Category Archives: Music

General Music

Practise practising-more from Stephen Hough

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Hough BBC

“There is a well-worn saying: practice makes perfect. I don’t believe this, at least in reference to playing the piano: abstract “perfection” is rarely what we seek; but good practising makes it more likely that we will give a good performance. Its attention, its concentration, its tightening of the screws enable the concert experience to take wing in freedom.”

The following article by Stephen Hough appears in the November/December issue of International Piano magazine. For full, free access to the other articles in that issue see here. It is reprinted in the Daily Telegraph’s music column.

More on the BBC website – Thanks to Oren Myers for this

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Leeds Castle 1981- a piece of guitar history

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Some very familiar faces, and some no longer with us.
A scary but great competition!
Thanks to Oren Myers for bringing this to my attention.

There were some notable events from this competition –  Tsuyoshi Horiuchi, the first prize winner had a tragic accident with the little finger of his left hand; Paul Galbraith, who won second prize was only 17 years old at the time, and there was an incident involving a prize sherry goblet and Eliot Fisk!

Here is a quote from Graham Wade’s second volume on Segovia:

“After the playing of three movements from the set repertoire and a movement from Fantasia para un Gentilhombre, the finalists were Eliot Fisk, Tsuyoshi Horiuchi, Cheryl Grice, Paul Galbraith, Stefano Grondona, and Yoshinobu Iwanaga. The competitors then went into the performance of a concerto and when this was completed the unanimous choice for winner was Tsuyoshi Horiuchi, with the youngest competitor, Paul Galbraith, second, and Stefano Grondona, third.

All finalists were given a silver sherry goblet, though it was at first reported that Eliot Fisk, disappointed with the result, threw his goblet into the moat at Leeds Castle. This story was eventually clarified in an editorial in Guitar where it was reported that the goblet had been thrown from a taxi and later retrieved by the driver, who was allowed to keep the article.”

The world sends us garbage… We send back music – the children of Cateura and their “Garbage Instruments” – Los Reciclados

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Mozart played on oil drums!

Just outside the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion sits Cateura, a massive landfill that receives 1,500 tons of new rubbish each day. The dumping site’s surrounding neighborhoods are home to several thousand families who make a living by sorting through its rotting waste, and separate out whatever can be sold to the local recycling industry. According to UNICEF, Cateura is a community marked by extreme poverty, illiteracy, and pollution.

It’s also home to an orchestra—one made up of local children whose instruments are made entirely from recycled garbage.

This is an article in TakePart amplifying my earlier post on Cateura’s collaboration with Berta Rojas.

It’s an intriguing story of a musician, Favio Chávez, who got together with a rubbish collector, Nicolás Gómez, to make instruments together using packing cases, oil drums and old bottles.

How to practise with a metronome – All that jazz – Wayne Krantz

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Wayne says:
“The following content is related to the December 2012 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now, or in our online store

In this month’s column, I’d like to talk about practicing with a metronome. I’m sure most of you have read or been told at some point that practicing to a metronome is an important thing for guitar players to do on a regular basis. I think that practicing with a metronome can reap many benefits and have spent a lot of time doing it over the years.

Although I’ve always felt that my sense of “time”—my ability to play at a steady tempo and in a groove “pocket” without speeding up or slowing down—has been pretty good, I realized at one point that it was not quite as good as I wanted it to be. So I spent a considerable amount of effort really focusing on that aspect of my playing, and I think there are ways to practice with a metronome that are more beneficial than others.”

Brilliant advice

More on Metronome

Sondheim and Slonimsky

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To continue the little digression on invective –

Some time ago, composer and playwright Stephen Sondheim wrote a book called  Look, I Made a Hat which amongst many other wry observations contains the following paragraph, which I find expresses exactly what it is I enjoy about reading uncomprehending criticism. It might also be comforting for those who feel “unfairly trashed” (and who hasn’t?)…

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Gunpowder plot truthers – ten things about bonfire night you probably didn’t know

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Article in the Independent with a bit more history and a touch of gruesomeness for those who don’t know about hanging, drawing and quartering.

Apparently is was by law that you had to remember, remember the 5th of November.
There is also a distinct possibility that the whole plot was a put up job by arch Catholic hater and MP Robert Cecil to finger Fawkes, Catesby and their co conspirators.

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The fleas that tease

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Do you remember an Inn,

Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?

So begins Hilaire Belloc’s mysterious mini-epic, Tarantella.

This is a justifiably famous poem from the person who penned Cautionary Tales for Children. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, sailor, satirist, man of letters, soldier and political activist. Originally French, he became a naturalised British subject in 1922, and was President of the Oxford Union and later MP for Salford from 1906 to 1910.

He was famous for his vigorously disputative nature and running feuds with various other strong minded personalities. H.G.Wells remarked that “Debating Mr. Belloc is like arguing with a hailstorm“.

What is less well known is that he actually wrote a bit of music and sang to his poems, including Tarantella.

I was naturally excited to see the following instruction on the top of the page, which was presented to me by Pam Spooner, one of Betty Roe’s singing students (at the age of 85!) and the possessor of a fine high soprano voice.

Miranda clip

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