“Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of the “divine madness,” to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks. They do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean. “
– Rolo May, Courage to Create
Creative people produce being
by
Tags:
Featured Content
About the transcriber
1 1 MUSIC TRANSCRIPTION Greg Smith is a freelance Australian composer and pianist. Greg completed his Bachelor of Music with Honors Class I and a University Medal at the University of Newcastle in 2001. He then graduated from a Master of Creative Arts, majoring in Performance Practice Issues in Russian Piano Music from the same […]
Abstraction VIITitle: Abstraction VII Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLES:
Anxiety“Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity”. — Chuck Jones, animator Goleman, D., Kaufman, P., & Ray, M. (1993) The Creative Spirit. New York: Plume.
Is it worth writing?“Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you.” Gustav Holst Cited in: Classic FM, May 2011
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 […]
Achieving your aims“Those who have achieved all their aims probably set them too low.” – Herbert von Karajan, conductor Herbert von Karajan – Official Homepage. http://karajan.org/jart/prj3/karajan/main.jart?rel=en. Accessed 20 March 2016.
Abstraction XIIITitle: Abstraction XIII Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score Related products: – Abstraction XIII (mp3)
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.” […]
The forgotten aspect of music“One of things that’s been forgotten in music for a long time is the ability to be nakedly emotional”. David Lang, composer Cited in “When Opera Is New and Unproved”, Anne Midgette, The Washington Post, 7 September 2008.
How piano wires have changed throughout historyWhile piano wire has changed over the centuries from iron to steel of varying qualities, researchers were surprised to find that the sound produced by the instruments’ wires has remained largely unchanged. “I thought as the wire evolved — as the tension evolved — harmonicity would also change over time,” Purdue University physics professor Nicholas […]