on to […]

American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim has released a book Finishing the Hat: The Collected Lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes.  The following is an extract from interview an article on Sondheim by Emma Brockes: Initially a maths student at Williams College in Massachusetts, the young Sondheim took […]

Harpsichordist  Jane Chapman performs both early music and Avante music, including using techniques to use distortion on the harpsichord! “Many early music people are interested in contemporary music, too, and many composers are also interested in early music instruments because they don’t have the baggage of the [classical and romantic periods]. Increasingly, younger generation composers […]

“Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.” – Leonard Bernstein, conductor, composer and pianist. Cited at QuotationsBook.  

Long before the tune Danny Boy even had words the tune existed as an Irish folk melody.  A study in 1979 revealed that Londonderry Air was related to Aislean an Oigfear (The Young Man’s Dream), which had been collected in 1792 from harpist Denis O’Hampsey  He was over ninety at the time and had played […]

“There is also in this [nineteenth-century romantic] music an extraordinary sense of control over the passage of time; a moment will be held still as if suspended, and then released with a rush. Einstein has told us that time is relative, flexible and elastic; I have noticed these qualities whenever I have tried to play […]