The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration. – Steven Pressfield S. Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, New York, Black Irish Entertainment, 2002, p.18

A craftsman replicating large medallions has discovered medieval Scottish notation of instrumental music.  The notation is sequences of 0s, Is and IIs. Barnaby Brown, a specialist in early Scottish music, notated that, “This discovery is potentially of great significance to our understanding of medieval and Renaissance instrumental music – the normally ‘unwritten’ practice of the elite court […]

Title 1: My Shepherd is the Living Lord Text 1: Isaac Watt Title 2: I know That My Redeemer Lives Text 2: Samuel Medley Tune title: My Shepherd 88.88 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB Product medium: PDF score Sample:

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“There is also in this music an extraordinary sense of control over the passage of time; a moment will be held still as if suspended, and then released, with a rush.  Einstein has told us that time is relative, flexible and elastic; I have noticed these qualities whenever I have tried to play to the […]

Brahms formed a Ladies Choir of about fifty singers: “Fix oder Nix” was the motto he coined for them – “Bang up or nothing”; and he promised to write all the music they could sing if they would meet regularly, and always on time.  He even drew up a set of humorous rules.  “Avertimento” it […]

American composer John Bratton wrote the music for “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” in 1907. It was first published by M. Witmark & Sons as a piano work titled “The Teddy Bears Picnic. Characteristic Two Step”. Irishman Jimmy Kennedy added the lyrics in 1932. Dance Band leader Henry Hall hosted a radio program on the BBC which […]

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 […]

British conductor Thomas Beecham was not too impressed with early recording technology (the gramophone): It was put to him that for people who lived in remote districts, far from orchestral concerts, the gramophone was an alternative: "It is no alternative to this," he said, waving his arm towards the hall, where the orchestra was waiting […]

Rachmaninoff completed his Third Piano Concerto at his summer estate at Ivanovka in September-October 1909.  He then toured America, learning the piano part on a dumb piano aboard the ship.  The work was first performed in New York under Walter Damrosch in November 1909.  In January 1910, Gustav Mahler conducted the third New York performance. […]