Title: A Light Rises in the Darkness Psalm 111 (112): 4-9 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part.

Schumann studied with Dorn, the conductor at the civic theatre. Dorn recalled: Having completed exercises in figured-bass realization, chorale harmonization, and canon, teacher and student moved on to double counterpoint. Intrigued by the mysteries of this discipline, and reluctant to tear himself away from his desk, Schumann once requested that his lesson take place in […]

While writing the lyrics to songs in Beauty and the Beast, Howard Ashman’s health was deteriorating. The composer, Alan Menken, recalls: By a certain point, he wasn’t well enough to travel. Once Disney knew, they brought a lot of the production over to the east coast; he made it through all the last recording sessions. […]

“Set me a task in which I can put something of my very self, and it is a task no longer. It is joy and art.” -Carman Bliss, Canadian Poet Cited at QuotationsBook  

The theatre director Rouben Mamoulian describes Gershwin’s playing: George at the piano was George happy … like a sorcerer celebrating his Sabbath.  He would draw out a lovely melody like a golden thread, then juggle it, twist it and toss it around mischievously, weave it into unexpected intricate patterns, and hurl it into a cascade […]

You’re travelling to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound… but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land, whose boundaries are only that of the imagination… you’re entering… the Twilight Zone… – Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone

“…at 6 o’clock in the morning I’m already done with my hair; at 7 I’m fully dressed; – then I compose until 9 o’clock; from 9 to 1 o’clock I give lessons. – Then I Eat, unless I’m invited by someone who doesn’t eat lunch until 2 or 3 o’clock as, for instance, today and […]

“Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Oliver Goldsmith (1762) The citizen of the world: or, letters from a Chinese philosopher, residing in London, to his friends in the east, Dublin: printed for George and Alex. Ewing, 1762, letter 7, p. 30.  Digitally archived at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ecco/004776950.0001.001/1:9?rgn=div1;view=fulltext, […]

“[The key of E-flat] was reserved mostly for moments of sublime seriousness, appropriate for dying thoughts, or of love unto death, whether human or divine.” – Heartz, Daniel (2003) Music in European Capitols. New York: Norton. Cited in: Siblin, Eric (2009) The Cello Suites. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, p. 144.

Vaughan Williams was commissioned to revise the hymn book of the Anglican Church: Hymns Ancient and Modern. This was amounted to a huge task, but beneficial to his compositional outlook. The study of folk music to ensure the “best” versions of tunes was stressed the importance of musical activity in all spheres of music. He […]