It’s not hard work“Talent labors, genius creates.” Florestan (one of Schumann’s characters) Robert Schumann,Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Muisker (Leipzig, 1854), IV. Cited in Weiss, Piero & Taruskin, Richard (2008) Music in the Western World: A History in Documents. California: Thomson, p. 306.
Beethoven’s contestIn 1800, an improvisation contest occured between Beethoven and the pianist Daniel Steibelt. It was agreed that Prince Lobkowitz would sponsor Steibelt and Prince Lichnowsky sponsor Beethoven, the improvisation contest to take place in Lobkowitz’s palace. As the challenger, Steibelt was to play first. He walked to the piano, tossing a piece of his own […]
LA no longer the center for film scoring“…a panel of experts warn that film, TV and videogame scoring continues to leave L.A. because producers are unwilling to meet union demands. “If work continues to dry up at the current rate, they speculated, one or more of the three remaining large scoring stages (Fox, Sony, Warner Bros.) could close “within the next two […]
Bernstein as a counterpoint student at HarvardThe composer Harold Shapero, who lived a few doors away from Bernstein in Newton and was a year behind him at Harvard, also noted Bernstein’s cavalier approach to counterpoint studies. “Lenny didn’t come to class at all. I was a dutiful little student. I did my Palestrina stuff and I got an ‘A.’ . . […]
Beauty Around UsTitle: Beauty Around Us Composer: Greg Smith Based on text by: Bernhard Severin Ingemann Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score Related products: – Beauty Around Us (hymn version) – Beauty Around Us (easy piano version) – Beauty Around Us (mp3) SAMPLE:
Review of Pablo CasalsA Review written in El Alcance of the cellist Pablo Cassals: His bow, sometimes sweet as a voice from heaven, at other times vibrant and robust, produces such a sonorous combination of voices and tones that it seems that the body of his violincello is the magic secret of sublime harmonies capriciously transformed at the […]
Stokowski as a sound engineerThe conductor Stokowski (who was the conductor of Disney’s Fantasia) was a pioneer of orchestral recording. This was not without its problems: Stokowski was moving more and more toward what is recognized as his most significant achievement – the broadening of popular interest in serious music. He developed a firm conviction that radio, recordings, and […]
Against GregorianIn Anglican England in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was considerable opposition to the Roman Catholic Gregorian chant. The Parish Choir or Church Music Book, published by the Society for the Promoting of Church Music (October 1847), applauds those who “deal heavy blows at Romanism and every other form of dissent.” (1) Part […]
On thinking“If you make people think they’re thinking they’ll love you: but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.” Don Marquis, American writer, poet & artist. Creator of the characters such as Archy (1916), a cockroach who had been a poet in a previous life, who supposedly left poems on Marquis’ typewriter by jumping […]
The artist should not be shabbily treated“I like honesty and sincerity; and I maintain that an artist should not be shabbily treated.” – Beethoven, in a letter to C. F. Peters, 5 June 1822 E. Anderson, Letters of Beethoven (1961), cited in Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. United Kingdom, Oxford, OUP Oxford, 2014.
