Beethoven, who is often bizarre and baroque, takes at times the majestic flight of an eagle, and then creeps in rocky pathways. He first fills the soul with sweet melancholy, and then shatters it by a mass of shattered chords. He seems to harbor together doves and crocodiles.
A review of Beethoven’s First Symphony, Tablettes de Polymnie, Paris, 1810. Cited in: Cited in: James Irsay, “The Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas–Artur Schnabel”, https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/SchnabelBeethovenPianoSonatas.pdf, accessed 19 August 2020.
Harbouring doves and crocodiles
by
Tags:
Featured Content
Easy Street
Title: Easy Street (Silent film soundtrack) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score Related products: – MP3 soundtrack BACKGROUND: FILM: Written by: Charles Chaplin, Vincent Bryan & Maverick Terrell Starring: Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance & Eric Campbell Directed by: Charles Chaplin & Edward Brewer Released: 1917 SAMPLE:
Tchaikovsky and mushroom collectingLike so many Russians, he was a madly keen collector of mushrooms and could indulge his passion freely at Klin; the woods and fields around his house were filled with them. However, as anyone will know who has taken to the sport, there are mushroom collectors and mushroom collectors; some have the eye for it, […]
A mystery instrument createdMozart’s Magic Flute uses a glass harmonica or keyed glockenspiel to represent a set of magic bells. “Mozart’s original score for the 1791 opera The Magic Flute called for a glass harmonica or keyed glockenspiel to represent a set of magic bells. The instruments were obscure even in Mozart’s day but more than 200 years after his […]
Schumann as a studentSchumann studied with Dorn, the conductor at the civic theatre. Dorn recalled: Having completed exercises in figured-bass realization, chorale harmonization, and canon, teacher and student moved on to double counterpoint. Intrigued by the mysteries of this discipline, and reluctant to tear himself away from his desk, Schumann once requested that his lesson take place in […]
Mozart improvisingIn 1777, Mozart was having lunch with his uncle at the Holy Cross Convent in Ausburg. Mozart played a sinfoni and Vanhall’s Violin Concerto in B. In the evening, at supper, he performed his Strasbourg concerto, a keyboard prelude and his Fischer Variations (K179). It was suggested to the deacon of the Holy Cross Conen, […]
To a friendTitle: To a friend Composer: Greg Smith Text: James Fenimore Cooper Jr. Instrumentation: TTBB Product medium: PDF score Sample:
The James Bond themeJohn Barry did not get the chance to see any footage and he had not read any of Ian Fleming’s books when he was called in to work on the music for the first James Bond film, Dr No (1962), for which Monty Norman had originally been commissioned to write the score. “I was just […]
Trombone and pianoThe influence of musicConductor Leopold writes: There are millions who find solace in music – it opens for them the sun-bathed gates of inspiration – through music they know that behind the sordid, grim surface of life there nevertheless exists an ideal and external Beauty. Music powerfully stimulates the growth in us of impulses we had never suspected […]
The pros and cons of imagination“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.” Ursula Kroeber Le Guin, American author. Cited at: Quotationsbook