While writing the lyrics to songs in Beauty and the Beast, Howard Ashman’s health was deteriorating. The composer, Alan Menken, recalls: By a certain point, he wasn’t well enough to travel. Once Disney knew, they brought a lot of the production over to the east coast; he made it through all the last recording sessions. […]

Before the time of Bach, keyboardists would often only use the middle three fingers of each hand and tended to keep their hands flat. Bach taught his students under the new principle of using all the fingers. Beethoven asked his pupils to curve the hand. Source: Marek, George (1969) Beethoven: Biography of a Genius. London: William […]

In the ninteenth century, the piano was not only regarded as a musical instrument but as a part of the decor a room. An article in The Musical Times in February 1893 describes some possible applications: Placed near a bay window, it shuts in the cosiest lovers’ next imaginable. Soft-cushioned window seats that have room […]

Bassoon

Early phonograph recordings were a little rough.  In 1889, pianist Hans von Bülow was asked to play into a phonograph in America: After playing upon a pianoforte, from which issued sounds compared to the soft and dreamy gurgle of a brook, the far-off sighign of the night wind and the roar of the cataract, he […]

Title: Abstraction XVIIComposer: Greg SmithInstrumentation: PianoPerformer: Greg Smith (October 2023)Product medium: MP3 audio Related products: – Abstraction XVIII (score) Sample:

The career of a musician out to be — it is, actually, and in many ways — different from the careers of artists in other fields of art.  All comparisons of the other arts with music are necessarily somewhat superficial.  The art of music needs, essentially, not much contact with social groups, or concern with […]

“Tuning a piano also tunes the brain, say researchers who have seen structural changes within the brains of professional piano tuners.” BBC News, 29 August 2012. Click here to view article  

Grade 3 Theory

“For me, as a creative musician, composition is a daily function that I am compelled to discharge. I compose because I am made for that and cannot do otherwise … I am far from saying that there is no such thing as inspiration; quite the opposite. It is found as a driving force in every […]