Ravel’s style — elegant, and refined — was highly influenced by eighteenth classicism (e.g., Mozart) and the early French keyboard composers (e.g., Couperin). Stravinsky once described Ravel as a “Swiss watchmaker”, due to Ravel’s attention to detail. Ravel wrote: “I never put down a work until I have made absolutely certain that there is nothing […]

“To accomplish great things we must first dream, then visualize, then plan… believe… act!” – Alfred Montapert, Author Cited at: QuotationsBook

American composer Steve Reich on his compositional process: When I compose, I notice I’m the only one in the room. (laughs) I tend to be a somewhat self-critical person. I use my emotional faculties to judge whether I want to hear something again. Basically I have no one in mind except pleasing myself. And my […]

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Life is made up of little things. It is very rarely that an occasion is offered for doing a great deal at once. True greatness consists in being great in little things. – Charles Simmons (1852) A Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker: Containing Over a Thousand Subjects.  North Wrentham: Charles Simmons, p. 315.  Digitally archived […]

Johann Sebastian Bach’s preferred to play the viola when conducting an orchestra. Source: Siblin, Eric (2009) The Cello Suites.  Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, p. 216.

In writing, habit seems to be a stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. Consequently there must be some little quality of fierceness until the habit pattern of a certain number of words is established. There is no possibility, in me at least, of saying, “I’ll do it if I feel like it.” One never […]

A Review written in El Alcance of the cellist Pablo Cassals: His bow, sometimes sweet as a voice from heaven, at other times vibrant and robust, produces such a sonorous combination of voices and tones that it seems that the body of his violincello is the magic secret of sublime harmonies capriciously transformed at the […]

When Spanish cellist Pablo Casals was in his seventies, he retired from the concert stage and lived in Prades, Southern France. Casals began each day by playing from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier on the piano (1), then heading out for a walk with his German shepherd, cocking an ear for birdsong and saluting the snow-capped peak […]

On the one hand, I believe that to connect tradition and innovation is the most important thing to me personally. On the other hand, to explore the score and be close to what the composer wanted is essential. There is a way to find your own language within the details that the composers left. Julius […]