No art is equal to music

“I firmly believe, nor am I ashamed to assert, that next to theology no art is equal to music; for it is the only one, except theology, which is able to give a quiet and happy mind. This is manifestly proved by the fact that the devil, the author of depressing care and distressing disturbances, almost flees from the sound of music as he does from the word of theology. This is the reason why the prophets practiced music more than any art and did not put their theology into geometry, into arithmetic, or into astronomy, but into music, intimately uniting theology and music, telling the truth in psalms and songs.”

– Martin Luther

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The Lord is my Shepherd – Psalm 22 (23)
Title: The Lord is my shepherd Text: Psalm 22 (23)     Related settings:     – I shall live in the house of the Lord (Psalm 22; Greg Smith) – SATB and piano (PDF score) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Lullaby for Ben
Title: Lullaby for Ben Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score
Gershwin and Ravel
Ravel, touring America in 1928, was approached by George Gershwin for composition lessons.  Ravel refused, stating “you would only lose your own spontaneity and end up by writing bad Ravel!” Cited in:  James, Burnett (1983) Ravel: His Life and Times.  New York: Midas Books, p.120
Orchestra/Concert band
Concert band
Cry Out With Joy and Gladness – Isaiah 12
Title: Cry out with joy and gladness Text: Isaiah 12:2-6 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano (unison verses) Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE:    
Rachmaninoff scares me
Cyril Smith recounts Rachmaninoff’s stage presence: Those who were fortunate enough to hear him play will almost certainly remember this very tall, melancholy figure, with his graying hair in a crew cut and his deeply-lined face set in a somber expression, walking unwillingly to the piano as though he hated the very sight of  it.  […]
Bunking down in the Philharmonic
Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, after running into some problems with his accommodation, was spending a cold November day in the Tiergarten, Berlin, in 1923. Throughout the course of the day, he was approached by Paul Bose to play Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. It began to rain. In Moscow it probably is snowing now, I thought absently, making […]
Mastery
“Mastery passes often for egotism.” — Johanne Goethe, German author Johanne Goethe (1906) The Maxisms and Relfections.  Translated by Bailey Saunders.  New York: The Macmillan Company.  Digitally archived at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33670/33670-h/33670-h.htm, accessed 12 Setpember 2021
Matheson and Handel’s duel
Two flamboyant young musickers leave the town of Lübeck as soon as can be. For they have learned that the successful candidate must marry the daughter of the man in whose shoes they would fain have trodden the pedals. One look at the daughter was enough. She was not fair to see, and her years […]
It’s not hard work
“Talent labors, genius creates.” Florestan (one of Schumann’s characters) Robert Schumann,Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Muisker  (Leipzig, 1854), IV.  Cited in Weiss, Piero & Taruskin, Richard (2008) Music in the Western World: A History in Documents.  California: Thomson, p. 306.