Debussy on Metronome markingsYou 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. — Debussy, Letter to Jacques Durand of 9 October 1915 […]
Shedding light on what is invisibleWhen we create something, whether it’s a one-woman show, a video animation, a poem, a song, whatever—we’re taking what’s inside of us and stepping it out. Now it can be shown or heard. Now it can be experienced, transmitted. Now it can be shared. When it’s shared, parts of us that were once invisible, hidden, […]
Abstraction IXTitle: Abstraction IX Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Brass quintet (2 trumpets in B-flat, Horn in F, trombone, bass trombone) Product medium: PDF score and parts SAMPLE:
Music is the real lifeIn modern life electricity plays a great part. Sometimes it is used destructively – sometimes creatively – but there is another power which is like electricity, only far more subtle and penetrating. This power is all-pervading. It is omnipresent. If we understood this power we would know the secret of the magical influence of music. […]
Cure for the common chordHe [John Holmes] entered my room around midnight and said, “‘Eureka!’ shouted Arnold Schoenberg. ‘I’ve found the cure for the common chord.’” Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary 1986-1999. Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press, p.104.
People must hear me“I cannot tell you how much I love to play for people. Would you believe it – sometimes when I sit down to practice and there is no one else in the room, I have to stifle an impulse to ring for the elevator man and offer him money to come in and hear me.” […]
Beethoven in codeThe first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony are the morse code for the letter V.
A note about ChopinThe following appeared in the Musical Times in 1913: An amusing story, for the truth of which we can vouch, comes to us from Toronto. An organist had drawn up the order of a Sunday service, and it was in type ready for printing, when the death of an important personage made a change necessary. […]
Prayer of Thanksgiving to the TrinityTitle: Prayer of Thanksgiving to the Trinity Text: St. Catherine’s Dialogue on Divine Providence Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB Related products: – Prayer of Thanksgiving to the Trinity – Easy piano (PDF score) – Prayer of Thanksgiving to the Trinity – Concert band (PDF score) Product medium: PDF score Sample:
1.1: The Fundamental Vibration of Nature1In 1994, Dr. Masaru Emoto began taking photos of ice crystals. What he found was that environmental surroundings had different effects on the nature of the crystals. The crystals formed at Mt. Fuji, for example, had a different structure to those found at the Rocky Mountains. He then extended this study to include a study […]