Title: The King’s Entrance Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano duet Level: Piano I –  1 (five finger position) Product medium: PDF score and MP3 accompaniment track (Audio sample of accompaniment track only)

The stage director of the first Porgy and Bess production recalls hearing the score in Gerswhin's New York apartment: They both blissfully closed their eyes before they continued with the lovely "Summertime" song.  George played with the most beatific smile on his face.  He seemed to float on the waves of his own music with […]

The composer Burton Lane describes George Gershwin’s playing: You could feel the electricity going through the room when he played.  He could transpose into any key with the greatest of ease.  He had total command of what he was doing.  Musical surprises, unusual changes of keys.  He was one of the few composers who had […]

Title: Love came down at Christmas Text: Christina Rossetti Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano solo Product medium: MP3 audio     Related products:     – Love came down at Christmas – SATB and piano (PDF score)     – Love came down at Christmas – Piano solo (PDF score) Samples:

Violinist Hilary Hahn on practice and technique: I’ve always worked hard at my technique … But I’ve worked hard at my musicality as well. When I was doing my etudes my teachers always made sure I didn’t go onto the next until I had the first really good. But it wasn’t good unless it was […]

“Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.” Frank Zappa, composer Cited at QuotationsBook.  

“The Last Master of resounding song, the tuneful heir of Bach and Handel, Mozart & Haydn’s immortal fame is now no more. The harp is hushed. He was an artist – and who shall arise to stand beside him? He was an artist – thus he was, thus he died, and thus he will live […]

Mozart was not at all a purely instinctive, intuitive artist. His remarks to the effect that he “loved to plan works, study, and meditate” and that “he preferred to work slowly and with deliberation” [demonstrate this] … On one level, Mozart’s musical aesthetic is informed by three fundamental and closely related principles that can be […]

“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.” – Norman Vincent Peale, American author and preacher Cited at QuotationsBook  

It was in the eventful year, then, of 1813—the year of “Il Figlio per Azzardo”, with its obbligato accompaniment for lamp-shades of “Tancredi” and of “L’Italiana in Algeri”—that Rossini was writing one morning in bed, when the duet on which he was engaged fell from his hands. “Nothing easier”, an ordinary composer would say, “than […]