Unconscious bursts of creativity that engender significant artistic endeavors are not necessarily inspired by passionate romantic love alone. Greek mythology believed that this kind of stimulus came from nine muses, the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. Muses were long considered the source of knowledge embodied in poetry, lyric songs and ancient myths. Throughout the history of Western art, artists, writers and musicians have prayed to the muses, or alternately, drawn inspiration from personified muses that conceptually reside beyond the borders of earthly love. True to life, however, composer inspiration has emerged from the entire spectrums of existence and being. Nature has always played a decidedly important role in the inspiration of various classical composers, as did exotic cities, landscapes or rituals. Composer inspiration is also found in poetry, the visual arts, and mythological stories and tales. Artistic, historical or cultural expressions of the past are just as inspirational as is the everyday: the third Punic War or the contrapuntal mastery of Bach is inspirationally just as relevant as are the virulent bat and camel. Composer inspiration is delightfully drawn from heroes and villains, scientific advances, a pet, or something as mundane as a hangover. Discover what fires the imagination of people who never stop asking questions.
Winter has inspired some of the most evocative music in the solo piano repertoire. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, composers often turned to the piano to capture winter’s many moods: biting wind, falling snow, frozen landscapes, and the
Beethoven’s violin sonatas and concerto exist because of men he alternately charmed and infuriated. One was dedicated to a man he called incomprehensible and never played. Another had an illness and physical limitations reflected in the sonata Beethoven wrote for
These fourteen cello scores trace not just the career of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich: they trace his life. His working relationships with composers began when he was barely out of his teens, immediately after the Communist Party’s infamous 1948 denunciation of
Not all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas had dedications, but those that did were deeply meaningful. Some recipients were teachers, like Joseph Haydn. Others were patrons whose stipends kept Beethoven fed and housed, or aristocratic students he grew close to over
Ernest Chausson (1855–1899) studied under the composers Jules Massenet and César Franck at the Paris Conservatoire from 1879 through 1883, ultimately studying only with Franck. He had a keen appreciation for the innovations of the day, both French and German
A new recording on Naxos Records features two works by Kip Winger, better known as a bassist with Alice Cooper and for forming his own band, Winger, which is still performing. He studied classical music with Richard Danielpour, Michael Kurek,
Readers have kindly written in with their contributions to our earlier pieces on Bach’s Influence on Jazz. Let’s explore some more! The Modern Jazz Quartet The Modern Jazz Quartet’s 1973 album Blues on Bach takes Bach melodies to create works
Good ‘ol Bach – continuous beat, flowing tunes, and jazz? Let’s look at his influence not on his contemporaries, not on his students, but on 20th-century composers. Jazz gives us the opportunity to swing a solid beat. And that beat
