People are mistaken thinking that the creative artist uses art to express what he feels at the very moment of experience. Joy and sorrow are feelings expressed retrospectively. Without any particular cause for rejoicing I can be immersed in a mood of happy creativity and, conversely, I can produce, when cheerful, a piece saturated in gloom and despair. In short, the artist leads a double life: the ordinary human one and the artistic one, and moreover, these two do not always coincide.
S. Hough, Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More, London, Faber & Faber, 2019, p. 54.
— Alexandra Orlova, Tchaikovsky: A Self-Portrait
The double life of an artist
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The effect of art
“There’s a phrase I’ve often heard from audience members at popular musicals (but, oddly, never anywhere else): the show, they’ll say, “really took me out of myself”. They are saying something basic and profound about the ecstasy of art, the act of being taken out of one’s normal state to a different level of being. […]
Steering the audience’s tasteThe following advice appeared in the British Journal the Musical Times in January 1879: A young student wishes us to tell him what to do under the following circumstances: He has been carefully educated in music, for which he has considerable aptitude and an intense love; he is an efficient pianist, and knows most of […]
Love Came Down At Christmas (Rossetti)Title: Love came down at Christmas Text: Christina Rossetti Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Related products: – Love came down at Christmas – Piano solo (PDF score) – Love came down at Christmas – Piano solo (MP3) hase_link id=”1674″ text=”Purchase” style=”button” color=”blue”] Samples:
Beethoven’s compositional processBeethoven was revising Fidelio when he wrote to Georg Freiedrich Treitschke (who was helping to revise the libretto) (1): Now, of course, everything has to be done at once; and I could composer something new far more quickly than patch up the old with something new, as I am now doing. For my custom when I […]
Hough and Schnabel on piano rollsI want to believe in piano rolls. The idea that we can insert an object into a present-day piano and hear long-dead pianists and composers perform again as if they were in the same room is a tantalisingly attractive prospect. It has a magical aura about it. But, I’m afraid, it’s a conjuring trick, or […]
Examination findingsSome curious answers for the Society of Arts published in the Musical Times (English Journal), July 1888: The Examiner’s report on the papers worked by the candidates in the recent Theoretical Examinations of the Society of Arts shows some very curious facts. … Mistakes in spelling have not been accredited with loss to to the […]
Johann Sebastian Bach: Sonata for violin and obbligato keyboard in A major (BWV 1015)I. Dolce II. Allegro assai III. Andante un poco IV. Presto Prior to J. S. Bach, the harpsichord in ensemble music was primarily a means of harmonic support. The harpsichordist would read from a figured bass—in other words, the part was rarely written out in full. Bach raised the level importance of the harpsichord to […]
Ode ITitle: Ode I Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score SAMPLE: Your browser does not support the audio element.
Guiding concepts of artistic creation“…few of us talk and write about the bigger picture of how our musical and tactical efforts are guided by three distinctly non-musical concepts that don’t get talked and written about often or openly enough: positive vision, abundant thinking, and a sense of self-worth. Thanks to technology, we now live in a world of vast […]
Musing by MoonlightTitle: Musing by Moonlight Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Duet Level: Piano I – level I (5 finger position, left and right hands) Product medium: PDF score & MP3 accompaniment track (Audio sample of accompaniment track only)