For me, inspiration comes from a bunch of places: desperation, deadlines… A lot of times ideas will turn up when you’re doing something else. And, most of all, ideas come from confluence — they come from two things flowing together. They come, essentially, from daydreaming. . . . And I suspect that’s something every human being does. Writers tend to train themselves to notice when they’ve had an idea — it’s not that they have any more ideas or get inspired more than anything else; we just notice when it happens a little bit more.
Neil Gaiman, writer, in an interview with Clem Bastow. Cited in: Maria Popova, “How Creativity Works: Neil Gaiman on Where Ideas Come From”, Brain Pickings, https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/02/18/neil-gaiman-creativity/, accessed 13 December 2020.
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Everything affects music making
‘”…turning 40 and new fatherhood have other effects: ‘It opens things up emotionally’, he says. ‘I find that my whole perspective on life and my whole emotional range generally has changed. I laugh more easily and cry more easily. And that probably has an impact on the music making in one way or another. Everything […]
Vladimir Horowitz on encores”You see,” he said, ”I have a very substantial program, and after a substantial program, you can’t play a substantial encore. You play a little … ” at this, he strummed the air with his fingers, tinkling an imaginary piano. ”It is,” he said, ”anticlimactic.” Clyde Haberman, “3,500 Japanese Applaud Horowtiz for 14 Minutes”, The […]
Malcolm Sargent on Vaughan Williams’ Sixth SymphonyConductor Malcolm Sargent on Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony: A frightening symphony. For a symphony to be frightening is perhaps a good thing. Here we have the complete testament of a man who, in his seventies, looks back on the human sufferings of his time. I never conduct the Sixth without feeling that I am walking […]
One WeekTitle: One Week (silent film soundtrack) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score BACKGROUND: Film: Directors: Edward F. Cline & Buster Keaton Starring: Buster Keaton, Joe Roberts, Sybil Seely Date of release: 1920 Synopsis: A newly wed couple receive a generous […]
Reverie IIReverie II Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano (left hand) Product medium: PDF score
Schnabel on recordingHaving spent five days recording five Beethoven sonatas and two concertos, Schnabel wrote to his wife: This week was an ordeal, a torture chamber. “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” says Nietzsche. Hopefully (probably) this is true. I had no idea of how outrageous a process the recording on discs could be. Like […]
Skye Boat SongTitle: Skye Boat Song Composer: Scottish folk melody (arr. Greg Smith) Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score
Review of Pablo CasalsA Review written in El Alcance of the cellist Pablo Cassals: His bow, sometimes sweet as a voice from heaven, at other times vibrant and robust, produces such a sonorous combination of voices and tones that it seems that the body of his violincello is the magic secret of sublime harmonies capriciously transformed at the […]
Music education helps to encourage empathy“In an age when many children experience music alone on iPods and computers, especially students at the upper elementary level, the research underscores the value of face-to-face musical interactions. “The Rabinowitch work [at Cambridge University] helps reinforce the intuitive notion that engagement in music is beneficial in terms of ethos, pathos, and logos,” said Jonathan […]
Britten on The Rake’s Progress“I liked everything about the opera but the music.” – Benjamin Britten on Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress Cited in: Jarski, Rosemarie (2005) Great British Wit. London: Ebury Press, p. 203.