Composer: Greg Smith (based on a 16th-century French melody)Title: Fantasia on Ding Dong Merrily on HighInstrumentation: Cello and piano Available from Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus. SAMPLES:

We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can […]

Title: Lullaby for Ben Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score

My love for Schubert is a very serious one, probably because it is no fleeting fancy. Where is genius like his, which soars heavenwards so boldly and surely, where we see the few supreme ones enthroned. He is to me like a son of the gods, playing with Jupiter’s thunder, and also occasionally handling it […]

Is genius original? What is original? Originality wasn't a must in Mozart's day. He was like everyone else, only more so. Like everyone else – but no one was like him. Artists don't necessarily feel more deeply than you or me; it's just that they can take the fugitive feelings we all recognize and congeal […]

“When walking through the valley of shadows, remember, a shadow is cast by a Light.” – H. K. Barclay Cited at: QuotationsBook

“Be ready when opportunity comes…. Luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet.” — Roy D. Chapin Jnr., Chariman American motors association J. Roberts, The Big Book of Business Quotations: Over 1,400 of the Smartest Things Ever Said about Making Money, Simon and Schuster, 2016.

Having spent five days recording five Beethoven sonatas and two concertos, Schnabel wrote to his wife: This week was an ordeal, a torture chamber. “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” says Nietzsche. Hopefully (probably) this is true. I had no idea of how outrageous a process the recording on discs could be. Like […]

Scriabin’s fiery D#-minor Etude, with its relentless triplets and huge leaps, used to just fall under my fingers, while the Lento final movement of the Copland Sonata was a minefield of wrong notes. Why is that? Is it just because we practice hard music 20 times as much as easy music, or is it psychological, […]

A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why. Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, 1821