What 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 […]

“What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.” — Samuel Coleridge Taylor, English poet, critic and philosopher. Coleridge, Samuel (1856) Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton. London: Chapman and Hall, page xlv

Beethoven, 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 […]

Reverie II Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano (left hand) Product medium: PDF score

“In 2007 Italian cellist Mario Brunello climbed to the summit of Mount Fuji and played selections from Bach’s cello suites, declaring that “Bach’s music comes closest to the absolute and to perfection.” Source: Siblin, Eric (2009) The Cello Suites. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin. p.6.

“You cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance.” – Charles Ives, American composer

Title: The Battle of the Somme (silent movie score) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: Full score (PDF download) – 80 pages     Related products:     – The Battle of the Somme (MP3) Background: In 1916 France was struggling to fend off German occupation.  It had become apparent that to break the stalemate Britain […]

“His creation was spontaneous and miraculous. He found it without seeking it, without forseeing it. It came on his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk when he was impatient to play it to himself. But then he began the most heart-rending labor I ever saw. It was a […]

Title: In Memory of  Those in Paradise   Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score SAMPLE:

“The experience of beauty … consists of finding a spiritual value (truth, happiness, moral ideals) at home in a material setting (rhythm, line, shape, structure) and in such a way that, while we contemplate the object, the two seem inseparable.” – John Armstrong, The Secret Power of Beauty.