“It’s a very reactionary viewpoint and I’m slightly ashamed, but I find it very difficult to access contemporary music. I am not prejudiced, but my work in tonal music leads me to believe nothing can be organic if it doesn’t have a [sense of] “home.” This idea of belonging, or home, can’t be an intellectual concept, it has to be recognisable in terms of sound or tones and I don’t see the replacement for that in atonal music.”
Pianist Murray Perahia. Cited in: Nick Shave, “Mull Over Beethoven”, BBC Music, July 2009, p.26.
Murray Perahia
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Through a Looking Glass
Title: Through a Looking Glass Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Duet Level: Piano I – level 1 (five finger position) Product medium: PDF score and MP3 accompaniment track (Audio sample of accompaniment track only
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 […]
A Swan (Ein Schwan) (Grieg)Title: A Swan (Ein Schwan), op. 25, no.2 Composer: Edvard Grieg Arranger: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Valley of shadows“When walking through the valley of shadows, remember, a shadow is cast by a Light.” – H. K. Barclay Cited at: QuotationsBook
Music is richer than words“If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music.” Jean Sibelius, in an interview with Berlingske Tidende, 10th June 1919. Cited at: www.sibelius.fi […]
Page turning for BeethovenIgnaz Xaver Seyfried was asked to turn pages for Beethoven in a performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto (5 April 1803). He recalled: In the playing of the concerto movements he asked me to turn the pages for him; but – heaven help me! – that was easier said than done. I saw almost nothing […]
Difficult music is the easiest to playScriabin’s fiery D#-minor Etude, with its relentless triplets and huge leaps, used to just fall under my fingers, while the Lento final movement of the Copland Sonata was a minefield of wrong notes. Why is that? Is it just because we practice hard music 20 times as much as easy music, or is it psychological, […]
The purpose of education“The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.” — Harold Rosenberg, American writer, educator, philosopher and art critic. Harold Rosenberg, “On the New Cultural Conservatism”, Partisan Review, 1972, vol. 39, no. 3, p. 444. Digitally archived at http://archives.bu.edu/collections/partisan-review/search/detail?id=326096, accessed […]
The work of the individual“The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind forward.” – Igor Sikorsky, Russian aviator
Sondheim on audiences“I do think audiences become more sophisticated. You try something out on them and they say, “Ugh”. You try it a second time and they say, “Oh”. You try it a third time and they say, “Ooh”. You try it a fourth time and they say, “Oh, that’s awfully old hat.”’ He laughs. ‘That’s the […]