Chopin
Etudes, Scherzo #1, Andante Spianato, Preludes, Waltz, Ballade #4, Mazurkas
[Warsaw, 1818]
At the age of eight, in Warsaw, chopin made his formal debut as a pianist and caused a sensation. When asked by his mother who had been prevented by illness from attending, what the audience liked best, the little boy replied: “My English collar, mama”.
[Paris, 1832]
“I have found my way into the very best society: I have my place among ambassadors, princes, ministers – I don’t know by what miracle it has come about, for I have done nothing to push myself forward. It is a necessary thing for me, because good taste is supposed to depend on it. At once you have a greater talent if you have been heard at the English and Austrian embassy. You play better if the Princesse de Vaudemont was your protector – I can’t say is, because the elderly lady died a week ago”.
– Fryderyk Chopin
“This Chopin is an angel: his kindness, tenderness and patience sometimes worry me, for i have the feeling that his whole being is too delicate, too exquisite and too perfect to exist long in our coarse and heavy earthly life.”
– George Sand
Bach
Chorals: ” Jesus, Joy of Men’s Desiring”,“Awake, the Voice Commands”,Polonaise, Menuet, Inventions, Preludes and Fugues from the Well Tempered Klavier, Italian Concerto, Siciliana, Organ Prelude and Fugue, Capriccio on the Departure of His Dearly Beloved Brother, Chaconne from the Second Partita
Deciding to copy his brother’s instrumental library, he worked late at night, when his brother was asleep, and the moonlight was his only illumination. He almost ruined his eyes, only to have the fruit of his hard work confiscated and destroyed by his brother.
Bach was hardly the formidable saint some would have us believe. Contemporary reports describe him as a big-hearted, robust man who presided over a teeming household. He smoked a pipe and took delight in the fact that, while living in Leipzig, he got his beer tax-free because he was a church official! He had a temper and plenty of ambition.
HE WORKED HARD AND HE LIKED MAKING MONEY
This complete musician, his composer whose vision embraced the then-known musical universe, this titan who had to work in Leipzig with wretched students and with personnel for below the strength he needed and wanted. He once summarized the quality of the students: “17 were unstable, 20 not yet usable, and 17 unfit.” These 54 boys constituted the choruses of the four churches in Leipzig.
“There is nothing so remarkable about it “Johann Sebastian Bach is believed to have said about playing the organ. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time, and the instrument plays itself”.
JAZZ
Works by: Debussy, Hindemith, Gershwin, Tansam, Auric, Gould, Kernis, Joplin, Tatum, Peterson and others.
Hot can be cool and cool can be hot, and each can be both. But hot or cool, man, JAZZ IS JAZZ.
– Louis Armstrong
In the Negro melodies of America i have discovered all that is needed for the creation of a great and noble school of music. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America, and your composer must turn to them. All the great musicians have borrowed from the songs of the people.
– Antony Dvorak
Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one, which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music.
– John Coltrane
Jazz has never existed in Africa, and it doesn’t exist there today. It was formed from the two musical cultures; from the African, which has the highest development of rhythm in the world, and from the European, which has the greatest development of harmony in the world; and it happened in AMERICA
– Max Kamimsky
