The Musicians Bar

A New Website !!

2008-11-18T13:14:00.000-08:00

This post is dedicated to a fantastic website dedicated to musicians, both connoisseurs and amateurs. This website includes a music library, an encyclopedia, free theory lessons to be added and many other cool features which will help anyone interested in music (and any kind of music, from classical to hip hop) to become more involved in the musical community and develop friendship with artists from all around the world at the same time! Please visit www.musiguru.com

Leopold Mozart to Lorenz Hagenauer, Salzburg

2008-07-31T19:28:00.000-07:00

London, 28 June 1764

[Extract]

Monsieur!

I have much pleasure in informing you that I have again deposited with the bankers Loubier et Tessier a small sum of 100 guineas, which I could arrange to be paid to someone at Salzburg who might wish to use it in this country.

At the end of next week we are going to Tunbridge, about thirty English miles from London, a distance which can be covered by the mail coach in three or four hours, for an English mile is not more than a German quarter of an hour. There are wells there and it lies in a corner between the east and the south. In July and August many of the nobility assemble in Tunbridge, for now nobody who has means and leisure remains in London.

On Friday, June 29th, that is, on the Feast of St. peter and St. paul, there will be a concert or benefit at Ranelagh in aid of a new stablished Hopital de femmes en couche and whoever wishes to attend it must pay five shillings entrance. I am letting Wolfgang play a concerto on the organ at this concert in order to perform thereby the act of an English aptriot who, as far as in him lies, endeavours to further the usefulness of this hospital which has been established pro bono publico. That is, you see, one way of winning the affection of this quite excetional nation.

I send greetings, and so do my wife and nannerl and little Wolfgang, who is always thinking of Salzburg.

I am

Your old

Mozart

From the Letters to Mozart and his family, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, London. 1985

The Public Advertiser described Mozart as " The most extraordinary prodigy and most amazing genius that has appeared in any age"

Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin

2008-06-07T11:28:00.001-07:00

Nature does not design like art, however realistic she may be. She has caprices, inconsequences, probably not real, but very misterious. Art only rectifies these inconsequences, because it is too limited to reproduce them. Chopin was a resume of these inconsequences which God alone can allow Himself to create, and which have their particular logic. he was modest on principle, gentle by habit, but he was imperious by instinct and full of a legitimate pride which was unconscious of itself. hence arose sufferings which he did not reason and which did not fix themselves on a determined object.
George Sand in "The Story of my life"

After eight years of courtship and great expectations his heart broke. With no muse by his side his lonely existence encountered death at the age of forty.

2008-06-05T21:50:00.000-07:00

"(14) Leopold Mozart to Lorenz Hagenauer, Salzburg
[Extract]

MAINZ, 3 August 1763

From Schwetzingen we drove to Heidelberg in order to see the castle and the great tun.

On the whole Heidelberg is very like Salzburg, that is to say, as to its situation. The fallen-in doors and walls in teh castle, which are amazing to see, show the sad fruits of the late French wars. In the Church of the Holy Ghost, which is famous in history on account of the struggle between the Catholics and the Calvinists, which led the Electors to transfer their residence to Mannheim, our Wolfgang so astonished everyone by his playing on the organ that by order of the Town Magistrate his name was inscribed with full particulars on it as a perpetual remembrance, After receiving a present of fifteen louis d'or we came on from Schwetzingen through Worms to Mainz.

In Mannheim a French colonel presented a little ring to Nannerl an a pretty toothpick case to little Wolfgang."

from the Letters to Mozart and his family, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, London. 1985

A horse walked into a bar...

2008-06-05T21:32:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Musician's Bar, an unnoticed rusty door in the dark alleyway of todays everyday routine. Creative minds rest and find themselves surrounded by one subject of conversation in this perdition space: music.

Feel free to walk around, take a beer or two, or simply seat in a corner as you spy on other musicians minds. Write your ideas, doubts, experiences (good or bad) and knowledge you have acquired throughout your life as a musician, after all...who will understand but us?

Enjoy.