Paul Simon on music todayPaul Simon (of Simon and Garfunkel) on the future of the “album” concept: I don’t think the album is going to disappear for several reasons … It’s not that people aren’t listening to albums. They’re just doing it on shuffle. What that does is it makes albums more eclectic and more interesting. But if an […]
Tin Pan AlleyTin Pan Alley refers to the concentration of music publishers in New York City, West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. It started around 1885 and lasted till the depression in the 1930s. It’s title comes from the the sound of all the cheap, tinny pianos playing, being likened to the beating of tin […]
The development of concert life in LondonThe public concert, as an institution, dates from England from the Restoration period [from the 1660s]; previously music, unless ecclesiastical or dramatic in character, had been essentially the art of a small circle. The largess of aristocratic patronage and the profits of publication were the composers’ rewards. But with the middle of the seventeenth century […]
What we play“What we play is life.” Louis Armstrong, Jazz musician Cited at: Satchmo, “Louis Armstrong Quotes and Tributes.” https://www.satchmo.com/louisarmstrong/quotes.html, accessed 6 September 2021.
From the heart“What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.” — Samuel Coleridge Taylor, English poet, critic and philosopher. Coleridge, Samuel (1856) Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton. London: Chapman and Hall, page xlv
The sole purpose of art is infiniteE. T. A. Hoffmann wrote in 1813 that instrumental music is the most romantic of all the arts – one might almost say, the only genuinely romantic one – for its sole subject is the infinite. The lyre of Orpheus opened the portals of Orcus – music discloses to man an unknown realm, a world […]
Brahms’ pranksHannes 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 […]
The Just Will Live in the Presence of the Lord (Setting II) – Psalm 14 (15)Title: The just will live in the presence of the Lord (Setting II) Text: Psalm 14 (15):2-5 (setting ii) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
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Trust yourselfAll this, my friend, will time provide, And of itself, itself will give; Soon as you in yourself confide, You know the way to live! — Mephistopheles to Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, translated by Lewis Filmore, (London: William Smith, 1847), p. 79. First published in the German as Faust: eine Tragödie, […]