Listening to music should always be an active process, and those who attend – pregnant verb – concerts, who listen, who respond, who treasure what they hear there, are musicians. They are the ones who do not let music wash over them like a bubble bath but who actively swim in the water. When vibrations in the air create vibrations in your soul, you’re a member of this club.
Stephen Hough (2019) Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More. London: Faber & Faber, p. 28.
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Copland on the integration of jazz into art music
American composer Aaron Copland discusses the influence of Jazz on his musical style: was a very important influence at one time. I wrote a Piano Concerto in 1927 which was largely based on jazz materials. Jazz, of course, is for us a very typical American musical expression, which we have not so successfully been able […]
Ombra mai fu from Serse (Handel)Title: “Ombra mai fu” (from Serse) Composer: George Frederic Handel Arranger: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello quartet Product medium: PDF score and parts Sample:
Abstraction XIIITitle: Abstraction XIII Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score Related products: – Abstraction XIII (mp3)
Ravel’s fine attributes as a composerOn his tour to America in 1928, Ravel was highly praised by music critics. In the New York Times, Olin Downeswrote: Never to have composed in undue haste; never to have offered the public a piece of unfinished work; to have experienced life as an observant and keenly interested beholder, and to have fashioned certain […]
Love your musicWhen I was 19 years old I joined Columbia Artists in New York. It was my first management and a momentous event in my life. All of a sudden here I was, part of what was perceived to be one of the most prestigious such organizations in the country. It was a big time and […]
A concise rehearsalHans Knappertsbusch (1888-1965) was a German conductor. However, he had a dislike of rehearsals. Karajan recalled: One time he was going over Tchaikovsky’s Fifth with the Vienna Philharmonic. He came to the second movement, with the horn solo, and said, “Let’s start.” He did a few bars, stopped, and said, “See you this evening. You […]
Sondheim’s pass timesSondheim is a lover of games, and collects antique ones (many were destroyed in a fire that swept through the lower floors of the house in 1995). He has a passion for murder mysteries, puzzles (he once spent 18 months devising cryptic crosswords for New York magazine), word play and anagrams. His own name, he […]
Paper and matches for maintenanceWhen Spanish cellist Pablo Casals was in his seventies, he retired from the concert stage and lived in Prades, Southern France. Casals began each day by playing from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier on the piano (1), then heading out for a walk with his German shepherd, cocking an ear for birdsong and saluting the snow-capped peak […]
Chopin and counterpointWith regard to counterpoint in Chopin’s music, you might be interested in the conversation that Chopin had not long before his death with the painter Eugène Delacroix. Delacroix was one of a handful of quite intimate friends of Chopin’s. In his diary, he mentions how he had picked up Chopin in a carriage, and they […]
Through the Long NightTitle: Through the Long Night Composer: Greg SmithText: Edward Carpenter Instrumentation: TTBBProduct medium: PDF score