When my students compose, I prefer them to be mistaken if they must make mistakes, but to remain natural and free rather than wishing to appear other than what they are. I remember a day when Stravinsky was dining here. He took his neighbor at the table by the lapels, violently! His neighbor crushed, said to him, “But Monsieur Stravinsky, I don’t know why we’re talking like this, I agree with you.” And Strainvsky exclaimed furiously, “Yes, but not for the right reasons, so you are wrong.”
Mademoiselle: Conversations with Nadia Boulanger, ed. by Bruno Monsaingeon, trans. by Robyn Marsack. Cited in: O. Strunk, Source Readings in Music History: The Twentieth Century, New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1998, p.218.
You can have good or bad reasons for searching. If you search in order to hide your inadequacy, you’re wrong. If you are looking in order to say what you really want to say, you’re right. And so it’s very important for a teacher first of all to let his pupil play as he wishes, write as he wishes; and then to be ruthless on questions of discipline.
— Nadia Boulanger
Searching for expression
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It is imperative to learn music
The philosopher Nietzsche noted: “Our emotional life is least clear to ourselves.” For this reason, it is imperative to listen to music, because music makes the strings of our inner life resonate. Even if the result is not complete self-realization, at least we can still feel our essence in the “resonance”. Safranski, Rüdiger (2002) Nietzsche: […]
Harbouring doves and crocodilesBeethoven, who is often bizarre and baroque, takes at times the majestic flight of an eagle, and then creeps in rocky pathways. He first fills the soul with sweet melancholy, and then shatters it by a mass of shattered chords. He seems to harbor together doves and crocodiles. A review of Beethoven’s First Symphony, Tablettes […]
Tears in artIn art there are tears that do often lie too deep for thoughts. – Louis Kronenberger L. Kronenberger, Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1954, p. 42.
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 […]
Some curious devicesIn the late nineteenth-century, some quite curious mechanical inventions were created to deal with the body with relation to pianists and conductors. The following is an account of a presentation by T. L. Southgate on The Physiology of Pianoforte Piano. The paper presented was written by W. Macdonald Smith. This account appeared in the […]
Waste not, want notWhile attending school in Lüneberg, J. S. Bach used to travel to Hamburg (50km away) to hear the organist of the Catharinekirche: J. A. Reincken. Marpurg describes how Bach, returning almost penniless to Lüneberg, once rested outside an inn; how someone threw two herring heads out on the rubbish heap; how Bach – a Thuringian, to […]
The AdventurerTitle: 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 […]
Don’t wish me luck“From here on out, I declare that no one ever wish me again to ‘break a leg’”. Joyce DiDonato, American mezzo soprano, shortly after having broken a leg on stage in a production of The Barber of Serville at the Royal Opera House. DiDonato insisted on continuing the performance in a wheel chair. Source: Kirkup, […]
Empty pockets“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.” – Norman Vincent Peale, American author and preacher Cited at QuotationsBook
Easter Prayer – St. Gregory the GreatTitle: Easter Prayer Text: St. Gregory the Great Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and organ Product medium: PDF score and parts SAMPLES: