You know what I think about metronome marks: they’re right for a single bar, like “roses, with a morning life”. Only there are “those” who don’t hear music and who take these marks as authority to hear it still less! But do what you please.
F. Lesure & N. Nichols (ed.), Debussy Letters, London, Faber, 1987, p. 305
— Debussy, Letter to Jacques Durand of 9 October 1915
Debussy on Metronome markings
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Art is a crucial, dangerous operation
If a man teaches composition in a university, how can he not be a composer? He has worked hard, learned his craft. Ergo, he is a composer. A professional. Like a doctor. But there is that doctor who opens you up, does exactly the right thing, closes you up—and you die. He failed to take […]
George Gershwin at the pianoThe theatre director Rouben Mamoulian describes Gershwin’s playing: George at the piano was George happy … like a sorcerer celebrating his Sabbath. He would draw out a lovely melody like a golden thread, then juggle it, twist it and toss it around mischievously, weave it into unexpected intricate patterns, and hurl it into a cascade […]
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Liszt’s account of a performance by ChopinFranz Liszt described one of Chopin’s concerts in the Gazette musicale, May 2 1841. Last Monday, at eight o’clock in the evening, M. Pleyel’s rooms were brilliantly lighted up; numerous carriages brought incessantly to the foot of a staircase covered with carpet and perfumed with flowers the most elegant women, the most fashionable young men, […]
The tone of the piano at the turn of the nineteenth centuryIn 1796, the piano maker Johann Andreas Streicher sent Beethoven one of his pianos as a gift. Beethoven's reply sheds some interesting light on the tone of the piano at this time: There is no doubt that so far as the manner of playing is concerned, the pianoforte is still the least studied and developed […]
CrosswordsGrade 3 Theory
The RinkTitle: The Rink (Silent film soundtrack) Composer: Greg Smith Performer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: MP3 soundtrack Related products: – The Rink – PDF score TRACK LISTING AND SAMPLES: TRACK TITLE LENGTH SAMPLE 1. Papa and Edna 0:55 2. Lunch order 2:03 3. Cocktails 1:34 4. Kitchen scurry 0:25 5. The flirty Mr and […]
Adequate musiciansHow do you rate your music? We’re not good musicians. Just adequate. Then why are you so popular? Maybe people like adequate music. – Interviewer and the Beatles. Cited in: Jarski, Rosemarie (2005) Great British Wit. London: Ebury Press, p. 203.
What is imagination?What is Imagination? We talk much of Imagination. We talk of Imagination of Poets, the Imagination of Artists &c; I am inclined to think that in general we don’t know very exactly what we are talking about. Imagination I think especially two fold. First: it is the Combining Faculty. It brings together things, facts, ideas, […]