“I cannot tell you how much I love to play for people. Would you believe it – sometimes when I sit down to practice and there is no one else in the room, I have to stifle an impulse to ring for the elevator man and offer him money to come in and hear me.” […]

Johannes Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann. whom he greatly admired: It is from you that I am constantly learning that one cannot obtain vital force out of books, but only out of one’s soul.  One must draw inspiration not from without, but from within. Cited in: Goss, Madeleine & Schauffler, Robert (1943) Brahms The Master. […]

‘”Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty.  Magical music never leaves the memory.” Sir Thomas Beecham Speech, c.1950, quoted in The Sunday Times, 16 September 1962

“There is hardly any treatise which could be too learned for me. I have not the slightest pretension to what is properly called erudition. Yet from my childhood I have striven to understand what the better and wiser people of every age were driving at in their works. Shame on an artist who does not […]

Title: Abstraction VI Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE:

“If all would play first violin, we could not obtain an orchestra. Therefore esteem every musician in his place.” — Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (translated by Henry Hugo Pierson), Advice to Young Musicains [Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln]. New York: J. Schuberth & Co. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28219/28219-h/28219-h.htm, accessed 29 August 2021.

Title: Peace is what I leave you Text: John 14:27 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:

I. Andante II. Poco Adagio III Rondo all’Ongarese Chamber music in the eighteenth century was written for and performed for the aristocracy. Music was an aesthetic pleasure: thus an emphasis was placed on musical balance and clarity in the context of an expressive style: evident particularly in the first two movements of this trio, which […]

“During a very busy life I have often been asked, How did you manage to do it all? The answer is very simple. It is because I did everything promptly.  Procastination … is fatal.” Richard Tangye (1833-1903), British manufacter of engines and other heavy equipment. Thomas Sharper Knowlson, The Art of Success, London: F. Warne […]

“Creativity can solve almost any problem — the creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” — George Lois, American art director, designer and author. G. Lois, Damn good advice (for people with talent!): how to unleash your creative potential by America’s master communicator, London: Phaidon Press, 2012.