When he [Beethoven] came to Vienna, he knew nothing at all of the fine art of cooking.  He cared little about good food, his favorite dish being a mess of macaroni with plenty of cheese on top.  He liked, too, the simplest kind of stew, and fish from the Danube.  Ignaz Seyfried reported that Beethoven […]

Anton Bruckner developed a condition call numeromania that compelled him to count everything – cathedral gables, stars, leaves on the trees; even the number of bars in his lengthy symphonies. Source: Lawrence, Christopher (2001) Swooning.  Sydney: Random House, p.70.

Robert de Fragny recalled a conversation with Ravel about his compositional process: The G major Concerto took two years of work, you know.  The opening theme came to me on a train between Oxford and London. But the initial idea is nothing.  The work of chiseling then begun.  We’ve gone past the days when the […]

TITLE: Lord, Heal My Soul TEXT: Psalm 40 (41): 2-5, 13-14. R. v.5 COMPOSER: Greg Smith INSTRUMENTATION: SATB and piano SAMPLE:  

Isaac Goldberg, a friend of George Gershwin, described the composer’s personality: HE was as simple, as unaffected, as modest, and as charming a youth as one could desire to meet. There was nothing about him that was forbidding. He wore his unprecedented celebrity as lightly as if it were a cane – that cane which […]

Ravel’s style — elegant, and refined — was highly influenced by eighteenth classicism (e.g., Mozart) and the early French keyboard composers (e.g., Couperin). Stravinsky once described Ravel as a “Swiss watchmaker”, due to Ravel’s attention to detail. Ravel wrote: “I never put down a work until I have made absolutely certain that there is nothing […]

Title: The Castle Builder Text: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:

Title: The Adventurer (Silent film soundtrack) Composer: Greg Smith Performer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: MP3 download     Related products:     – The Adventurer PDF score BACKGROUND: FILM:     Written by: Vincent Bryan, Charlie Chaplin & Maverick Terrell     Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell     Director: Charlie Chaplin     Year of release: 1917 TRACK LISTING AND SAMPLES: Track […]

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.

A German proverb says: Bose Menschen haben keine Lieder (bad men don't sing) . It is not impossible that out of a tremendous movement of amateur community music a peace movement could spread over the world. Could it not be supported by our high dignitaries? Instead of the president of the United States solitarily playing […]