(i) Humoresque I (ii) Song (iii) Little Waltz (iv) Humorous March (v) Impromptu “Never write an unnecessary note. Every note must live”.1 — Sibelius The miniature is the perfect genre to master this philosophy. Sibelius wrote the Opus 97 Bagatelles in 1920, in between his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. The quirky nature of these Bagatelles […]

“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 […]

Title: Lullaby for Edward Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano duet Level: Piano I – Level 1 (5 finger position, left and right hands) Product medium: PDF score & MP3 accompaniment track SAMPLES: (audio sample of accompaniment track only)

Title: Piper’s Tale Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano duet Level: Piano I –  2 (five finger position – pentatonic scale [black keys]) Product medium: PDF score and MP3 accompaniment track SAMPLE: (Audio sample of accompaniment track only)

I have often made the point in masterclasses that students should not listen to lots of recordings of a piece they are learning. I’m always a little horrified when I hear a student say, “My teacher told me to learn the Chopin G minor Ballade, so I went to the library and took out eight […]

Leopold Stokowski was a champion of contemporary music. He conducted music without judgement, believing judgement to be the public’s job. During the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra’s 1915-16 season,he programmed orchestral suites from Stravinsky’s Firebird and Petrushka, Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony, Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, and Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie No. 1. “This last, very cerebral work, although not […]

“Only art experienced within, in which the personality plays a creative role can be of interest …To achieve this, those of you who are not already in this sense dead, must die an expiatory death of all superficiality, of all that you have already learnt, of all encumbrances and of all that is false. Then, […]

Title: Blue Flemingo Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score SAMPLE:

The inexpressible depth of all music, by virtue of which it floats past us as a paradise quite familiar and yet eternally remote, and is so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from […]

Listening to music should always be an active process, and those who attend – pregnant verb – concerts, who listen, who respond, who treasure what they hear there, are musicians. They are the ones who do not let music wash over them like a bubble bath but who actively swim in the water. When vibrations […]