If Heaven has bestowed on you a fine imagination, you will often be seated at your piano in solitary hours, as if attached to it; you will desire to express the feelings of your heart in harmony, and the more clouded the sphere of harmony may perhaps be to you, the more mysteriously you will feel as if drawn into magic circles. In youth these may be your happiest hours. Beware, however, of abandoning yourself too often to the influence of a talent that induces you to lavish powers and time, as it were, upon phantoms. Mastery over the forms of composition and a clear expression of your ideas can only be attained by constant writing. Write, therefore, more than you improvise.
Robert Schumann (translated by Henry Hugo Pierson), Advice to Young Musicains [Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln]. New York: J. Schuberth & Co. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28219/28219-h/28219-h.htm, accessed 29 August
– Robert Schumann
Write over improvise
by
Tags:
Featured Content
The demise of the music critic
“…Moon, a 20-year veteran of the Philadelphia Inquirer before he left to write his new book, “1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die,” believes the biggest difference between old reviews and reviews now is that in the past, the critic’s job was to give readers a deeper sense of the work. But blogs’ rise has […]
A good performanceA good performance is one that moves me. But it is not only the passion and emotion expressed in a performance that move me, it is also allowing the clarity of the structure, as well as the different characters, to shine through, a well-judged balance, a sense of architecture of the whole piece and, at […]
Just a few variationsTchaikovsky was an enthusiastic student at the St. Petersberg Conservatoire. Anton Rubinstein asked Tchaikvosky to write a series of contrapuntal variations on a given theme. "I expected that he would present me with about a dozen. But Tchaikovsky turned up the next class day with more than two hundred!" Cited in: Hanson, Lawrence and Elisabeth […]
Schoenberg’s composition classAn account of Arnold Schoenberg teaching a composition class: Well, first of all there was composition class, in which he analyzed in brief the first sections of several Schubert sonatas. How he adores Schubert! “Many people say,” he remarked, “that Schubert is too long. He is long-yes-but for me he is always too short!” Such […]
Advice to opera performersIn the early 18th century, the standard of Italian opera performances had become somewhat questionable. In 1720, The satirical writer Marcello offered some advice to those involved in opera performance: [The opera performer] will hurry or slow down the pace of an aria, according to the caprice of the singers, and will conceal the displeasure […]
Practising at every opportunityThe conductor Stokowski was co-conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. He was rehearsing his own orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The orchestra, however, was used to playing Ravel’s exuberant orchestration. Charles O’Connell recalled: “In the midst of the rehearsal, one of the second violinists busied himself practising the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, which […]
What drives the wise“There is hardly any treatise which could be too learned for me. I have not the slightest pretension to what is properly called erudition. Yet from my childhood I have striven to understand what the better and wiser people of every age were driving at in their works. Shame on an artist who does not […]
The importance of melodyI have never questioned the importance of melody. I love melody, and I regard it as the most important element in music. I have worked on the improvement of its quality in my compositions for many years. To find a melody instantly understandable even to the uninitiated listener, and at the same time an original […]
Transcription ServicesMUSIC TRANSCRIPTION SERVICES Overview About the transcriber AUDIO TO TEXT TRANSCRIPTION AND CAPTIONING SERVICES Overview Submit project for transcription About the transcriber
The role of an interpreterThe interpreter is really an executant, carrying out the composer’s intentions to the letter. He doesn’t add anything that isn’t already in the work. If he is talented, he allows us to glimpse the truth of the work that is in itself a thing of genius and that is reflected in him. He shouldn’t dominate […]