“In all types of creative work the worker and his object become one, man unites himself with the world in the process of creation.” — Erich Fromm

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

Chopin can hardly write anything now but that we feel like calling out in the seventh or eighth measure, “It is by him!” – Robert Schumann, 1838 P. Kildea, Chopin’s Piano, London, Allen Lane, 2018, p. 43.

Title: I turn to you, Lord, in times of trouble Text: Psalm 30 (31): 1-2, 5, 11 Music: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:

Rodney Greenberg describes a side of George Gershwin’s “romantic side”: He wrote a little waltz-song, which he would sing and play to his current dating partner.  It was, in effect, what his friend Kitty Carlisle (who later married playwright Moss Hart) described as his “mating call”, because he left a blank space in the lyrics […]

Composer: Johannes Brahms Text: Klaus Groth Title: Wie melodien zieht es mir (Like melodies it pulls me), op. 105, no. 1 Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:  

Leopold Stokowski was staging a concert version of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. Natalie Bodanya, one of the finest singers at Curtis at the time, refused to audition, noting how “impersonal and impossible Stokowski was. Stokowski had filled all the roles, with the exception of that the Princess. “Is it possible” Stokowski asked Sylvan [Sylvan Lenin, a […]

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Ward, author Cited at QuotationsBook  

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. – Alexander Graham Bell Orison Swett Marden, (1901) “Bell Telephone Talk”, How They Succeeded. Boston: Lothrop Publishing Company, p. 38. Digitally archived at https://archive.org/details/howtheysucceeded00mardrich/mode/2up, accessed 11 September 2021.

Bernstein is intent on demonstrating that the inevitable doesn’t just happen. It comes from intense work. To show this, he restores a handful of Beethoven’s discarded sketches to the score so that we can hear how the Fifth would have sounded if Beethoven had retained his first (or second or 10th) thought. Some discarded passages […]