“All I have left is a long nose and a fourth finger out of practice.” Chopin, in Scotland, unable to visit his friend Julian in London because of ill health. Cited in: Zaluski, Iweo & Pamela (1993) The Scottish Autumn of Frederick Chopin. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, p.23.

A student of Beethoven’s, Ferdinand Ries, went on a walk with his teacher in the country: Beethoven muttered and howled the whole time, without emitting any definite notes.  When I asked him what he was doing he answered, “A theme for the last allegro of the sonata [the Appassionata] has occurred to me.”  When we […]

Elgar loved his football, particularly the Wolverhampton team.  His friend Dorebella recalled the first match he attended at Wolverhampton: It all delighted him. The dense crowd flowing down the road like a river; the roar of welcome as the rival teams came on to the ground; the shouts of men calling to their player friends […]

The Imperial Chapel Choir was founded in Vienna in 1498 and performed exclusively for the court.  Composers that worked with the choir included Musicians like Heinrich Isaac, Paul Hofhaimer, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Johann Joseph Fux, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Caldara, Antonio Salieri and Anton Bruckner.  Schubert was a chorister.  After the dissolution of the […]

“Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.” – Paul Johannes Tillich, German American theologian and philosopher

If a man teaches composition in a university, how can he not be a composer? He has worked hard, learned his craft. Ergo, he is a composer. A professional. Like a doctor. But there is that doctor who opens you up, does exactly the right thing, closes you up—and you die. He failed to take […]

A student of Rachmaninoff, Ruth Slenczynska, recalled: I remember how Rachmaninoff explained to me the problem of phrasing: he showed me an elastic band and stretched it slightly, then allowed it to bounce back; next, he stretched it beyond a certain point, and it snapped. He meant to say that no part of a musical […]

Title: The Castle Builder Text: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:

“That’s what I find wonderful about music: there is always a secret left, pieces don’t belong to performers, you rent them!” – Joseph Moog, Pianist W. Boon, “Joseph Moog”, Pianistique, 5 November 2016, https://www.pianistique.com/home/english-interviews/15-interviews/75-joseph-moog, accessed 17 January 2022.

The Polish pianist, Josef Hoffmann may have been a child prodigy. Upon hearing him play, Anton Rubinstein, who typically disliked child prodigies said told his manager, “This prodigy I believe in. Hear him!” (1) Yet in 1908, The Daily Graphic looked back on having seen the young pianist: When Joseph Hoffmann was an infant prodigy, […]