Feeling creates thought, men willingly agree; but they will not so willingly agree that thought creates feeling, though this is scarcely less true. — Nicolas Chamfort (Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort) S. Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations of Chamfort, Volume 2, Trans. E. Mathers, Golden Cockerel Press, 1926, p. 22.  

Humorists Ilf and Petrov described a concert by Rachmaninoff In New York (November 1935): The night we went to hear him he appeared tall, bent, and thin, with a long sad face, his hair closely clipped; he sat down at the piano, separated the folds of his old-fashioned back swallowtail, adjusted one of his cuffs […]

A violoncello piccolo is a violin-sized instrument tuned like a cello.  It is held horizontally, slung from a from a strap over the shoulder lika guitar.  Some of Bach’s cantatas specifically written for this instrument.  It is possible that Bach wrote the cello suites for the instruments (no instrument was specified on the manuscripts). Source: […]

Leonard Bernstein’s children have donated the contents of his main composing studio to Indiana University.   The contents include “Bernstein’s stand-up composing table; a conducting stool that may have been used by Brahms, given as a gift by the Vienna Philharmonic; an electric pencil sharpener; a telephone; an ashtray and disposable lighters; Grammy-nomination plaques; and […]

Interviewer: So many children hate to take music lessons. Can you understand this? Rubinstein: Oh, yes, I was one of them. You see, music lessons mean always this horrible dictatorial attitude of the professors. They slap four fingers and aarh; they shout at you: “Can’t you learn that? You must practice scales!” I mean, it […]

“Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of the “divine madness,” to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks. They do not run away from non-being, […]

“Every great work of art has two faces: one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.” — Daniel Barenboim. Cited in: Barenboim, Daniel & Said, Edward (2002) Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society. New York: Pantheon Books.

Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange “abnormal” events can lead to the feeling that anything can happen, and you have a music with no boundaries. – Morton Feldman, American composer Cited in Tom Johnson, Remembrance, September 1987. Accessed 13 May 2013.

No man can tell what the future may bring forth, and small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises. —  Demosthenes, Ad Leptinem, 162 Harbottle, Thomas Benfield (1897) Dictionary of Quotations (Classical).  London: S. Sonnenschein & co, p. 51.  Digitally archived at https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofquot00harbiala/page/511/mode/2up, accessed 12 September 2021. 

“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.” Robert Louis Stevenson, author