“There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.” -Ezra Pound – American poet, musician and critic Cited at: QuotationsBook  

Liszt on Beethoven’s music, in a letter to Wilhelm von Lenz in 1852: To us musicians the work of Beethoven parallels the pillars of smoke and fire which led the Israelites through the desert, a pillar of smoke to lead us by day, and a pillar of fire to light the night, so that we […]

Title: Wexford Carol Text: 12th century Irish Composer: 12th century Irish, arr. Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano     Related products:     – Wexford Carol – SATB and organ (PDF score) Product medium: PDF score and parts Sample:

Isaac Goldberg, a friend of George Gershwin, described the composer’s personality: HE was as simple, as unaffected, as modest, and as charming a youth as one could desire to meet. There was nothing about him that was forbidding. He wore his unprecedented celebrity as lightly as if it were a cane – that cane which […]

An undiscovered piano piece by Brahms (entitled Albumblatt, meaning “sheet music from an album”) has been discovered by Christopher Hogwood at Princeton University. The tune reappears in second movement of Brahms’ Horn Trio, written 12 years later. Alex Needham, “Brahms piano piece to get its premiere 159 years after its creation”, The Guardian, 13 January […]

Title: The Queen Stands At Your Right Hand Text: Psalm 44 (45): 10-12. 16 Composer: Greg Smith Performer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: MP3 recording     Related products:     – The Queen Stands At Your Right Hand – Piano solo (score)     – The Queen Stands At Your Right Hand – SATB and piano (score) Sample:

At the 1905 premiere of La Mer, one of whose movements is called “From Dawn to Midday on the Sea”, Debussy received the usual post-performance congratulations. Satie’s deflating comment was, “Ah, my dear friend, there’s one particular moment between half past ten and a quarter to eleven that I found especially stunning.” Levison, B. (2015). […]

“Technique is not music. Music is the thousandth of a millisecond between one note to the other—that’s where the music is.”  — Isaac Stern, in an interview with Mark Stryker Cited in: Green, Barry (2003) The Mastery of Music: Ten Pathways to True Artistry. New York: Broadway Books, p. 2.

Rachmaninoff played his Third Concerto in January 1909 in New York, conducted by Gustav Mahler. Rachmaninoff recalled the rehearsal: Suddenly, Mahler, who had conducted this passage a tempo, tapped his desk: “Stop!  Don’t pay any attention to the difficult bowing marked in your parts. … Play the passage like this,” and he indicated a different […]

There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song – but in this […]