Active listeningListening to music should always be an active process, and those who attend – pregnant verb – concerts, who listen, who respond, who treasure what they hear there, are musicians. They are the ones who do not let music wash over them like a bubble bath but who actively swim in the water. When vibrations […]
Early music discovered on carvingA craftsman replicating large medallions has discovered medieval Scottish notation of instrumental music. The notation is sequences of 0s, Is and IIs. Barnaby Brown, a specialist in early Scottish music, notated that, “This discovery is potentially of great significance to our understanding of medieval and Renaissance instrumental music – the normally ‘unwritten’ practice of the elite court […]
Tips for composersRob Deemer highlights several aspects needed for a composer to survive in the artistic community: – ability to accept “failure” (entering competitions, etc.) – maintaining a “stubbornness” to achieve recognition – promoting not only your best works, but also occasionally enjoying the success of your “foibles” – having a sense of “who you are” as […]
Hoffman on techniqueTechnic represents the material side of art, as money represents the material side of life. By all means achieve a fine technic, but do no dream that you will be artistically happy with this alone. There is a technic which liberates and a technic which represents the artistic self. All technic ought to be a […]
I need a better razorHaydn reached London in the opening days of 1791. He passed his first night at the house of Bland, the music publisher, at 45 High Holborn, which now, rebuilt, forms part of the First Avenue Hotel. Bland, it should have been mentioned before, had been sent over to Vienna by Salomon to coax Haydn into […]
Mozart on Craft“People are mistaken, if they think that my art has come easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has devoted so much effort in the study of composition as have I. There is scarcely a famous master in must whose works I have not diligently, and often repeatedly, studied.” – Mozart, in […]
On thinking“If you make people think they’re thinking they’ll love you: but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.” Don Marquis, American writer, poet & artist. Creator of the characters such as Archy (1916), a cockroach who had been a poet in a previous life, who supposedly left poems on Marquis’ typewriter by jumping […]
Busoni on inventionI came to think that every notation is already the transcription of an abstract invention. From the instant the pen takes hold of it, the idea loses its original feature. … The invention (Einfall) becomes a sonata, a concerto: it is already an arrangement of the original. From this first transcription to the second, the […]
I am not highbrowAfter writing his opera Porgy and Bess, producers in Hollywood started to think that Gerswhin was turning “highbrow”. George and Ira Gerswhin’s agent told Ira :”They think George is too highbrow. Can’t he write a few words and explain to them?” George wired: “Rumours about highbrow music ridiculous. Am out to write hits.” – George […]
Pieces to belong to performers“That’s what I find wonderful about music: there is always a secret left, pieces don’t belong to performers, you rent them!” – Joseph Moog, Pianist W. Boon, “Joseph Moog”, Pianistique, 5 November 2016, https://www.pianistique.com/home/english-interviews/15-interviews/75-joseph-moog, accessed 17 January 2022.
