Tag: work ethic

  • Habit is stronger than willpower or inspiration

    In writing, habit seems to be a stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. Consequently there must be some little quality of fierceness until the habit pattern of a certain number of words is established. There is no possibility, in me at least, of saying, “I’ll do it if I feel like it.” One never…

  • Write over improvise

    If Heaven has bestowed on you a fine imagination, you will often be seated at your piano in solitary hours, as if attached to it; you will desire to express the feelings of your heart in harmony, and the more clouded the sphere of harmony may perhaps be to you, the more mysteriously you will…

  • Don’t loaf and invite inspiration

    Don’t dash off a six-thousand-word story before breakfast. Don’t write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will none the less get something that looks remarkably like it.…

  • A practice regime

    After a year’s sabbatical in 1953, the pianist Horowitz found a routine and rebuilt his technique: I realized I had to work out new daily schedules for myself – so much time for study, for rest, for reflection, for exercise … Soon my days had a new rhythm, a new serenity.  Every day I start…

  • That which precedes success

    “I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.” — Thomas Edison, American inventor A. R. Calhoun How to Get On in the World; or, a Ladder to Pratical Success, New York, 1895, p.137.  Digitally archived at: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/20608/pg20608.html, accessed 18 September 2021. 

  • A man is not a failure until …

    What is luck?  Is it being in the right place at the right time?  I think it is something more.  Luck is the active process of creating the life you want.  So don’t just sit back and hope that good things will happen to you.  Be courageous and go after what you want.  Commit to…

  • Baudelaire on inspiration

    “Inspiration is merely the reward for working every day!” – Charles Baudelaire (French poet).  According to Roland-Manuel, Ravel would often recite this phrase.  Source: Nichols, Roger (1987) Ravel Remembered.  London: Faber & Faber, p. 143.

  • The effort is better than rest

    “Writing music is seventy-five per cent an intellectual activity.  This effort is often more pleasant for me than having a rest.” Conversation with Ravel, recalled by Robert de Fragny, Echo liberté, 7 November 1950. Cited in: Nichols, Roger (1987) Ravel Remembered.  London: Faber & Faber., p. 61.

  • Art and patience

    “Good art is nothing more than infinite patience.” William Wallace Kimball, founder of Kimball Piano Company Cited in: Cited in: Kimball, K., Petersen, R., Johnson, K. (1990) The Music Lover’s Quotation Book. Toronto: Sound and Vision, p. 85.

  • Silence, slowness, clarity, reinvigorate

    “No matter if you’re an artist, a desk jockey, or anything in between – give yourself permission to include regular (dare I say daily?) reinvigoration in your work ethic. Silence. Slowness. Clarity. The machine doesn’t work so well without them.” Kim Pensinger, from Living and Singing on Interest in the WTO Blog

  • Do everything promptly

    “During a very busy life I have often been asked, How did you manage to do it all? The answer is very simple. It is because I did everything promptly.  Procastination … is fatal.” Richard Tangye (1833-1903), British manufacter of engines and other heavy equipment. Thomas Sharper Knowlson, The Art of Success, London: F. Warne…

  • Work so that you don’t have to work

    Herr Richter, the pianist, is going on a tour that will take him back to Holland, his native country – I have given him a letter introductionto the Countess Thun at Linz. – He also wishes to visit Salzbourg, so I gave him a 4-line note for you, my dearest father … He plays well…

  • Mozart on Craft

    “People are mistaken, if they think that my art has come easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has devoted so much effort in the study of composition as have I. There is scarcely a famous master in must whose works I have not diligently, and often repeatedly, studied.” – Mozart, in…

  • Energy from work

    “The more work that you make, the more energy you have to make work.” – Garry Stewart, artistic director of the Adelaide-based Australian Dance Theatre. Edwards, Verity. “Dance maker with edge on top of world”, The Australian, 22 July 2011, p.7.  

  • The beginning and the end

    “Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.” – Joseph Joubert, French writer Joubert, J. (1983) The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection. Translated by Paul Auster. San Francisco: North Point Press, p. 76.

  • The life of a pianist

    My life involves endless hours of repetitive and frustrating practising, lonely hotel rooms, dodgy pianos, aggressively bitchy reviews, isolation, confusing airline reward programmes, physiotherapy, stretches of nervous boredom … punctuated by short moments of extreme pressure …perhaps most crushingly, the realisation that I will never, ever give the perfect recital. It can only ever, with…

  • Inspiration exists

    “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” -Pablo Picasso Cited at WikiQuote

  • Working hard for music

    “Now we know that you are gifted, very gifted, but you must work very hard, because someone who is gifted has to work harder than someone who is not, and you will see how boring it is to work hard at music.” Ravel to Manuel Rosenthal after a concert. Cited in: Nichols, Roger (1987) Ravel…

  • Hilary Hahn on technique, practise mentality, and performance

    Violinist Hilary Hahn on practice and technique: I’ve always worked hard at my technique … But I’ve worked hard at my musicality as well. When I was doing my etudes my teachers always made sure I didn’t go onto the next until I had the first really good. But it wasn’t good unless it was…

  • Work joyfully and peacefully

    If you will become possessed of this faith you will not need to bother about your success or failure, for success will come.  You will not need to be anxious about the results, and will work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts will inevitably bring about right results. — James Allen…

  • Stravinsky on composition

    “For me, as a creative musician, composition is a daily function that I am compelled to discharge. I compose because I am made for that and cannot do otherwise … I am far from saying that there is no such thing as inspiration; quite the opposite. It is found as a driving force in every…