Many studies are now discovering that learning a musical instrument is something positive in itself – a discipline that helps a person to acquire skills of co-ordination. concentration, and perseverance. It shares these with sport, of course, but there is more. What makes playing a musical instrument worthy of special attention is that its physical and mental complexities are a springboard to something beyond the tangible or measurable. Unlike sport, music is not about winning, or keeping fit, or promoting your town or your school; it’s about celebrating, to a level approaching ecstasy, the deepest human longings. At moments of acute joy or sorrow, men and women throughout history have sung or reached for musical instruments to express the inexpressible. When minds are taut with emotion, there seems to be an inner compulsive instinct to release and harness this tension through the measured vibrations in the air that we call music.
Stephen Hough (2019) Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More. London: Faber & Faber, pp. 25-26.
The benefits of musical instruments
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Abstraction VI
Title: Abstraction VI Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE:
Encouraging progress“I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.” – Charles M. Schwab, American businessman Cited at Quotd.
Stokowski playing Bach on the organStewart Warkov, assistant manager of the Symphony of The Air in 1961 described Stokowski playing Bach on the organ: Stokowski played Bach on the organ for me, each time one of the great pieces he had arranged. The sound, the phrasing, and the registration, the ritards and the accelerandos, gave me the impression of hearing […]
Beethoven conductingOn 5 April 1803 Beethoven conducted an concert of his own works: the First and Second Symphonies; The Third Piano Concerto, and his oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. It is likely that the he directed the piano concerto (which he played) from the piano. Ignaz von Seyfried gave an account of Beethoven’s conducting […]
Chopin and touchIf a student played with excessive tone, Chopin would say “What was that? A dog barking?” Source: Carter, Gerard (2008) The Piano Book. Ashfield: Wensleydale Press, p.68
Bruckner’s dogSome of Anton Bruckner’s students decided to play a trick on him. While he was out to lunch, they played music on the piano for Bruckner’s dog. As one of them played a motive from Richard Wagner’s music, the others chased the dog around the room and slapped him. But when they played from Bruckner’s […]
Arnold on culture“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.” Matthew Arnold (poet and scholar), Preface to Literature and Dogma (1873 edition), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Literature_and_Dogma/Introduction, accesssed 29 August 2021.
It is best to do it well“It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet
Through the Long NightTitle: Through the Long Night Composer: Greg SmithText: Edward Carpenter Instrumentation: TTBBProduct medium: PDF score
Old into newAn old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it. — Robert Bresson, French filmmaker J. Butler, Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1991, p. 170.