TITLE: Lord, every nation on earth will adore you (setting ii) TEXT: Psalm 71 (72): 1-2, 7-8, 10-13. R. cf. v.11 COMPOSER: Greg Smith INSTRUMENTATION: SATB and piano PRODUCT MEDIUM: PDF score and part

There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song – but in this […]

Satie’s ballet Relâche (1924) had trouble pulling a crowd: the title translates as “this performances is cancelled”. Source: Lawrence, Christopher (2001) Swooning.  Sydney: Random House, p.70.

Art that feels like a duty is probably bad art. But most of the art industry is geared towards foisting that kind of art on us. Bad art changes over the centuries far less than we think. Today’s theory-heavy video installations are often modern equivalents of pompous and moralising Victorian paintings. It’s the joyous, uninhibited […]

> Title: Tally Ho Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Duet Level: Piano I – 1.1 (five finger position with movement to the 6/4 position) Product medium: PDF score and MP3 accompaniment track SAMPLES: (Audio sample of accompaniment track only)

My approach is to sit with the score and make my decisions about what Andante means or what piano means in a certain context; often you go back to recordings and find that nobody’s ever really played it that way. You ask yourself ‘Why is that? Did I misread or misinterpret something? Or is this […]

“Mastery passes often for egotism.” — Johanne Goethe, German author Johanne Goethe (1906) The Maxisms and Relfections.  Translated by Bailey Saunders.  New York: The Macmillan Company.  Digitally archived at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33670/33670-h/33670-h.htm, accessed 12 Setpember 2021

In the eighteenth century, hooped skirts were a popular choice of ladies dress attire as they enabled a dramatic entrance, and also flattered the figure when pregnant. They did take up considerable space though. For the performance of the Messiah Handel instructed the ladies to come without hooped skirts, and gentlemen without their swords. The […]

“‘Culture is our petrol,’ says Toumani Diabaté, the Malian kora player who has collaborated with Damon Albarn and Björk, to name but a few. ‘Music is our mineral wealth. There isn’t a single major music prize in the world today that hasn’t been won by a Malian artist.’ ‘Music regulates the life of every Malian’, […]

When Handel travelled through Chester, on his way to Ireland, this year, 1741 (to give the first performance of Messiah), I was at the Public School in that city and very well remember seeing him [Handel] smoke a pipe, over a dish of coffee, at the Exchange Coffee House; for being extremely curious to see […]