Title: Ode IComposer: Greg SmithInstrumentation: PianoPerformer: Greg Smith (January 2010) Your browser does not support the audio element. Sheet music

Title: Abstraction VII Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLES:

In 1928, Ravel delivered a lecture in Houston Texas. He mentioned the influence of Satie: Another significant influence – less than unique and derived in part from Chabrier – is that of Satie, who had a notable effect on Debussy, on myself and, to tell the truth, on the majority of modern French composers. Satie […]

“You know it’s sort of addictive because there is all this gold just floating in the ether around you. The process of song writing is this process of just discovering and putting together these beautiful animals that live on their own and run around the world and make people feel good or go on trips […]

Beethoven was revising Fidelio when he wrote to Georg Freiedrich Treitschke (who was helping to revise the libretto) (1): Now, of course, everything has to be done at once; and I could composer something new far more quickly than patch up the old with something new, as I am now doing. For my custom when I […]

“Spotlights dance down on 216 jewels of lead crystal, set in dazzling diamond patterns into the piano’s black lid, sides, legs, fallboard and bench. Each jewel features several hundred to several thousand intricately cut, ground and polished pieces of crystal — nearly a half-million in all.” Glass artist Jon Kuhn has collobarated with Bosendorfer to […]

“The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.” Paul Klee, Swiss painter Cited at QuotationsBook

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 […]

“Good music is very close to primitive language.” Denis Diderot (Elements of Physiology, 1875)

I have often made the point in masterclasses that students should not listen to lots of recordings of a piece they are learning. I’m always a little horrified when I hear a student say, “My teacher told me to learn the Chopin G minor Ballade, so I went to the library and took out eight […]