What Cage couldn’t stand

“John Cage once said he couldn’t abide the Dominant Seventh, and the saxophone.”

Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary 1986-1999.  Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press, p.65.


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Sleepy Bear
Title: Sleepy Bear Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score SAMPLE: Your browser does not support the audio element.
Your Words, Lord, are Spirit and Life – Psalm 18 (19)
TITLE: Your Words, Lord, are Spirit and Life TEXT: Psalm 18 (19): 8-10, 15 COMPOSER: Greg Smith INSTRUMENTATION: SATB and piano PRODUCT MEDIUM: PDF score and part SAMPLE:
Vaughan Williams on an authentic performance of Bach
Vaughan Williams gave a broadcast talk on Bach entitled “Bach the Great Bourgeois.” It was later published in The Listener. Vaughan Williams, who was involved in performances of works such as Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion as part of the Leith Hill Festival, offered some insight in contemporary approaches to Bach performance: WHEN I was a […]
A monkey on his shoulder
Cellist Walter Joachim spend some time in Calcutta, India. He recalled: “I bought a monkey with which to amuse myself. We played. He was sitting on my shoulders for hours when I was practising.” Joachim practised at least one or two movements of a Bach suite. “I started my day usually with Bach or a […]
Music acting as a spirit resonance
My purpose is to create music not for snobs, but for all people, music which is beautiful and healing.  To attempt what old Chinese painters called "spirit resonance" in melody and sound. – Alan Hovhaness. Cited at The Alan Hovhaness Website: http://www.hovhaness.com/Hovhaness.html
A great teacher
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Ward, author Cited at QuotationsBook  
Teach Me Your Ways, O Lord – Psalm 24 (25)
Title: Teach me your ways, O Lord Text: Psalm 24 (25):4-9 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Bernstein as a counterpoint student at Harvard
The composer Harold Shapero, who lived a few doors away from Bernstein in Newton and was a year behind him at Harvard, also noted Bernstein’s cavalier approach to counterpoint studies. “Lenny didn’t come to class at all. I was a dutiful little student. I did my Palestrina stuff and I got an ‘A.’ . . […]
Learning
“Learning makes a man fit company for himself.”   —  La Harpe Day, E. P. (1884) Day’s Collacon: An Encylopaedia of Prose Quotations.  International Printing and Publishing Office, p. 498.  Digitally archived at: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Qo\_Mhkcu8iAC, accessed 8 September 2021. 
The art of listening
“It’s a challenge, for me at least, to do nothing but listen.  You need to set aside time for it.  You need to concentrate on the music alone (and not on your next deadline).  But when it works, you open yourself up to the transcendent ecstasy good music can bring.” Francis Merson, editor, Limelight, April […]