May 2013
6 posts
“We should always remember that sensitiveness and emotion constitute the real...”
– Maurice Ravel (via heartinwinter)
imaginarydances:
[White guy] has written music for [list of standard classical ensembles]. His music combines a contemporary classical style with [probably some alternative rock/pop style] and a love of [probably film or video game music or something]. His works have been performed at [festivals you haven’t heard of]. He has studied with [some older white guys] and is currently pursuing his...
“Art is the opposite of nature…a work of art can only come from the interior of a...”
– Edvard Munch, Letters (via kateymichelelikes)
“I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.”
– Igor Stravinsky (via ryandonato)
April 2013
8 posts
“I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And...”
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (via milktree)
“A creative artist works on his next composition because he is not satisfied with...”
– Dmitri Shostakovich (via mattgallaghermusic)
“There’s a way of playing safe, there’s a way of using tricks and there’s the way...”
– Dave Brubeck (via justleanna)
“Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed...”
– T.S. Eliot (via oiseaur0uge)
“Brahms’s 51 Exercises for the pianist show how clearly he understood pianistic...”
– Brahms’s Pianos and the Performance of His Late Piano Works (via tylerkielb)
“Black males have helped create the blues, more than any other music, as a music...”
– bell hooks, from “Forever” in Black Cool (via sydlow)
March 2013
7 posts
“I compose everywhere, walking or driving, eating or drinking, at home or abroad,...”
– —Richard Strauss, on his method of composition (via homilius)
Classical musicians and fans: do you follow homilius? I recommend it. -lt
(via leadingtone)
“I disavow the so-called ‘avant-garde’ tendencies of contemporary music, because...”
– Lubomyr Melnyk (via imaginarydances)
February 2013
13 posts
Messiaen Plays Messiaen →
imaginarydances:
The complete recordings of Messiaen performing his own works, free download from the International Historical Organ Recording Collection.
”It’s very clear that Olivier Messiaen was grounded in the romantic performance style and perhaps his music should be approached in that way. Many post or contemporary organists of Messiaen tend to play his music only “as written” which...
“Let’s face it: Pianists are often told that the mere act of producing sound on a...”
– Terence Dawson: Collaborative Piano and the developing Musician (via sonateharder)
“Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.”
– Arthur Rimbaud (via leadingtone)
Paul Elie, Reinventing Bach →
James Suffern: Of Bach’s compositional process you say, “Invention would come to characterize his music, both as a habit of art and as a pattern of the art itself. His music develops in ways that dramatize the act of invention” (pg. 75). Is it precisely this quality of intentional invention that draws musicians to Bach throughout various eras? Is he an artist’s artist...
“Whereas most other modern composers are engaged in manufacturing cocktails of...”
– Jean Sibelius on his Symphony No. 6 (via ameekgarden)
Pianist Daniil Trifonov: Disappearing Into Chopin →
February 6, 2013After winning two major competitions, the 21-year-old Russian is reaching for piano perfection. Hear him play Chopin etudes, colorful Fairy Tales by Nikolai Medtner and an explosive arrangement of music from Stravinsky’s Firebird at the WGBH studios in Boston.
January 2013
6 posts
Art-Piano:: Busoni: Learning to Listen →
art-piano:
This is an extract from Francis Cooke’s ‘Great Pianists on Piano Playing’. The whole chapter ‘Important Details in Piano Study’ is written by Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) (see Busoni)
THERE IS A DETAIL WHICH FEW STUDENTS OBSERVE WHICH IS OF SUCH VAST IMPORTANCE THAT ONE IS TEMPTED TO SAY THAT THE MAIN PART OF SUCCESSFUL MUSICAL PROGRESS DEPENDS UPON IT. THIS IS THE DETAIL OF LEARNING...
leadingtone:
Poulenc Rapsodie nègre (1917) for...
December 2012
5 posts
imaginarydances:
My prof said that the Well Tempered Clavier Book 1 was for keyboardists and that Book 2 was for composers. Never thought about it like that.
“After a series of four sonatas — advancing chronologically throughout 1744 to...”
– I need to check out CPE Bach a bit more carefully.
Calculated Instability: The Pioneering Sonatas Of C.P.E. Bach : Deceptive Cadence : NPR
(via sonateharder)
November 2012
8 posts
“Silences between movements are employed only to bring the opposing duo to the...”
–
Elliott Carter
(via leadingtone)
“In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and...”
– Antonin Dvorak (via composerquotes)
Music Theory for Musicians and Nonmusicians →
“It always saddens me to think that after all I am not yet a proper musician; but...”
–
Brahms
(via leadingtone) 