Paul Simon (of Simon and Garfunkel) on the future of the “album” concept: I don’t think the album is going to disappear for several reasons … It’s not that people aren’t listening to albums.  They’re just doing it on shuffle.  What that does is it makes albums more eclectic and more interesting.  But if an […]

“Art does not progress – it transforms itself.” – François-Joseph Fétes Siblin, Eric (2009) The Cello Suites.  Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, p. 191.

“In order for music to free itself, it will have to pass over to the other side – there where territories tremble, where the structures collapse, where the ethoses get mixed up, where a powerful song of the earth is unleashed, the great ritornelles that transmutes all the airs it carries away and makes return.” […]

Title: Abstraction Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score Sample:

Title: Easter Prayer Text: St. Gregory the Great Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and organ Product medium: PDF score and parts SAMPLES:

In 1900, Rachmaninoff worked at the Yekaterininsky Girls’ Institute.  One of his students recalled her experience of examination day: The lessens after luncheon seem an eternity – the examination is to begin at 4.I straighten the front bow of my apron, gather my music together, and run to the music room.  The students to be […]

One of the most magical passages in Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker is the Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy. The featured instrument, the celeste, was a relatively new invention, having only been developed by a Parisian harmonium builder, Auguste Mustel, in 1886. The French word “céleste” translates to “heavenly”. Tchaikovsky first discovered the celeste while visiting Paris […]

Hannes was not always solemn – far from it!  He could be as full of fun and wild pranks as any boy.  With Christian he worked out a scheme which they both found hugely entertaining.  They would knock at the door of a house where, perhaps a century before, some illustrious citizen of Hamburg had […]

“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.” Ursula Kroeber Le Guin, American author. Cited at: Quotationsbook