In Halina Rodzinski’s book Our Two Lives she describes how on the very first day Artur Rodzinski came to assist Stokowski in 1929, his boss immediately restyled his hair without a part and combed straight back from the brow.  “That’s how a conductor should look,” said Stokowski, pointing Rodzinski at a mirror in his dressing […]

Sergei Prokofiev was once asked to give a piano recital. He declined, offering this explanation: “It would cost me half a sonata.” Source: Samuel, Prokofiev

The composer does not sit around wait wait for inspiration to walk up and introduce itself … Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel. — George Gershwin Isaac Goldberg. Tin Pan Alley. New […]

“It is a mark of soulfulness to be present in the here and now. When we are present, we are not fabricating inner movies. We are seeing what is before us.” – John Bradshaw (1992) Creating Love: The Next Great Stage of Growth.  United States: Bantam Books, p.127.

“I don’t mind telling you that I have written a tiny, tiny pianoforte concerto with a tiny, tiny wisp of a scherzo.  It is in B flat, and I have reason to fear I have worked this udder, which has always yielded good milk before, too often and too vigorously.” – Brahms on his Second […]

The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration. – Steven Pressfield S. Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, New York, Black Irish Entertainment, 2002, p.18

“Musical instruments are aids to the maintenance of health, and to the restoration of health once lost, according to the difference in the complexions of men. For this art of music was anciently ordained to draw the mind back into healthful habits, and thus doctors are dedicated to its use to cure bodies. Therefore they […]

“Bartók’s music as a whole is a music I never think about when its not around.  It’s impeccable, it’s theatrical, it’s even great.  It dazzles, thrills, horrifies, sometimes irritates, but also moves me.  But I’m not touched by it, as by, for instance, the outset of the quartet by Ravel – Ravel, supposed to be […]

“The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.” — Walt Disney L. Howes, “20 Lessons from Walt Disney on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Chasing Your Dreams”, Forbes, 17 July 2012, https://www.forbes.com/sites/lewishowes/2012/07/17/20-business-quotes-and-lessons-from-walt-disney/?sh=4b3af9d44ba9, accessed 13 January 2022.

“Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?” – William Wordsworth, writer Cited at QuotationsBook