Elegie ITitle: Elegie I Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE:
Playing with fantasy“Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.” – Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology Quoted at QuotationsBook
Schumann on musicAs to what concerns the knotty question in general of how far instrumental music may go in the representation of thoughts and events, many are here too anxious in their attitude. We are certainly wrong if we believe that composers set out pen and paper to realize the miserable intention of expressing, describing, or painting […]
Beethoven in 1821In his book, A Tour in Germany, and some of the Southern Provinces of the Austrian Empire, in 1820, 1821, 1822, published in Edinburgh in 1824, Sir John Russell describes Beethoven in 1821: The neglect of his person which he exhibits gives him a somewhat wild appearance. His features are strong and prominent; his eye […]
The effect of art“There’s a phrase I’ve often heard from audience members at popular musicals (but, oddly, never anywhere else): the show, they’ll say, “really took me out of myself”. They are saying something basic and profound about the ecstasy of art, the act of being taken out of one’s normal state to a different level of being. […]
The subject of artAbstract art is only painting. And what’s so dramatic about that? There is no abstract art. One must always begin with something. Afterwards one can remove all semblance of reality; there is no longer any danger as the idea of the object has left an indelible imprint. It is the object which aroused the artist, […]
Performance practice issues in Russian Piano MusicABSTRACT The nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed the rapid growth of musical culture in Russia. This resulted in a large repertoire of piano music — ranging from miniatures to virtuosic etudes and sonatas. Growing out of the nineteenth century romantic tradition, and highly influenced by the social conditions of the time, Russian composers developed a distinctive style which […]
BeautyThe academic teaching on beauty is false. We have been misled, but so completely misled that we can no longer find so much as a shadow of a truth again. The beauties of the Parthenon, the Venuses, the Nymphs, the Narcisusses, are so many lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, […]
Elgar’s football teamElgar loved his football, particularly the Wolverhampton team. His friend Dorebella recalled the first match he attended at Wolverhampton: It all delighted him. The dense crowd flowing down the road like a river; the roar of welcome as the rival teams came on to the ground; the shouts of men calling to their player friends […]
A world of emotions“We find a world of emotions and ideas created with only the simplest of materials.” – Laurence Lesser, cellist Cited in: Siblin, Eric (2009) The Cello Suites. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin. p.3.