Tchaikovsky’s favourite flower was lilies of the valley.  The local musical society at Tiflis was extremely enthusiastic to have the presence of Tchaikovsky at a gala concert of his works at the Opera House: Ippolitov-Ivanov had thought of everything, even finding out by devious means what his favourite flower was.  This flower did not grow […]

Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange “abnormal” events can lead to the feeling that anything can happen, and you have a music with no boundaries. – Morton Feldman, American composer Cited in Tom Johnson, Remembrance, September 1987. Accessed 13 May 2013.

With shifts in the commercial music industry away from smooth jazz, musicians are finding new niches for smooth jazz such as cruises. Twenty years ago, of course, smooth jazz wasn’t a code to be cracked so much as a wave to be caught. Like most species of pop, it felt ubiquitous and maybe a little […]

“Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1849), Kavanagh, London: George Slater, p.49.  https://books.google.com.au/books?id=i8ENAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed 4 September 2021.

I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise. — George Gerswhin Goldberg, Isaac, and Garson, Edith. George Gershwin: A Study in American Music. United Kingdom, F. Ungar Publishing Company, 1958, p.139.

American composer Steve Reich on Schoenberg and his compositional style: Schönberg is the beginning of the death of German Romanticism. It’s about deciding that we didn’t need harmonic organization. But this was music for a small cadre of listeners. I think Schönberg said, “In fifty years, the postman will whistle my tunes.” Well, it’s been […]

  “You are an extremely valuable, worthwhile, significant person even though your present circumstances may have you feeling otherwise.” – James Newmann, American mathematician

Murray Perahia initially found Beethoven hard to understand: “I was always working on Beethoven, but I couldn’t feel close to him.  For nearly ten years I didn’t altogether like his music because I felt it showed an aggressive, up-front personality.”  But after studying, performing, and recording Beethoven (Appasionata,op. 2, op. 101 and the Piano Concertos), […]

Beethoven moved often, and his landlords were not always keen to have him back. While he was working on the Ninth Symphony in 1923, Beethoven couldn’t stand his present lodgings in Hetzendorf, as the landlord, Baron Pronay, constantly bowed to him when they met.He sought lodgings where he had previously stayed in Baden.  The landlord […]

The teaching methods of Johann Sebastion Bach are recounted by his son, Philip Emanuel Bach: The first thing he did was to teach his pupils his special ways of touching the keyboard. For this he made them practice for months nothing but separate exercises for all the fingers of both hands, with constant attention to […]