Tchaikovsky on Don GiovanniTchaikovsky, later in his life, reflected on hearing Mozart's Don Giovanni as a boy: The music of Don Giovanni was the first to conquer me completely. It awoke an ecstasy in me of which the consequences are known. It gave me the key to the spheres of pure beauty in which the greatest geniuses soar. […]
Arnold on culture“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.” Matthew Arnold (poet and scholar), Preface to Literature and Dogma (1873 edition), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Literature_and_Dogma/Introduction, accesssed 29 August 2021.
Intermezzo, op. 118, no. 2 (Brahms)Title: Intermezzo, op. 118, no. 2Composer: Johannes BrahmsArranger: Greg SmithInstrumentation: Cello and pianoProduct medium: PDF score and part
Mastery“Mastery passes often for egotism.” — Johanne Goethe, German author Johanne Goethe (1906) The Maxisms and Relfections. Translated by Bailey Saunders. New York: The Macmillan Company. Digitally archived at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33670/33670-h/33670-h.htm, accessed 12 Setpember 2021
Sight singing with HandelWhen Handel travelled through Chester, on his way to Ireland, this year, 1741 (to give the first performance of Messiah), I was at the Public School in that city and very well remember seeing him [Handel] smoke a pipe, over a dish of coffee, at the Exchange Coffee House; for being extremely curious to see […]
The creative urge“The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.” —Agnes de Mille (1905-1993), American dancer and choreographer. Gardner, Kara Anne. Agnes de Mille: Telling Stories in Broadway Dance. United States, Oxford University Press, 2016.
A little help with a fugueRachmaninoff had a little help with a fugue exam at the Moscow Conservatory in 1891: By mistake the examinations of Rachmaninoff in both piano and fugue were scheduled for the same day and hour, so his fugue examination was transferred to the following day, when he was to be examined alone, the rest of the […]
To a friendTitle: To a friend Composer: Greg Smith Text: James Fenimore Cooper Jr. Instrumentation: TTBB Product medium: PDF score Sample:
The forgotten aspect of music“One of things that’s been forgotten in music for a long time is the ability to be nakedly emotional”. David Lang, composer Cited in “When Opera Is New and Unproved”, Anne Midgette, The Washington Post, 7 September 2008.
Trust yourselfAll this, my friend, will time provide, And of itself, itself will give; Soon as you in yourself confide, You know the way to live! — Mephistopheles to Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, translated by Lewis Filmore, (London: William Smith, 1847), p. 79. First published in the German as Faust: eine Tragödie, […]
