The famous organist Reincken heard Bach play. Bach improvised for half an hour on the hymn “By the Waters of Babylon”.  Reincken said: “I thought such art was dead, but I see it still lives in you.” Siblin, Eric (2009) The Cello Suites.  Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, p. 58.

Title: The just will live in the presence of the Lord (Setting II) Text: Psalm 14 (15):2-5 (setting ii) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:

My life involves endless hours of repetitive and frustrating practising, lonely hotel rooms, dodgy pianos, aggressively bitchy reviews, isolation, confusing airline reward programmes, physiotherapy, stretches of nervous boredom … punctuated by short moments of extreme pressure …perhaps most crushingly, the realisation that I will never, ever give the perfect recital. It can only ever, with […]

The 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. […]

Johannes Brahms and the violinist Eduard Remenyi had been concertizing to great success in Cello and Lüneberg.  By this time the two musicians were so elated over their success that they decided to try a concert in the city of Hildesheim entirely on their own.  They had no one there to herald their coming, write […]

Greg Smith’s experience as a composer and chamber musician means that he is comfortable scoring in a variety of styles and instrumental forces: – chamber (e.g., piano, cello and piano, string quartet) – choral – orchestra – wind orchestra Greg can arrange in a variety of styles, from classical to jazz. Contact Greg Smith ARRANGMENTS, […]

“Art,” announces Pat Buchanan to Charlie Rose, “is meant to be uplifting.” What a relief!  After all these years I’d never realized that Art had a moral purpose.  No more need now to be upset by Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, Picasso and Goya, Stravinsky and Berg, Sophocles and Williams.  Pat has clarified the rules, set the […]

In 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.  […]

Title: Abstraction VIII Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score SAMPLE:

"Human beings, by change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden." Johann Wolfgang Goethe, German writer, philosopher and scientist.