Rob Deemer highlights several aspects needed for a composer to survive in the artistic community: – ability to accept “failure” (entering competitions, etc.) – maintaining a “stubbornness” to achieve recognition – promoting not only your best works, but also occasionally enjoying the success of your “foibles” – having a sense of “who you are” as […]

Title: Abstraction XComposer: Greg SmithPerformer: Greg Smith (7 August 2010)Instrumentation: PianoProduct medium: MP3Related products:– Abstraction X (PDF score)

A study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology has concluded that the level of lighting in a room can impact the level of creative thinking. Anna Steidle and Lioba Werth concluded that “darkness increases freedom from constraints, which in turn promotes creativity.” A dark environment “elicits a feeling of freedom, self-determination, and reduced inhibition, […]

It is not what the artist does that counts. But what he is. Cézanne would never have interested me if he had lived and thought like Jaques-Emile Blanche, even if the apple he had painted had been ten times more beautiful. What interests us is the anxiety of Cézanne, the teaching of Cézanne, the anguish […]

Title: Smooth Sailing Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano duet Level: Piano 1 – 1.1 (five finger position) Product medium: PDF score (audio of accompaniment track only)

I need time to be idle in order to experience and romance my muse, Music, my lifelong partner. In some ways, when I think about the enforced thirty minute practice sessions and much-resented violin lessons during Friday recess which introduced us during my early childhood, our story feels a bit like the plot of a […]

Herr Richter, the pianist, is going on a tour that will take him back to Holland, his native country – I have given him a letter introductionto the Countess Thun at Linz. – He also wishes to visit Salzbourg, so I gave him a 4-line note for you, my dearest father … He plays well […]

Tchaikovsky’s favourite flower was lilies of the valley.  The local musical society at Tiflis was extremely enthusiastic to have the presence of Tchaikovsky at a gala concert of his works at the Opera House: Ippolitov-Ivanov had thought of everything, even finding out by devious means what his favourite flower was.  This flower did not grow […]

Title: Abstraction V Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLES:

Music exists only in a passing of time, racing past us like the mid-nineenth-century trains Ruskin so hated. It is utterly non-fixed, and to focus on one moment is to destroy the whole. It is a forest that we have to pass through, not a single tree that we can contemplate or capture. But, if […]