On his tour to America in 1928, Ravel was highly praised by music critics.  In the New York Times, Olin Downeswrote: Never to have composed in undue haste; never to have offered the public a piece of unfinished work; to have experienced life as an observant and keenly interested beholder, and to have fashioned certain […]

“John Cage once said he couldn’t abide the Dominant Seventh, and the saxophone.” Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary 1986-1999.  Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press, p.65.

People are mistaken thinking that the creative artist uses art to express what he feels at the very moment of experience. Joy and sorrow are feelings expressed retrospectively. Without any particular cause for rejoicing I can be immersed in a mood of happy creativity and, conversely, I can produce, when cheerful, a piece saturated in […]

“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.

James Huneker, a critic with the New York Courier, wrote about the impact of Brahms’ music on him: Brahms dreams of pure white staircases that scale the infinite. A dazzling, dry light floods his mind, and you hear the rustling of wings – wings of great terrifying monsters; hippogrifs of horrid mien; hieroglyphic faces, faces […]

Title: Abstraction III Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Trombone and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE:

Paul Simon (of Simon and Garfunkel) on the future of the “album” concept: I don’t think the album is going to disappear for several reasons … It’s not that people aren’t listening to albums.  They’re just doing it on shuffle.  What that does is it makes albums more eclectic and more interesting.  But if an […]

Ravel’s infamous Boléro was somewhat created by chance: Shortly before Ravel left for America, the Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein had asked him for a ballet to be based on orchestrations of parts of Albéniz’s Iberia. To this he agreed; with so much on his plate he was not anxious to undertake further commitments for wholly original composition. […]

Cellist Walter Joachim spend some time in Calcutta, India. He recalled: “I bought a monkey with which to amuse myself. We played. He was sitting on my shoulders for hours when I was practising.” Joachim practised at least one or two movements of a Bach suite. “I started my day usually with Bach or a […]

Rachmaninoff sent fellow composer/pianist Medtner his Corelli Variations.  He wrote: I played them here about fifteen times, but of these fifteen performances, only one was good.  The others were sloppy.  I can't play my own compositions!  And it's so boring! Not once have I played these all in continuity.  I was guided by the coughing […]