How do you rate your music? We’re not good musicians.  Just adequate. Then why are you so popular? Maybe people like adequate music. – Interviewer and the Beatles. Cited in: Jarski, Rosemarie (2005) Great British Wit.  London: Ebury Press, p. 203.

Reporters described Sergei Rachmaninoff on a concert tour (c. 1940): His punctuality is a legend.  If a reporter asks for two minutes of his time, two minutes and no more are given.  Consequently he arrives at a concert hall on the dot of 8 and goes on the stage precisely at 8:30.  If the concert […]

Title: The Lord upholds my life Text: Psalm 53 (54):3-6. 8 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano (unison verses) Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:

“I don’t mind telling you that I have written a tiny, tiny pianoforte concerto with a tiny, tiny wisp of a scherzo.  It is in B flat, and I have reason to fear I have worked this udder, which has always yielded good milk before, too often and too vigorously.” – Brahms on his Second […]

Title: Musing by Moonlight Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Duet Level: Piano I – level I (5 finger position, left and right hands) Product medium: PDF score & MP3 accompaniment track (Audio sample of accompaniment track only)

“When you’re young, you can be taken with the impulse of the moment and the beauty of a phrase, but the older you get, the more you see that the phrase is only beautiful because of the context within which it works.  The melody is only the outward manifestation of something quite deep inside and […]

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In 1920s Soviet Russia, musicians experimented mirroring the political state: “Just as the government didn’t need a tsar, so the orchestra didn’t need a director,” says Pyotr Aidu of the School of Dramatic Art, which will revive the long-dead form at a premiere concert Thursday. Miriam Elder, “1920s Orchestra Without a Conductor Revived”, The Moscow […]

I have never questioned the importance of melody. I love melody, and I regard it as the most important element in music. I have worked on the improvement of its quality in my compositions for many years. To find a melody instantly understandable even to the uninitiated listener, and at the same time an original […]

Johann Sebastian Bach married Anna Magdelena, 3rd December 1721. They married at home, by command of the Prince of Saxe-Weissenfels. It was Bach’s second marriage. Bach purchased a 264 quarts (about 250 litres) of wine, worth 84 thalers and 16 groschen (about one fifth of his annual salary). Siblin, Eric (2009) The Cello Suites.  Crows […]