The length of a rehearsalRachmaninoff completed his Third Piano Concerto at his summer estate at Ivanovka in September-October 1909. He then toured America, learning the piano part on a dumb piano aboard the ship. The work was first performed in New York under Walter Damrosch in November 1909. In January 1910, Gustav Mahler conducted the third New York performance. […]
Lord, Every Nation on Earth will Adore You (setting ii) – Psalm 71 (72)TITLE: Lord, every nation on earth will adore you (setting ii) TEXT: Psalm 71 (72): 1-2, 7-8, 10-13. R. cf. v.11 COMPOSER: Greg Smith INSTRUMENTATION: SATB and piano PRODUCT MEDIUM: PDF score and part
You Are A Priest For Ever (Setting II) – Psalm 109 (110)Title: You are a priest for ever (Setting ii) Text: Psalm 109 (110): 1, 2, 3, 4 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Nick Cave on the creative processWhat makes a great song great is not its close resemblance to a recognizable work. Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult […]
Dividing the concert takingsIn 1866 Brahms and the violinist Joachim gave a concert tour through Switzerland. One of their concerts was in Aarau. After the program, Brahms and Joachim went to a tavern, where they opened several bottles of the best vintage Swiss wine, including the popular vin mousseux of Lausanne. Brahms felt decidedly genial. “How did we […]
The best of every man“I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.” – William Yeats, Deirdre
Vaughan Williams on Hubert ParryVaughan Williams studied composition with Dr. Hubert Parry at the Royal College of Music, London. Vaughan Williams recalled: Many … entirely misunderstood Parry; they were deceived by his rubicund bonhomie and imagined that he had the mind, as he had the appearance, of a country squire. The fact is that Parry had a highly nervous […]
A hundred violins may play softer than oneJohn Holmes “reiterates that only with a large group can you get a truly soft sound. Sure, a solo fiddle can hold its own against a hundred fiddles: a hundred fiddles are never a hundred times louder than a solo at the same dynamic, since there’s no such animal as “a same dynamic,” or even […]
The tone of the piano at the turn of the nineteenth centuryIn 1796, the piano maker Johann Andreas Streicher sent Beethoven one of his pianos as a gift. Beethoven's reply sheds some interesting light on the tone of the piano at this time: There is no doubt that so far as the manner of playing is concerned, the pianoforte is still the least studied and developed […]
A party pieceIrish pianist and composer George Alexander Osburn (1806-93) was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music and a director of the Philharmonic Society. One of his most popular compositions was La Pluie de Perles (The Shower of Pearls). At a fashionable party, at which he arrived very late, he was invited to play, and […]
