The violinist Ivan Galamian describes the musician’s quest for a goal greater than mere technical accomplishment: A complete technique .. implies the ability to do justice, with unfailing reliability and control, to each and every demand of the most refined musical imagination.  It enables the performer, when he has formed an ideal concept of how […]

Vaughan Williams gave a broadcast talk on Bach entitled “Bach the Great Bourgeois.” It was later published in The Listener. Vaughan Williams, who was involved in performances of works such as Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion as part of the Leith Hill Festival, offered some insight in contemporary approaches to Bach performance: WHEN I was a […]

”You see,” he said, ”I have a very substantial program, and after a substantial program, you can’t play a substantial encore. You play a little … ” at this, he strummed the air with his fingers, tinkling an imaginary piano. ”It is,” he said, ”anticlimactic.” Clyde Haberman, “3,500 Japanese Applaud Horowtiz for 14 Minutes”, The […]

Tin Pan Alley refers to the concentration of music publishers in New York City, West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.  It started around 1885 and lasted till the depression in the 1930s.  It’s title comes from the the sound of all the cheap, tinny pianos playing, being likened to the beating of  tin […]

In art there are tears that do often lie too deep for thoughts. – Louis Kronenberger L. Kronenberger, Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1954, p. 42.

“If all would play first violin, we could not obtain an orchestra. Therefore esteem every musician in his place.” — Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (translated by Henry Hugo Pierson), Advice to Young Musicains [Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln]. New York: J. Schuberth & Co. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28219/28219-h/28219-h.htm, accessed 29 August 2021.

“Inspiration is merely the reward for working every day!” – Charles Baudelaire (French poet).  According to Roland-Manuel, Ravel would often recite this phrase.  Source: Nichols, Roger (1987) Ravel Remembered.  London: Faber & Faber, p. 143.

Title: Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble (setting ii) Text: Psalm 90 (91): 1-2, 10-15. R. v.15 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: SATB score and partSAMPLE:

Ravel’s infamous Boléro was somewhat created by chance: Shortly before Ravel left for America, the Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein had asked him for a ballet to be based on orchestrations of parts of Albéniz’s Iberia. To this he agreed; with so much on his plate he was not anxious to undertake further commitments for wholly original composition. […]

Title: All the ends of the earth Text: Psalm 97 (98):1-6. R. v.3 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE: