Underrated and overrated composers“Polls of various musical personalities (but not me) in the Times about who’s underrated and who’s overrated. Naturally Vivaldi is deemed overrated in the light of Bach. Since everyone knows he’s overrated. I’d have said he’s the most underrated of overrated composers.” Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary 1986-1999. Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press, p.82. […]
Imagination disposes and creates“Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which is everything in this world.” — Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. Ramage, Craufurd Tait (1866) Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian Authors. Liverpool: Edward Howell, p.232. Digitally archived at https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=nDErAAAAYAAJ&hl=en_AU, accessed 12 September 2021.
The forgotten aspect of music“One of things that’s been forgotten in music for a long time is the ability to be nakedly emotional”. David Lang, composer Cited in “When Opera Is New and Unproved”, Anne Midgette, The Washington Post, 7 September 2008.
Your Ways, O Lord, are Love and Truth – Psalm 24 (25)TITLE: Your Ways, O Lord, are Love and Ruth TEXT: Psalm 24 (25):4-9 COMPOSER: Greg Smith INSTRUMENTATION: SATB and piano (unison verses) PRODUCT MEDIUM: PDF score and part SAMPLE:
The role of the arts in societyThe Eighteenth Weimar Classicists’ (e.g., Goethe, Shiller) conception of art expanded past the arts themselves, but also embraced all elements of society. John Armstrong states: The aim of art is to ennoble us, to make us whole and balanced; then we can engage maturely and sensibly in political processes. The aim of their “classical art” […]
I need a better razorHaydn reached London in the opening days of 1791. He passed his first night at the house of Bland, the music publisher, at 45 High Holborn, which now, rebuilt, forms part of the First Avenue Hotel. Bland, it should have been mentioned before, had been sent over to Vienna by Salomon to coax Haydn into […]
The experience of composition“I am not suited to ‘writing music’. All has to be experienced.” -Jean Sibelius Cited in:Goss, Glenda (2009) “Sibelius”. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 6.
Handel and the sopranoThe great singer, Cuzzoni, refused to sing an air of his the way he wished it. He seized her, and, dragging her to a window, threatened to throw her out, thundering, “I always knew you were a devil, but I’ll show you that I am Beelzebub, the prince of devils.” Hughes, Rupert (2004) The Love […]
We can’t all play first violin“If all would play first violin, we could not obtain an orchestra. Therefore esteem every musician in his place.” — Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (translated by Henry Hugo Pierson), Advice to Young Musicains [Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln]. New York: J. Schuberth & Co. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28219/28219-h/28219-h.htm, accessed 29 August 2021.
StringsCello and piano String ensemble
