music
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Talking about failure, success, auditions, concerts, marks and everything that I wish didn’t define me
I don’t keep it much of a secret that I’ve suffered with performance anxiety for the whole of my life as a musician, just as most of us do. It comes in peaks and troughs as I feel my mind drifts between a space of acceptance and joy to a place of dread, judgment and…
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A Commitment to Sound 1- Motivated by What?
This series shows the ups and downs of me having made a commitment to sound. I have spent many years studying the cello, but very little time has been dedicated to the sound I create and how I create it. Because of this I want to make sound, and not success, my new obsession. The…
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A Commitment to Sound
It has been unnervingly easy to go about living, practicing and exploring music without really listening to what I create. I have become complacent, getting by with what is ‘good enough’ and what might sound impressive. My practice has become a frustrating mass of confusion towards a foggy goal of ‘perfect’. Unaware of what I…
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A New Operatic Dogma- How Gluck changed the ‘ridiculous and wearisome’
Opera, Italian for ‘work’, is an art form over 400 years old. Inspired by mythology, history, folk stories and politics, composers have turned to writing operas as an outlet of creativity, but the stories behind opera’s broad and fascinating history are incredibly thought provoking in themselves. The fifth week of our opera history course at…
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Our World From Up Here
Our world from up here Vast scenes below then hypnotic Sunsets far and wide And warm until memories Like a canal flow gliding Open to us and run free- Alive in the clouds but Below the moon still Glowing black like darkened Emotion pouring to heal And your voice to seal Echoed cries from their…
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Talking About Performance Anxiety
Having started the cello much later to most other musicians, I found myself battling the fear of performing at the same time as facing an insecure self-image that often comes with being a 12 year old. I believe this made the issue far greater than it would’ve been, had I been performing at an earlier…
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Larsen Magnacore Cello String Review
Strings are to a musician like ballet shoes are to a dancer. Just as each dancer is very different and requires different size and softness of shoes, every cello is vastly different and requires different strings to compliment the resonance of the instrument. My cello has an especially bright and powerful quality, especially on…
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Glass Half Gone
The World demands your deliberate artifice But right in the now and hear You’re Walking alone, along a lonely Love burnt grey and dust of stars Streaming ankle level and below Beneath and between your fears own me Dawn cracking down on a darkened day Alive about a sunbeam, once in May Living a lie,…
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Tennis and musical injury- the injustice
Following a hectic final term at school, my return home last Friday was greeted with the excitement of both the women and men’s Wimbledon finals. Throughout the whole of the tournament this year, I couldn’t help but compare the lives of tennis players with our lives as musicians, and how tennis may be revealing…
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“Play it like something you hear down by the river”
I believe it is now widely accepted, or at least should be, that the soul of great music and a great artist is not solely created in the practice room. We use the practice room as a place to learn how to interpret a composers emotions though our instruments. The practice room is used to…
Hattie Butterworth 