I have often been asked for the music of my transcriptions and original pieces and I have wondered how best to make them available.My main concern has been that for many people in the world published music has become too expensive to buy, even if one can find it – John Williams
Gál was born in 1890 to a Jewish family in a small village just outside Vienna. He was trained at the New Vienna Conservatory where later he taught for some time.
With the support of such important musicians as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Richard Strauss and others, he obtained the directorship of the Mainz Conservatory.
Gál composed in nearly every genre and his operas, which include Der Artz der Sobeide, Die Heilige Ente andDas Lied der Nacht, were particularly popular during the 1920s.
Although not exactly a household name in the guitar world, he did compose many works which include the mandolin and guitar, some of which are for mandolin orchestra. Continue reading
The alternative performing space I like best is Goldberg’s room next door to his boss Count Kaiserling. The Count was an insomniac and used to get Goldberg to play the clavichord to while away the night – no iPod or TV!
I often wonder how Goldberg must have spent his day and when he had time to practise! Of course, this would all have been a footnote in history if Forkel, Bach’s biographer had not written that Count Kaiserling had commissioned old Bach to write his eponymous set of variations for Goldberg. The Count was reported to have said, frequently ‘Dear Goldberg, do play me one of my variations.’
A few years back, where would you have been able to listen to the following guitarists in a more or less regular series for free? Xue Fei Yang, Johannes Moller, David Leisner, Alison Smith, the Eden Stell Duo, Gerald Garcia and Alison Bendy?
With Britten and Bream celebrating anniversaries, there has been a bit of a frenzy on the broadcasting front.
So it was refreshing to listen to the programme “Come Heavy Sleep” on BBC3 which combined both anniversarians with insight, largely owing to the sympathetic interviewer, guitarist Tom McKinney.
with only 2 days left to listen, you might like to know a little about the programme anyway: Continue reading
When Choirs Sing, Many Hearts Beat As One
“it took almost no time at all for the singers’ heart rates to become synchronized. The readout from the pulse monitors starts as a jumble of jagged lines, but quickly becomes a series of uniform peaks. The heart rates fall into a shared rhythm guided by the song’s tempo“
This has been around a while now, but is still interesting. I wonder if anyone has measured heart rates of supporters at a football or tennis match.
Do guitar ensemble players live longer than soloists? (Only if they follow the conductor!)
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In a moment of weakness I once bought a CD entitled “The Ultimate Classical Album”.As well as the usual classics like Rachmaninoff’s Concerto, a smattering of Satie Gymnopédies and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (well, one season actually), I was surprised to find that 3 out of the 4 CDs contained music by Max Steiner, Thomas Newman, John Barry, James Horner and other names not that familiar to classical listeners – in other words film music. Continue reading
I have known David Solomons, self-styled “singer, one-man choir, guitarist and composer” since university days and was always in awe at his ability to play an orchestral score on the piano, or the guitar, or anything that came to hand or voice.
He embodies the idea of a musician who happens to play the guitar, and I am happy to say that he is flourishing as a guitarist and composer.
Many of his pieces have unusual titles, such as “Alcohol“, “Arthropod Duet“, “Hair of the Doggerel” , “Ode to a Nose“etc – Continue reading
These posts are becoming something of an AG (acronymic graveyard).
I am now in Kentucky at the Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) International Convention. I was lucky enough and honoured to be invited Continue reading