Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge, for it requires from its disciples, composers and performers alike, not only talent and enthusiasm, but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection.
Hector Berlioz, A Travers Chants.
Cited in I. Lipsius, Thoughts of Great Musicians, London, Augener, 1886, p. 9, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951002299295b&view=1up&seq=6.
Music: the product of feeling and knowledge
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It’s the page turner’s fault
Several years ago, Mr. Kalichstein hired a young music student who kept reaching across the score to turn pages from the bottom right corner, in the process obscuring several measures of the concerto. “Take it from the top!” the frustrated Mr. Kalichstein finally hissed; reflexively, the page turner flipped the score back to the beginning. […]
Through a Looking GlassTitle: Through a Looking Glass Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Duet Level: Piano I – level 1 (five finger position) Product medium: PDF score and MP3 accompaniment track (Audio sample of accompaniment track only
Music as a means of common meditation“There is also in this music an extraordinary sense of control over the passage of time; a moment will be held still as if suspended, and then released, with a rush. Einstein has told us that time is relative, flexible and elastic; I have noticed these qualities whenever I have tried to play to the […]
Brahms’ post-concert adventureBrahms was invited to the family of one of his students, Fräulein von Meyensbug, in Detmol : The Meysenbug ladies proved very prim and conventional. Brahms was ill at ease. He was so afraid of shocking his aristocratic hostesses that he hardly knew what to say or how to behave. Their young nephew Carl, however, […]
Out of practice“All I have left is a long nose and a fourth finger out of practice.” Chopin, in Scotland, unable to visit his friend Julian in London because of ill health. Cited in: Zaluski, Iweo & Pamela (1993) The Scottish Autumn of Frederick Chopin. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, p.23.
A duet under the bedIt was in the eventful year, then, of 1813—the year of “Il Figlio per Azzardo”, with its obbligato accompaniment for lamp-shades of “Tancredi” and of “L’Italiana in Algeri”—that Rossini was writing one morning in bed, when the duet on which he was engaged fell from his hands. “Nothing easier”, an ordinary composer would say, “than […]
Old into newAn old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it. — Robert Bresson, French filmmaker J. Butler, Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1991, p. 170.
The evolution of the jazz traditionAmerican jazz music is, in many ways, rooted in its “traditional” repertoire – the American “Songbook” of “standards”. There are, however musicians who emphasise the importance of a fresh approach: If jazz has a future, musicians like Matt Mayhall could help it get there. A lanky, bespectacled Reno native and graduate of Cal Arts, where […]
Richter on small concerts“Put a small piano in a truck and drive out on country roads; take time to discover new scenery; stop in a pretty place where there is a good church; unload the piano and tell the residents; give a concert; offer flowers to the people who have been so kind as to attend; leave again.” […]
Widmann on BrahmsWidmann, a Swiss poet, describes Brahms’ performing at the piano: The broad leonine chest, the Herculean shoulders, the mighty head which the player sometimes threw back with an energetic jerk, the pensive, handsome brow that seemed to radiate an inner illumination, and the Germanic eyes which scintillated with a wondrous fire between their fair lashes […]