Blogs

756 Posts
Looking at Beethoven: After His Death
The first image we have of Beethoven after his death is his death mask. It was common to take a death mask of famous people, either to serve as a memory or as a basis for portraits. The method was
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My Beethoven by Maureen
One of the things that we are often unaware of is how much our first hearing of a work can influence our thoughts on that work. I don’t think I really paid attention to the music around me unless I
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Playing With Musical Terms
Why are there so many words when it comes to music? And in so many languages, like Italian, German, French, and even English! Often, one has to decipher obscure words to read the score and the musical directions, which include
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Musical Schizophrenia: Mr. Jekyll & Dr. Hyde
I have observed a bipolarity in my musical self that reflects through my two main musical activities; improvising and composing. Both completing each other — not through their similarities towards a creative goal but rather through their differences of qualities
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For the Love of Musical PUNS
A 2017 post by the radio station Classic FM, sited a conversation by Reddit user r3mus3, full of puns using the names of composers, which began due to a misspelled note from his father, “The Handel is broken.” I thought,
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The Trigger of Serendipity
How Inspiration Arises
The story of how I came to create and record one of my most recent pieces — entitled Chapel of Silence — sprung to me as being a great illustration of how inspiration arises. Doug Thomas: Chapel of Silence I
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Looking at Beethoven: In His Life
We’re so familiar with the images of Beethoven in his mature years – the glower, the intense look, the solitary figure – but when we go back in time, we can see just how his contemporaries viewed him. The very
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Reeds – What’s All the Fuss About?
Fewer words strike equal amounts of fear and frustration into the heart of wind players than the word ‘reed’. This seemingly simple piece of cane we attach to our mouthpiece can be the make or break between a beautiful sound
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