Handel certainly liked to eat: A story is told of him that he once ordered up enough dinner for three. Noting that the servant dawdled about, Handel demanded why; the servant answered that he was waiting for the company to come, whereupon Handel stormed, in his famous broken English, “Den print up der tinner prestissimo. […]

In 1824, Schubert wrote a letter to his friend Schober concerning a general complacency about the role of art at the time: The idle time, which hinders the fulfillment of all greatness, destroys me too. Even golden verse is foolishly mocked by the people, no longer attentive to its powerful message. Only by the gift […]

In 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 […]

Bach, a master of harmony and counterpoint, would not settle for imperfect sounds, no matter where he was.  Johann Reichardt recalled: Johann Sebastian Bach once came into a large company while a musical amateur was sitting and improvising at a harpsichord.  The moment the latter became aware of the presence of the great master, he […]

“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.” Matthew Arnold (poet and scholar), Preface to Literature and Dogma (1873 edition), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Literature_and_Dogma/Introduction, accesssed 29 August 2021.

“Be ready when opportunity comes…. Luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet.” — Roy D. Chapin Jnr., Chariman American motors association J. Roberts, The Big Book of Business Quotations: Over 1,400 of the Smartest Things Ever Said about Making Money, Simon and Schuster, 2016.

At the core of Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations, an esoteric and astonishing piano piece lasting some 50 minutes, is one of the intriguing mysteries of music history. Why did Beethoven, during the difficult last decade of his life, when he was deaf, chronically ill and often in financial straits, become nearly obsessed with writing an extensive […]

Title: Widerstehe doch der Sünde (from Cantata BWV 54)Composer: Johann Sebastian BachArranger: Greg SmithInstrumentation: PianoProduct medium: PDF score Sample:

If you will become possessed of this faith you will not need to bother about your success or failure, for success will come.  You will not need to be anxious about the results, and will work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts will inevitably bring about right results. — James Allen […]

[Barbara Streisand’s] early voice training amounted to one lesson with a voice teacher. At that session Ms. Streisand sang “A Sleepin’ Bee,” the Harold Arlen song that she performed in her first television appearance, on “The Jack Paar Show” in 1961, just before turning 19. During the lesson Ms. Streisand got as far as the […]