Application of talent

“…all talent, all application will not suffice if one’s whole life is not directed towards being a mediator of great thoughts and feelings. Every deed, yes, every thought leaves its trace on the personality. One must live a life of purity in every detail, even down to the morsel one is putting into one’s mouth. Prepared in this way, that something will appear which is unteachable, that grace of the quiet hour when the spirit of the composer speaks to us, that unconscious moment when one is raised out of oneself, call it intuition, grace – then all ties are loosened, all hindrances are swept away. You feel yourself hovering. One feels no longer: I am playing, but IT is playing, and behold all is well; as if directed by a divine hand … in humility you experience the supreme happiness of the interpretive artist: to be only the mediator between the Divine, the Eternal and man.”

Edwin Fisher (pianist)

Cited at: Crisis Magazine. Accessed 12 July 2012

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

, ,

Featured Content

Busoni on invention
I came to think that every notation is already the transcription of an abstract invention. From the instant the pen takes hold of it, the idea loses its original feature. … The invention (Einfall) becomes a sonata, a concerto: it is already an arrangement of the original. From this first transcription to the second, the […]
Performers and performances
1.2: The Fundamental Vibration of Music
1 1 1   For Pythagoras (c. 570 BCE – c. 495 BCE), the ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician, numbers were not merely a mathematical phenomena, but were representative all levels of existence, from the individual, to society, to the universe as a whole. In Metaphysica (Metaphysics), Aristotle wrote: Pythagoreans applied themselves to mathematics, and […]
Real genius
“Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.” Simone Wells, French philosopher and mystic. Cited at QuotationsBook
The influence of music
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 […]
I Shall Live in the House of the Lord – Psalm 22 (23)
Title: I Shall Live in the House of the Lord Text: Psalm 22 (23) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano     Related settings:     – The Lord is my shepherd (Psalm 22; Greg Smith) – SATB and piano (PDF score) Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Stokowski’s first rehearsal with the Philadelphia Orchestra
On Stokowski’s first rehearsal with the Philadelphia Orchestra: From Oscar Schwar, a fellow faculty member at Curtis who became my friend, I heard the details of Stokowski’s first contact with the orchestra.  He would never forget, he said, that Monday morning of October 7, 1912, when an amazingly young and handsome Stokowski, wearing a light […]
“Didn’t you like it?”
Leonard Bernstein and Mildred Spiegel attended the Boston Symphony Orchestra season in 1933. They sat, she remembers, in the second balcony “under one of the male Greek nude statues.” One evening, during a standing ovation for the orchestra’s music director, Serge Koussevitzky, Lenny “just sat there” clapping very softly. “What’s the matter,” I asked, “didn’t […]
Mozart on rubato in adagios
In 1777, Mozart visited Heir Stein in Ausburg (1). According to Mozart, Stein had stated that no-one has ever played his Piano Forte as well as I have, and, besides, I always keep correct time. They are all wondering about that. They simply can’t believe that you can play a Tempo rubato in an Adagio, […]
Stokowski playing Bach on the organ
Stewart Warkov, assistant manager of the Symphony of The Air in 1961 described Stokowski playing Bach on the organ: Stokowski played Bach on the organ for me, each time one of the great pieces he had arranged. The sound, the phrasing, and the registration, the ritards and the accelerandos, gave me the impression of hearing […]