“Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. Although the spirit be not master of that which it creates through music, yet it is blessed in this creation, which, like every creation of art, is mightier than the artist.
Edwards, Tyron (1891) A Dictionary of Thoughts. New York: Cassell Publishing Company, p.367. Digitally archived at https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/A_Dictionary_of_Thoughts/uUi0R_St0qYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=A+Dictionary+of+Thoughts:+Being+a+Cyclopedia+o&pg=PA263&printsec=frontcover, accessed 11 September 2021
— Beethoven
Beethoven on music
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Some curious devices
In the late nineteenth-century, some quite curious mechanical inventions were created to deal with the body with relation to pianists and conductors. The following is an account of a presentation by T. L. Southgate on The Physiology of Pianoforte Piano. The paper presented was written by W. Macdonald Smith. This account appeared in the […]
Bunking down in the PhilharmonicCellist Gregor Piatigorsky, after running into some problems with his accommodation, was spending a cold November day in the Tiergarten, Berlin, in 1923. Throughout the course of the day, he was approached by Paul Bose to play Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. It began to rain. In Moscow it probably is snowing now, I thought absently, making […]
Abstraction XVIIITitle: Abstraction XVIIIComposer: Greg SmithInstrumentation: PianoProduct medium: PDF scoreRelated products: – Abstraction XVIII (mp3 audio) Sample:
Origins of the name BeethovenThe Beethoven family tree can be traced back to the mid 13th century. The name appears in chronicles of Flemish cities, in parts of northern France, in Mechlin and Antwerp. Two possible theories of the origins of the name are: – van (the) Hof (Beet-Garden) – grower of Beets – after the Belgium town of Betouwe (“be” […]
Cello and pianoMozart and Beethoven“Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each […]
Fantasia on “I Saw Three Ships”Title: Fantasia on “I Saw Three Ships” Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Trombone and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Go for long walksRachmaninoff once urged Horowitz to go for long walks. “If you don’t walk, your fingers will not run.” Abram Chasins, “The Return of Horowitz”, The Saturday Evening Post, October 22, 1966, p.102-3. Cited in: Gerig, Reginald (1974) Famous Pianists and Their Technique. Washington: Robert V. Luce, p.307.
Liszt on BeethovenLiszt on Beethoven’s music, in a letter to Wilhelm von Lenz in 1852: To us musicians the work of Beethoven parallels the pillars of smoke and fire which led the Israelites through the desert, a pillar of smoke to lead us by day, and a pillar of fire to light the night, so that we […]
Haydn’s auditionKarl Georg Reutter II was appointed choirmaster at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna in 1738. The following year he went on tour to recruit choristers. In the town of Hainburg, Joseph Haydn (at stage seven years of age) auditioned. The contemporary biography Guiseppe Carpani recalled: Reutter gave him a tune to sing at sight. The […]