Title: Big Business (silent film soundtrack) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium:PDF score (31 pages) BACKGROUND: Film:     Directors: James W. Horne & Leo McCarey     Starring: Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy     Year of release: 1929     Synopsis: Two salesmen are trying to sell Christmas trees in california. The customers, however, are not so keen. Who would […]

The conductor Stokowski (who was the conductor of Disney’s Fantasia) was a pioneer of orchestral recording.  This was not without its problems: Stokowski was moving more and more toward what is recognized as his most significant achievement – the broadening of popular interest in serious music.  He developed a firm conviction that radio, recordings, and […]

“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.” Robert Louis Stevenson, author  

Schumann described Chopin’s works as “cannons buried in flowers”.  Contained in Chopin’s music are painful moments, suffering, longing and much drama. Similarly to Mozart, the external impression may be one of pure beauty, elegance, exuberance or joy but, deep down, there is something else entirely, a sort of imprecise discomfort, a certain malaise. The contrast […]

“I liked everything about the opera but the music.” – Benjamin Britten on Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress Cited in: Jarski, Rosemarie (2005) Great British Wit.  London: Ebury Press, p. 203.

A craftsman replicating large medallions has discovered medieval Scottish notation of instrumental music.  The notation is sequences of 0s, Is and IIs. Barnaby Brown, a specialist in early Scottish music, notated that, “This discovery is potentially of great significance to our understanding of medieval and Renaissance instrumental music – the normally ‘unwritten’ practice of the elite court […]

Title: Piper’s Tale Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano duet Level: Piano I –  2 (five finger position – pentatonic scale [black keys]) Product medium: PDF score and MP3 accompaniment track SAMPLE: (Audio sample of accompaniment track only)

Morrell gave Handel the words of Cleopatra’s air “Convey me to some peaceful shore” in Alexander Balus, he cried out “Damn your Iambics!”. Morell offered to change them to trochees and went into the next room to do so, only to find about three minutes later that Handel had set them as they stood.” Dean, […]

The following is an account of the conductor Hans von Bülow: Bülow’s close relationship with his Berlin audience was not achieved without some stress and strain along the way.  At a Philharmonic concert in January 1892, a half-dozen latecomers, who had been held up at the cloakroom during the intermission, made a noisy entrance in […]

“The illiterate of the future are not those that cannot read or write. They are those that can not learn, unlearn, relearn.” -Alvin Toffler, American writer and futurist Cited at QuotationsBook