Forty years ago, the soul that represented a summer breeze of lyricism in 20th Century classical music left this world. On January 23, 1981, Samuel Barber died. In a century of fragmented styles – some austere, some pandering, and some destined to be repurposed in horror movie soundtracks – Barber’s style remained solidly in touch with a lyrical core and grounded in the human heart.
Master Any Passage ... In Bite-Size Pieces (Practice Technique, Part 5)
We all have them: the “skyscraper” passages. The imposing technical passages that seem inscrutable, and maybe impossible. From the sidewalk in front of an actual skyscraper, it seems dizzyingly high. How could someone even build something so high?! And staring at a tricky passage on the page, it can be hard to even imagine how something so difficult could ever be performed. But with the right approach, there’s always a way.