Check out this fun video of variations on a classic you’ll surely recognize! Learn this great showstopper of a piece now – it is featured this month in our August Sheet Music here! CS Theme and Variations, Op. 6 (1985) Randall Compton (b. 1954) Rebekah Jordan-Miller, piano Jerico Vasquez, piano Shorter University Faculty Gala
Our brains can turn down our ability to see to help them listen even harder to music and complex sounds, say experts. A US study of 20 non-musicians and 20 musical conductors found both groups diverted brain activity away from visual areas during listening tasks. Scans showed activity fell in these areas as it rose in auditory ones. But during harder tasks the changes were less marked for conductors than […]
With August 22 being Debussy’s 150th birthday, we thought it only appropriate to have him featured in the Composer’s Corner this month! Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Claude Debussy (born Achille-Claude Debussy) was among the most influential composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His mature compositions, distinctive and appealing, combined modernism and sensuality so successfully that their sheer beauty often obscures their technical innovation. Debussy is considered the […]
You start a new life after retirement and could consider piano lessons a part of it. Though people spend years planning their lives before retirement, they don’t plan enough for their life after retirement. Your life after retirement can be the best time of your life because you are finally free of all the responsibilities and have free time to pursue your passion and interests. Some people take up piano […]
Are you looking for a rare, beautiful grand piano with an awe-inspiring sound and the classic Steinway touch? This 1926 Steinway Louis XV model M is just that instrument! The ornately carved cabinet is a stunning mahogany, with beautifully carved legs to match the original matching duet bench. This piano was just restored! It has a new pinblock, new pins, new strings, new damper felts, and new decals. Its Renner parts are […]
Elisabeth Lutyens (July 09, 1906 – April 14, 1983) Working completely in isolation from European trends, Lutyens developed her own innovative style of serialism in the late 1930’s. Continuing amid almost total neglect in England, she eventually became known for an exceptional ability at setting texts, achieving a highly objective and original constancy of form while maintaining deeply emotional qualities. The daughter of an architect, she entered the Ecole Normale in […]
For the month of July, we wanted to share the history of music in America. Please enjoy this article and clips from the National Museum of American History’s “Sounds of America” online exhibit. Photograph of bluegrass musician and singer Joe Val by Henry Horenstein Join the National Museum of American History and Smithsonian Global Sound, as we present an ongoing series of programs featuring music made and played in the U.S.A. Drawing […]
1. The Star Spangled Banner is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from “Defence of Fort McHenry”, a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812. The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men’s […]
GOD BLESS AMERICA and AMERICA, THE BEAUTIFUL Performed by Sophoan Sorn November 8, 2008 Stockton Empire Theatre Written by Katharine Lee Bates, Irving Berlin
Certain key elements are what all music is based on – melody, harmony, rhythm, and dynamics – that are essential in establishing the essence of music. As with anything, there is an elemental basis for the composition of music. The material essence of music lies with its melody, harmony, rhythm, and dynamics. Melody gives music soul, while rhythm blends the expression of harmony and dynamics with the tempo of the passage. All are necessary to […]
