To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. — Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque, 1881 Stevenson, R. L. (1895). Works. United States: P. F. Collier, Vol. 2, p. 119

I never use a score when conducting my orchestra. Does a lion tamer enter a cage with a book on how to tame a lion? — Dimitri Mitropoulos, conductor Zographos, Achilleas (2017) Music and Chess. Milford: Russell Enterprises Inc.

Johann Matthias Gesner was a colleague of Johann Sebastian Bach at St. Thomas’ School, Leipzig. He later worked on a commentary of the Roman author Quintilian (c. 35-100 A. D.). He included a comparison of Bach with the Classical lyre player: All these (outstanding achievements) … you would reckon trivial could you rise from the dead and […]

Beethoven once gave a performance of a new piano concerto in which he forgot he was the soloist and began to conduct instead.  At the first sforzando he threw out his arms so vehemently that he knocked both candlesticks off the piano.  The audience burst out laughing, which enraged Beethoven.  He made the orchestra start […]

Title: Teach me your ways, O Lord Text: Psalm 24 (25):4-9 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:

“The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet

A tiny 18th-century book has turned up in Hay-on-Wye containing the earliest known version of Sweet Molly Malone, almost a century older than Dublin’s unofficial anthem. Maev Kennedy, “Tart with a cart? Older song shows Dublin’s Molly Malone in new light”, The Guardian, 18 July 2010. Click here to view article

A common theme in the music of French composers at pre world war I was water.  Debussy wrote En bateau (On the Boat), Sirenes (Sirens), Reflets dans l’eau (Reflections in the Water), Voiles (Sails), and La Cathedrale engloutie (The Engulfed Cathedral).  Ravel wrote Jeux d’Eau (The Water Fountain), and Ondine. So striking a peculiarity of […]

This culmination may be at the end or in the middle, it may be loud or soft; but the performer must know how to approach it with absolute calculation, absolute precision, because, if it slips by, then the whole construction crumbles, and the piece becomes disjointed and scrappy and does not convey to the listener […]

Einstein wrote that Mozart’s music “was so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master.” Lyth, David (2019) The Road to Einstein’s Relativity. Boca Ranton: CRC Press, p.131.