“What gives Sebastian Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great expressive composers never sacrificed form to expression. As high as their expression may soar, their musical form remains supreme and all-sufficient.” – Camille Saint-Saëns, from a letter to Camille Bellaigue, 1907 Cited in: Fisk, Josiah (ed.) (1997) Composers On Music: Eight […]

Title: A Swan (Ein Schwan), op. 25, no.2 Composer: Edvard Grieg Arranger: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:

“The tragedy of music is that it begins with perfection.” – Morton Feldman, American composer. Cited in a May 1976 interview, Studio International, November 1976, pp. 244-248.

Excerpts from Borodin’s Prince Igor were to be performed by the Free College of Music. Rimsky Korsakov recalled: At this epoch, Prince Igor advanced slowly, but advanced nevertheless. How many prayers I addressed to dear Borodine that he might finally decide to orchestrate a few numbers for the concert! His numerous occupations at the Medical […]

Tchaikovsky disliked teaching at the best of times, but he particularly didn’t enjoy teaching female students, most of whom, in this period of history, were of an amateur status: Although it is a dreary business to have been forced to explain to my young men’s classes for eleven consecutive years what a triad consists of, […]

“Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which is everything in this world.” — Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. Ramage, Craufurd Tait (1866) Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian Authors.  Liverpool: Edward Howell, p.232. Digitally archived at https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=nDErAAAAYAAJ&hl=en_AU, accessed 12 September 2021.

In his work Le Streghe (The Witches), the virtuoso violinist Paganini would use scissors to reduce the number of strings on his violin throughout the piece, until he would be left playing the work on just the G string. Source: Haylock, Julian, “Nicolo Paganini”, Classic FM, December 2009, p. 41.

Conductor Leopold writes: There are millions who find solace in music – it opens for them the sun-bathed gates of inspiration – through music they know that behind the sordid, grim surface of life there nevertheless exists an ideal and external Beauty. Music powerfully stimulates the growth in us of impulses we had never suspected […]

The great singer, Cuzzoni, refused to sing an air of his the way he wished it. He seized her, and, dragging her to a window, threatened to throw her out, thundering, “I always knew you were a devil, but I’ll show you that I am Beelzebub, the prince of devils.” Hughes, Rupert (2004) The Love […]

Title: The Lord is my light (Setting II) Text: Psalm 26 (27): 1, 4, 13-14. R. v.1 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample: