An allemande is a stately processional couple dance. The dances formed lines of couples, extended their hands, and moved forward and backward throughout the ballroom. It was a common stylised dance in baroque music. Johann Mattheson described it in 1739: Now the allemande is a broken, serious, and well constructed harmony, which is the image […]

Beethoven’s revised version of Fidelio was due to be premiered on the 23rd May 1814. Beethoven had planned to write a new overture for the performance. He was still yet to complete it before the final rehearsal on the 22nd May. The night before, he was dining out with his physician (Dr. Bertolini). After dinner, he took a menu, […]

Franz Liszt owned Beethoven’s Broadwood piano.

“Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything.” – W. Clement Stone, American businessman

Leopold Stokowski was staging a concert version of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. Natalie Bodanya, one of the finest singers at Curtis at the time, refused to audition, noting how “impersonal and impossible Stokowski was. Stokowski had filled all the roles, with the exception of that the Princess. “Is it possible” Stokowski asked Sylvan [Sylvan Lenin, a […]

Title: Abstraction II Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score SAMPLE:

“One must practice slowly, then more slowly and finally slowly.” – Camille Saint-Saëns Cited in: The Piano Quarterly, 1974, p. 24.

Some conductors put all the emphasis on the melodic line, while others are fanatics about rhythm, but there are very few conductors who are uniquely able to look at the score and hear every part before it actually happens. With the very best of conductors, it’s as though there are two performances going on simultaneously. […]

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 […]

Satie’s ballet Relâche (1924) had trouble pulling a crowd: the title translates as “this performances is cancelled”. Source: Lawrence, Christopher (2001) Swooning.  Sydney: Random House, p.70.