Music exists only in a passing of time, racing past us like the mid-nineenth-century trains Ruskin so hated. It is utterly non-fixed, and to focus on one moment is to destroy the whole. It is a forest that we have to pass through, not a single tree that we can contemplate or capture. But, if hearing and seeing beauty have different timetables they both require a sort of repetition in order to be fully appreciated: music needs to be heard many times, and the visual world needs multiple, if consecutive, seconds of looking. Only in such repetition perhaps can we grasp or hold onto beauty.
S. Hough, Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More, London, Faber & Faber, 2019, p. 225.
– Stephen Hough
Appreciating beauty
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Rachmaninoff on the culminating point in performanceThis culmination may be at the end or in the middle, it may be loud or soft; but the performer must know how to approach it with absolute calculation, absolute precision, because, if it slips by, then the whole construction crumbles, and the piece becomes disjointed and scrappy and does not convey to the listener […]
1.2: The Fundamental Vibration of Music1 1 1 For Pythagoras (c. 570 BCE – c. 495 BCE), the ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician, numbers were not merely a mathematical phenomena, but were representative all levels of existence, from the individual, to society, to the universe as a whole. In Metaphysica (Metaphysics), Aristotle wrote: Pythagoreans applied themselves to mathematics, and […]
To fool, or be fooled, by a nameOne of Tchaikovsky’s favorite anecdotes resulted from his nearly losing the sketches for the Little Russian on the way back to Moscow. To persuade a recalcitrant postmaster to hitch the horses to the coach in which he and his brother Modest had been travelling, Tchaikovsky presented himself as “Prince Volkonsky, gentleman of the Emperor’s bedchamber.” […]
We arrived here safely yesterday morning at 9 o’clock. – We spent the first night at Vögelbruck; – on the following morning we reached Lambbach – just in time for me to accompany the Agnus Dei on the organ during the mass. – The prelate was most delighted to see me again … We stayed […]
Ask Me Why (Evacuation) (The Boy and the Heron)Composer: Joe HisaishiArranger: Greg SmithTitle: “Ask Me Why (Evacuation)”, from The Boy and the HeronInstrumentation: Piano Solo This item is available from Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus.
A $1.2 million piano“Spotlights dance down on 216 jewels of lead crystal, set in dazzling diamond patterns into the piano’s black lid, sides, legs, fallboard and bench. Each jewel features several hundred to several thousand intricately cut, ground and polished pieces of crystal — nearly a half-million in all.” Glass artist Jon Kuhn has collobarated with Bosendorfer to […]
Gramophone: no substitute for live performanceBritish conductor Thomas Beecham was not too impressed with early recording technology (the gramophone): It was put to him that for people who lived in remote districts, far from orchestral concerts, the gramophone was an alternative: "It is no alternative to this," he said, waving his arm towards the hall, where the orchestra was waiting […]
The Ruffled KnightsTitle: The Ruffled Knights Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score
Brahms at the tavernWhen Brahms was young, he had to play in rowdy taverns to help support his family. Dance music was what the people in the taverns wanted, and Hannes would sometimes relieve the monotony by improvising variations on the popular waltzes of the day. But what finally made his work endurable was the discovery that while […]