Title: The Lord hears the cry of the poor Text: Psalm 32 (33): 2-3, 17-19, 23 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:

The composer Karol Szymanowski was born into a landowning class family.  Even, later in life, when short for money, he always retained the mindset of this class: At one time in Vienna, Szymanowski discovered that he did not have enough money to travel to Cracow, so some friends of him lent him the required sum. […]

“Art,” announces Pat Buchanan to Charlie Rose, “is meant to be uplifting.” What a relief!  After all these years I’d never realized that Art had a moral purpose.  No more need now to be upset by Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, Picasso and Goya, Stravinsky and Berg, Sophocles and Williams.  Pat has clarified the rules, set the […]

A common theme in the music of French composers at pre world war I was water.  Debussy wrote En bateau (On the Boat), Sirenes (Sirens), Reflets dans l’eau (Reflections in the Water), Voiles (Sails), and La Cathedrale engloutie (The Engulfed Cathedral).  Ravel wrote Jeux d’Eau (The Water Fountain), and Ondine. So striking a peculiarity of […]

Title: Easy Street (Silent film soundtrack) Composer: Greg Smith Performer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: MP3 soundtrack     Related products     – PDF score TRACK LISTING AND SAMPLES: TRACK TITLE LENGTH SAMPLE 1. A new beginning 4:07 2. Easy Street 7:06 3. Law and order 1:22 4. Aid where aid is due 1:33 5. Poverty and […]

Insider jokes are not just for White House Correspondents’ Assn. Dinners or ESPN kibitzers or Academy Awards emcees. They also crop up in discussions about symphony orchestra musicians — a society unto itself. There are jibes and even sober-minded studies that characterize personality types according to the instruments they play. Who are the string players? […]

This knowledge of truth, combined with proper regard for it, and its faithful observance, constitutes true education. The mere stuffing of the mind with a knowledge of facts is not education. The mind must not only posses a knowledge of truth, but the soul must revere it, cherish it, love it as a priceless gem; […]

Liszt on Beethoven’s music, in a letter to Wilhelm von Lenz in 1852: To us musicians the work of Beethoven parallels the pillars of smoke and fire which led the Israelites through the desert, a pillar of smoke to lead us by day, and a pillar of fire to light the night, so that we […]

Now I am attracted only to music which I consider to be better than it can be performed. Therefore I feel (rightly or wrongly) that unless a piece of music presents a problem to me, a neverending problem, it doesn’t interest me too much. For instance, Chopin’s studies are lovely pieces, perfect pieces, but I […]

“The illiterate of the future are not those that cannot read or write. They are those that can not learn, unlearn, relearn.” -Alvin Toffler, American writer and futurist Cited at QuotationsBook