For most of these string postings I write as an educator, but this time I write as an enthusiast. As a performer I always found it a little disappointing that most of us don’t have any skills in upkeeping our… Read More »The Basics of Sound Post Setting
Someone recently asked me about the importance of knowing history in being a musician, and I thought it interesting enough and important enough a question for all of us, regardless of instrument. Music can be seen as having three major… Read More »Understanding Music as a Combination of Elements
Cecil Forsyth was primarily a musicologist, with Orchestration being his prime publication, and his advice to Vaughan Williams on the orchestration of A London Symphony was noted by Adrian Boult. He was also a composer as well as a violist,… Read More »Cecil Forsyth: Viola Concerto
The Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů composed in virtually all genres, from symphony to ballet, chamber music to opera, madrigal to film score. He even explored the road less travelled with a jazz suite, a sinfonia concertante and a nonet for… Read More »Martinů: Viola Sonata
Bach’s Sixth Suite for unaccompanied cello carries an implicit demand for sonority and dignified poise, part of the sociological and musical contexts of the Kapellmeister of Cöthen. The work has particular technical demands due to its original intention to be… Read More »Bach: Sixth Suite For Unaccompanied Cello (Arr. Viola)
by Andrew Filmer If a form of punctuation were to be chosen to describe the authenticity of the Concertino for Oboe and Winds, it would definitely be the question mark. Listed under “doubtful and spurious works” of Weber in the… Read More »From the Charm of the Court: Weber’s Concertino for Oboe and Winds
The source of inspiration – or as some say, magic – has always been the great elusive question, from philosophers looking for the meaning and truth of life, literary scholars in the beauty of tragedy, or music lovers in the… Read More »The Search for Inevitability: Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony
by Andrew Filmer Program Notes Juxtaposition, the connection of contrasts, has always been poetic, the great bard William Shakespeare using it to great effect. A century later it is the musical genius of Mozart that blends seemingly disparate elements into… Read More »Symphony No. 39 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
by Andrew Filmer When one listens to a symphony or a concerto, one listens to a musical legacy stretching back hundreds of years. But there is a difference between listening to those and Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante: quite simply, people still… Read More »Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante in E flat major for Violin, Viola and Orchestra
by Andrew Filmer Legend has it that by the time Beethoven premiered his Ninth Symphony in 1824, he had become totally deaf, and he conducted hearing the notes only his head, providing the clearest symbolism of how a composer communicates… Read More »Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: Believing in the Dream of Brotherhood