O Lord, Our God, How Wonderful Your Name – Psalm 8Title: O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name Text: Psalm 8:4-9. R. v.2 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Give music to those who love it“Music must be given to those who love it. I want to give free concerts; that’s the answer.” -Sviatoslav Richter, pianist Bruno Monsaingeon: Introduction to Sviatoslav Richter — Notebooks and Conversations p. XX. Cited at: Wikipedia
The orchestra as a symbol of unity“You see behind me a symphony orchestra. Every single one of the instruments has an entirely different background and history; they come from different places …; they’ve had different developments; they sound different… And so, the next time your soul sings, assailed with some sort of horrid indication that people can’t get along together, please […]
Karajan and directionSeiji Ozawa recalls Karajan’s overarching concept of music: I really shouldn’t start comparing Karajan and Bernstein. I’m thinking of the word “direction” – the direction of the music. In Maestro Karajan’s case, he had it from birth – the ability to make long phrases. It was something he taught us, the ones who studied with […]
Inner-most feelings can be expressed in musicTaneyev was critical of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. Tchaikovsky’s response ended with: “I can see you laughing as you read all of this, you sceptic and mocking-bird. In spite of your great love of music it seems you still can’t believe that a man can express his inmost feelings in his compositions. You just wait!” Cited […]
A hunchLogically, a hunch makes as much sense as saying, horses have tails; therefore, all tails have horses.” But in the zany world of films you don’t explain hunches — you just live and die by them. Frank Capra (1971) The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography. Macmillan, p. 123.
The soul and speech“There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech.” Allan Bloom (1987) The closing of the American mind: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students. New York: Simon Simon and Schuster, […]
Growing up in a bell towerCzech composer Bohuslav Martinů was born and spent most of his childhood in a church tower in Polička, on the borders of Bohemia and Moravia. Martinů recalled that the panoramic view encapsulated “the vast and boundless space I am always searching for in my music.” Source: Calum MacDonald, “Bohuslav Martinů”, BBC Music, August 2009, p.44.
Spontaneity and artAlexander Gow, musician in the band Oh Mercy on spontaneity of artistic creation: [Spontaneity is] when art is expression, and that’s what I’m interested in. If, like you said, there’s a spontaneity to it and it’s an extension of a certain kind of moment or feeling, and if you’re clever enough to express that through […]
The creative process 