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 […]

Hans Knappertsbusch (1888-1965) was a German conductor. However, he had a dislike of rehearsals. Karajan recalled: One time he was going over Tchaikovsky’s Fifth with the Vienna Philharmonic. He came to the second movement, with the horn solo, and said, “Let’s start.” He did a few bars, stopped, and said, “See you this evening. You […]

An ounce of patience is worth a pound of brains — Dutch proverb Henry Bonn. A polyglot of foreign proverbs.  London, Henry G. Bohn, 1857, p.315.

TITLE: Your Ways, O Lord, are Love and Ruth TEXT: Psalm 24 (25):4-9 COMPOSER: Greg Smith INSTRUMENTATION: SATB and piano (unison verses) PRODUCT MEDIUM: PDF score and part SAMPLE:  

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

Education & research services in the fields below are offered both: – online – face to face Skill areas: – Aural and harmony – Analysis – Music history – Piano tuition How can Emotemuse help you? – Tuition – Research and analysis Contact   THE CRAFT OF THE MUSICAL LANGUAGE Greg Smith completed a Bachelor […]

Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange “abnormal” events can lead to the feeling that anything can happen, and you have a music with no boundaries. – Morton Feldman, American composer Cited in Tom Johnson, Remembrance, September 1987. Accessed 13 May 2013.

The composer Harold Shapero, who lived a few doors away from Bernstein in Newton and was a year behind him at Harvard, also noted Bernstein’s cavalier approach to counterpoint studies. “Lenny didn’t come to class at all. I was a dutiful little student. I did my Palestrina stuff and I got an ‘A.’ . . […]

Having spent five days recording five Beethoven sonatas and two concertos, Schnabel wrote to his wife: This week was an ordeal, a torture chamber. “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” says Nietzsche. Hopefully (probably) this is true. I had no idea of how outrageous a process the recording on discs could be. Like […]

Title: Bright Sunny Day Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Duet Level: Piano I – level I (5 finger position, left and right hands) Product medium: PDF score & MP3 accompaniment track (Audio sample of accompaniment track only)