Title: Cry out with joy and gladness Text: Isaiah 12:2-6 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano (unison verses) Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE:    

“We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.” — David Lynch

“It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will do when they don’t have to.” — Walter Linn The Signalman’s Journal, Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, vol. 29-30, 1948, p.188. 

Stokowski’s ability to inspire musicians was sometimes balanced by the ability to turn them off.  Saidenberg altered me to a remarkable violinist who quit the Philadelphia Orchestra and went on to become America’s greatest authority on constitutional law.  “Raoul Berger was a wonderful violinist in the Philadelphia Orchestra.  One day at rehearsal, Stoki stopped the […]

In mid-nineteenth century England, whistling was a common source of entertainment and as part of the general reception to a piece of music. An article in March 1854 in The Musical Times reported: We were sorry to hear the vile practice of whistling again carried on to some extent at the concert; were the well-meaning […]

The composer Karol Szymanowski was born into a landowning class family.  Even, later in life, when short for money, he always retained the mindset of this class: At one time in Vienna, Szymanowski discovered that he did not have enough money to travel to Cracow, so some friends of him lent him the required sum. […]

From pure sensation to the intuition of beauty, from pleasure and pain to love and the mystical ecstasy and death—all the things that are fundamental, all the things that, to the human spirit, are most profoundly significant, can only be experienced, not expressed. The rest is always and everywhere silence. After silence that which comes […]

Rachmaninoff sent fellow composer/pianist Medtner his Corelli Variations.  He wrote: I played them here about fifteen times, but of these fifteen performances, only one was good.  The others were sloppy.  I can't play my own compositions!  And it's so boring! Not once have I played these all in continuity.  I was guided by the coughing […]

In a lecture in 1928 in Houston, Texas, Ravel described the differences between Debussy and his approach to composition: For Debussy the musician and the man I have had profound admiration, but by nature I am different from him. Although he may not be quite a stranger from my own personal heritage, I would at […]

Title: Musing by Moonlight Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Duet Level: Piano I – level I (5 finger position, left and right hands) Product medium: PDF score & MP3 accompaniment track (Audio sample of accompaniment track only)