A Light Rises in the Darkness – Psalm 111 (112)Title: A Light Rises in the Darkness Psalm 111 (112): 4-9 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part.
Music and identity“The more anonymous music is, the less likely people will be to feel attached it and to feel the need to support it. But when someone knows who you are, when you’re not just some disembodied vibrations in the air, they’re far more likely to stand behind you.” Isaac Schankler. “Beyond Sound and Science: Musicians, […]
The source of inspirationFor me, inspiration comes from a bunch of places: desperation, deadlines… A lot of times ideas will turn up when you’re doing something else. And, most of all, ideas come from confluence — they come from two things flowing together. They come, essentially, from daydreaming. . . . And I suspect that’s something every human […]
Hogarth on Chopin“He accomplishes enormous difficulties, but so quietly, so smoothly and with such constant delicacy and refinement that the listener is not sensible of their real magnitude. It is the exquisite delicacy, with the liquid mellowness of his tone, and the pearly roundness of his passages of rapid articulation which are the peculiar features of his […]
Claude Debussy: RêverieFromont published Rêverie years after Debussy had given it to them. By this time, Debussy’s opinion of it had changed: “I regret very much your decision to publish Rêverie… I wrote it in a hurry years ago, purely for material considerations. It is a work of no consequence and I frankly consider it no good.” […]
Skepticism“Great intellects are skeptical.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Antichrist, 54. Digitally archived at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/19322-h/19322-h.htm, accessed 12 September 2021
Never use a scoreI never use a score when conducting my orchestra. Does a lion tamer enter a cage with a book on how to tame a lion? — Dimitri Mitropoulos, conductor Zographos, Achilleas (2017) Music and Chess. Milford: Russell Enterprises Inc.
Mastery“Mastery passes often for egotism.” — Johanne Goethe, German author Johanne Goethe (1906) The Maxisms and Relfections. Translated by Bailey Saunders. New York: The Macmillan Company. Digitally archived at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33670/33670-h/33670-h.htm, accessed 12 Setpember 2021
Fill Us With Your Love, O Lord – Psalm 89 (90)Title: Fill us with your love, O Lord Text: Psalm 89 (90): 12-17. R. v.14 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE: .
Malcolm Sargent on Vaughan Williams’ Sixth SymphonyConductor Malcolm Sargent on Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony: A frightening symphony. For a symphony to be frightening is perhaps a good thing. Here we have the complete testament of a man who, in his seventies, looks back on the human sufferings of his time. I never conduct the Sixth without feeling that I am walking […]