Bernstein as a counterpoint student at HarvardThe composer Harold Shapero, who lived a few doors away from Bernstein in Newton and was a year behind him at Harvard, also noted Bernstein’s cavalier approach to counterpoint studies. “Lenny didn’t come to class at all. I was a dutiful little student. I did my Palestrina stuff and I got an ‘A.’ . . […]
What an artist can do for anotherThe best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration. – Steven Pressfield S. Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, New York, Black Irish Entertainment, 2002, p.18
Education and researchEducation & research services in the fields below are offered both: – online – face to face Skill areas: – Aural and harmony – Analysis – Music history – Piano tuition How can Emotemuse help you? – Tuition – Research and analysis Contact THE CRAFT OF THE MUSICAL LANGUAGE Greg Smith completed a Bachelor […]
Review of Pablo CasalsA Review written in El Alcance of the cellist Pablo Cassals: His bow, sometimes sweet as a voice from heaven, at other times vibrant and robust, produces such a sonorous combination of voices and tones that it seems that the body of his violincello is the magic secret of sublime harmonies capriciously transformed at the […]
Salvation by imagination“An idea is salvation by imagination.” – Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect
Handel’s speedy methodMorrell gave Handel the words of Cleopatra’s air “Convey me to some peaceful shore” in Alexander Balus, he cried out “Damn your Iambics!”. Morell offered to change them to trochees and went into the next room to do so, only to find about three minutes later that Handel had set them as they stood.” Dean, […]
Beethoven and the spiderXaver Schydner von Wartensee, in the early days of meeting Beethoven, was curious about a tale he had heard about Beethoven and a spider. Before Schnyder had become acquainted with the immortal Master, he had read the well-known anecdote according to which, when Beethoven was practising the violin in his garret, a spider lowered itself […]
Doing what I can’t do“I am always doing what I can’t do yet in order to learn how to do it”. – Van Gogh, painter, in a letter to Anthon van Rappard, 1885
Part of the bigger pictureLeopold Stokowski conducted the American premier of Berg’s opera Wozzeck in 1930 (a joint effort of The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Phildelphia Grand Opera, and Curtis Institute). Abram Chasins recalls a rehearsal: I attended his second rehearsal with the orchestra in the pit and singers on the stage. After some twenty minutes of singing and acting, […]
Piano Method 