I need time to be idle in order to experience and romance my muse, Music, my lifelong partner. In some ways, when I think about the enforced thirty minute practice sessions and much-resented violin lessons during Friday recess which introduced us during my early childhood, our story feels a bit like the plot of a romantic comedy in which the protagonists express disdain for each other at first, only to confess an epic love for each other by the end of the story. Music kept me alive as a lonely and depressed pre-teen feeling his other-ness come into sharp relief through my middle and high school years. It has carried me to some of my most joyful experiences in life, facilitated almost all of my most-treasured friendships and romances, and comforted me during my darkest moments. Stealing moments to reconnect with it is the least it deserves, and reinvigorates me and my sense of wonder in untold ways. Every challenge and bump I encounter on this pathway of a musical life (even pandemics) are not catastrophic endings, they are simply a bit of a tease. It’s my muse playing coy, reminding me of the importance of our relationship, and simply inviting me to lean in harder, with more devotion, and to continue to fill my life with joyful kisses.
Nicholas Phan, “Eternity”, 4 August 2020, http://nicholas-phan.com/grecchinois/2020/eternity, accessed 27 August 2020.
Relationship with the muse
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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
Ode ITitle: Ode IComposer: Greg SmithInstrumentation: PianoPerformer: Greg Smith (January 2010) Your browser does not support the audio element. Sheet music
Conducting glovesThe practice of wearing white gloves whilst conducting was common in the nineteenth century. The Musical times reported in July 1884 that: “A German conductor,” we are told, “in order that the public may be more deeply impressed with the feeling of grief intended to be produced by the Funeral March in Beethoven’s ‘Eroica Symphony,’ wears […]
Bernstein’s response to violenceThis will be our response to violence To make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. – Leonard Bernstein.
The background to BoleroRavel’s infamous Boléro was somewhat created by chance: Shortly before Ravel left for America, the Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein had asked him for a ballet to be based on orchestrations of parts of Albéniz’s Iberia. To this he agreed; with so much on his plate he was not anxious to undertake further commitments for wholly original composition. […]
Capturing the experience of being aliveIn attempting to capture something of the experience of being alive, the words themselves must be alive. Words, when living and breathing are like musical chords. The full resonance of the chord or phrase must be allowed to be heard in all of its suggestive imprecision. We must attempt in our use of language in…our […]
A young Josef HoffmannThe Polish pianist, Josef Hoffmann may have been a child prodigy. Upon hearing him play, Anton Rubinstein, who typically disliked child prodigies said told his manager, “This prodigy I believe in. Hear him!” (1) Yet in 1908, The Daily Graphic looked back on having seen the young pianist: When Joseph Hoffmann was an infant prodigy, […]
Stravinsky on composition“For me, as a creative musician, composition is a daily function that I am compelled to discharge. I compose because I am made for that and cannot do otherwise … I am far from saying that there is no such thing as inspiration; quite the opposite. It is found as a driving force in every […]
Be a dreamer“Be a dreamer. If you don’t know how to dream, you’re dead.” – Jim Valvano, American basketball coach
Form your own interpretationI 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 […]