We arrived here safely yesterday morning at 9 o’clock. – We spent the first night at Vögelbruck; – on the following morning we reached Lambbach – just in time for me to accompany the Agnus Dei on the organ during the mass. – The prelate was most delighted to see me again … We stayed […]

“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

I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise. — George Gerswhin Goldberg, Isaac, and Garson, Edith. George Gershwin: A Study in American Music. United Kingdom, F. Ungar Publishing Company, 1958, p.139.

“I always have a hard-boiled egg. A three-minute egg. Do you know how I time it? I bring it to the boil and then conduct the overture to The Marriage of Figaro. Three minutes exactly.” Sir John Barrirolli Cited in: The Music Lover’s Quotation Book. Ed. Kathleen Kimball, Robin Peterson & Kathleen Johnston. Toronto (Canada): […]

Title: To a friend Composer: Greg Smith Text: James Fenimore Cooper Jr. Instrumentation: TTBB Product medium: PDF score Sample:

John E. Borland described in a paper of June 1897: It was customary to commence with a Bach prelude and fugue (usually perverted from one intended for the organ), a Beethoven sonata (choice limited to four or five), some Chopin pieces (there were about twelve orthodox ones to select from), and a Liszt rhapsody. These […]

Hannes was not always solemn – far from it!  He could be as full of fun and wild pranks as any boy.  With Christian he worked out a scheme which they both found hugely entertaining.  They would knock at the door of a house where, perhaps a century before, some illustrious citizen of Hamburg had […]

Title: Haunted Spooks (silent film soundtrack) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score (47 pages) Background:     Written by: H. M. Walker     Starring: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Wallace Howe, Sammy Brooks, William Gillespie, Mark Jones, Gaylord Lloy, Sam Lufkin, Ernest Morrison, Dee Lampton          Directed by: Alfred J. Goulding & Hal Roach     Film released: […]

The teaching methods of Johann Sebastion Bach are recounted by his son, Philip Emanuel Bach: The first thing he did was to teach his pupils his special ways of touching the keyboard. For this he made them practice for months nothing but separate exercises for all the fingers of both hands, with constant attention to […]

“The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.” — Harold Rosenberg, American writer, educator, philosopher and art critic. Harold Rosenberg, “On the New Cultural Conservatism”, Partisan Review, 1972, vol. 39, no. 3, p. 444.  Digitally archived at http://archives.bu.edu/collections/partisan-review/search/detail?id=326096, accessed […]