“I feel that tolerance, love and social harmony can and should be the by-products of an artist’s way of life and creation.  I would like to believe that beauty and truth, two great disciplines, when combined as they are in music, where order is based on self-restraint and a better understanding of repose, will lead […]

The following appeared in the Musical Times, August 1890: We read that “a Saxon engineer has invented an automatic machine, the object of which is to save conductors the physical part of their duties. By pressing a button the apparatus, which is provided with an arm holding a conducting-stick, can be made to beat with the […]

On 1 May 1747, Bach met Friedrich II, King of Prussia, in the Potsdam city palace (where chamber music was usually played from 7-9pm daily).  Johann Forkel recalled: in 1802 The king used to have every evening a private concert, in which he himself generally performed some concertos on the flute.  One evening, just as […]

If Heaven has bestowed on you a fine imagination, you will often be seated at your piano in solitary hours, as if attached to it; you will desire to express the feelings of your heart in harmony, and the more clouded the sphere of harmony may perhaps be to you, the more mysteriously you will […]

Composer: Greg SmithTitle: Meditation IIInstrumentation: PianoPerformer: Greg Smith (November 2010)Product medium: MP3 recording Your user agent does not support the HTML5 Audio element. Sheet music

Vaughan Williams wrote a series of articles for the Royal College of Music magazine entitled “Who Wants the English Composer?”. In these, he expresses his advocacy for an exploration of the English musical style: We English composers are always saying, “Here are Wagner, Brahms, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, what fine fellows they are, let us try and […]

“What we play is life.” Louis Armstrong, Jazz musician Cited at: Satchmo, “Louis Armstrong Quotes and Tributes.” https://www.satchmo.com/louisarmstrong/quotes.html, accessed 6 September 2021.

Insider jokes are not just for White House Correspondents’ Assn. Dinners or ESPN kibitzers or Academy Awards emcees. They also crop up in discussions about symphony orchestra musicians — a society unto itself. There are jibes and even sober-minded studies that characterize personality types according to the instruments they play. Who are the string players? […]

Overheard in a New York street car:— Average Young Man (to neighbour): “Everything they say about Paderewski is true. He’s a perfect genius. Why, he played fourteen pieces and did not once look at the programme. Yet he played straight ahead and never once forgot what piece was to come next. I tell you the […]