Title: Bless the Lord, my soul Text: Psalm 103 (104): 1-2, 3-4, 24-25, 27-30 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and partSAMPLE:

One of Tchaikovsky’s favorite anecdotes resulted from his nearly losing the sketches for the Little Russian on the way back to Moscow. To persuade a recalcitrant postmaster to hitch the horses to the coach in which he and his brother Modest had been travelling, Tchaikovsky presented himself as “Prince Volkonsky, gentleman of the Emperor’s bedchamber.” […]

In 1862 Brahms went to Vienna: Although he been in Vienna only a few weeks, Brahms was already making a name for himself.  After the first performance of  his First Serenade, Hanslick wrote more favorably, calling the work “one of the most charming of modern compositions.” A few months later, the leading Viennese orchestra played […]

In the ninteenth century, the piano was not only regarded as a musical instrument but as a part of the decor a room. An article in The Musical Times in February 1893 describes some possible applications: Placed near a bay window, it shuts in the cosiest lovers’ next imaginable. Soft-cushioned window seats that have room […]

Overheard in a New York street car:— Average Young Man (to neighbour): “Everything they say about Paderewski is true. He’s a perfect genius. Why, he played fourteen pieces and did not once look at the programme. Yet he played straight ahead and never once forgot what piece was to come next. I tell you the […]

Stravinksy on the public not particularly liking his music: Their attitude certainly cannot make me deviate from my path. I shall assuredly not sacrifice my predilections and my aspirations to the demands of those who, in their blindness, do not realize that they are simply asking me to go backwards … I could not follow […]

Theatre director Herbert Wernicke has taken six of Bach’s Cantatas dealing with the frailty of the human condition and presented them in a staging of mundane human activities.  Albrecht Puhlmann, the general director of Stuttgart Opera, states that “From the woman with the baby to the coffin being carried out, life and death is being […]

In the 1960s, the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer founded the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University.  The research group explored the sonic environment.  Later projects would include  The Vancouver Soundscapes of Canada (1973), European Sound Diary, and Five Village Soundscapes.  In his book on the subject, The Tuning of the World, Schafer wrote […]

The composer does not sit around wait wait for inspiration to walk up and introduce itself … Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel. — George Gershwin Isaac Goldberg. Tin Pan Alley. New […]

1In 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 […]