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 […]

Sergey Prokofiev was once evicted from his apartment for playing the same chord 218 times.  A tally was kept by the downstairs tenant. Source: Lawrence, Christopher (2001) Swooning.  Sydney: Random House, p.69.

“Music is a readily available, highly effective tool that you use to improve both your cognitive and physical abilities.” Arthur Winter, English priest and cricketer Cited at: QuotationsBook  

“Beauty will save the world.” – The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Harvey Sach’s comments on pianist Author Rubinstein at age 13: …it is clear that Arthur’s practising began to deteriorate when he was about fourteen years old.  He would mechanically play through one-handed exercises and use his free hand to feed himself chocolates or cherries, while he read a book that he had propped up on […]

Conductor Leopold writes: There are millions who find solace in music – it opens for them the sun-bathed gates of inspiration – through music they know that behind the sordid, grim surface of life there nevertheless exists an ideal and external Beauty. Music powerfully stimulates the growth in us of impulses we had never suspected […]

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 […]

“You have all the reason in the world to achieve your grandest dreams. Imagination plus innovation equals realization.” Denis Waitley, American author

Title: Jack Sparrow, from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s ChestComposer: Hans ZimmerArranger: Greg SmithInstrumentation: Solo cello, string orchestra, tom-tom (optional)Product medium: PDF score and parts Available from Sheet Music Plus and Sheet Music Direct

When renowned composer John Williams first watched a rough cut of Schindler’s List at director Steven Spielberg’s home in Los Angeles, he got so choked up he couldn’t speak. “I had to walk around the room for four or five minutes to catch my breath,” Williams recalls. “I said to Steven, ‘I really think you […]