“I liked everything about the opera but the music.” – Benjamin Britten on Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress Cited in: Jarski, Rosemarie (2005) Great British Wit.  London: Ebury Press, p. 203.

“I produce music as an apple tree produces apples.” — Camille Saint-Saëns Musical Heritage Review. Musical Heritage Society, volume 1, issues 13-18, p.47.

In 1853, Brahms went on a tour of German cities with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi.  In the town of Celle, they were scheduled to play Beethoven’s Sonata in c minor (op. 30, no. 2): but it was found that the piano in the hall was tuned a half tone too low.  Reményi refused to […]

“It’s a challenge, for me at least, to do nothing but listen.  You need to set aside time for it.  You need to concentrate on the music alone (and not on your next deadline).  But when it works, you open yourself up to the transcendent ecstasy good music can bring.” Francis Merson, editor, Limelight, April […]

A violoncello piccolo is a violin-sized instrument tuned like a cello.  It is held horizontally, slung from a from a strap over the shoulder lika guitar.  Some of Bach’s cantatas specifically written for this instrument.  It is possible that Bach wrote the cello suites for the instruments (no instrument was specified on the manuscripts). Source: […]

“There can be no music without idealogy … We, as revolutionaries, have a different conception of  music from the composers of other [non Soviet-Russia] countries.  Lenin himself said the “Music is a means of unifying people”.  It is not a leader of the masses, perhaps, but certainly an organising force … I think an artist […]

“Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.” – Oscar Wilde, in a letter to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, 22 September 1894

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. – Alexander Graham Bell Orison Swett Marden, (1901) “Bell Telephone Talk”, How They Succeeded. Boston: Lothrop Publishing Company, p. 38. Digitally archived at https://archive.org/details/howtheysucceeded00mardrich/mode/2up, accessed 11 September 2021.

Beethoven’s revised version of Fidelio was due to be premiered on the 23rd May 1814. Beethoven had planned to write a new overture for the performance. He was still yet to complete it before the final rehearsal on the 22nd May. The night before, he was dining out with his physician (Dr. Bertolini). After dinner, he took a menu, […]

The following is an account of the conductor Hans von Bülow: The newspaper critics Bülow continued to despise because of their self-importance, and he lost no opportunity to expose their musical ignorance.  On one occasion, Bülow, at a public rehearsal in the Philharmonie, remarked upon a printing error in the second horn part of the […]