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.
Located nearly 1,400 km northwest of Denmark, the Faroe Islands were first under Norwegian rule in the 11th century and under Danish rule in the 16th century. During the 20th century, the language of the islands gradually grew away from
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) published his well-known Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, in 1741, in the 4th part of his Clavier-Übung (collection of keyboard music). Its creation story, as told by Bach’s biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749–1818), wrote that Count Hermann
Penelope was the queen of Ithaca and the wife of Odysseus. She and her son, Telemachus, who was just born at Odysseus’ departure for the battlefield of Troy, wait patiently for Ulysses’ return. While he’s away for 10 years at
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) took the fairy-tale play by Alexander Ostrovsky as the basis for his incidental music production of The Snow Maiden. The Snow Maiden emerges from the forest at exactly the wrong time: winter is fading, and spring
Winter sports are so different from summer sports – you can fly through the air on your skies, slide down the icy hill on your sledge, or just silently glide through the snowy forest on your cross-country skies. Let’s see
As you can easily tell from my first name Hermione, my parents are huge fans of fantasy adventures. I also much liked the Harry Potter series, but for me personally, the Lord of the Rings is one of the greatest
Considered a cultural icon of Russia, a sleigh drawn by three horses abreast, the troika. The unusual aspect is that the three horses are next to each other, abreast, with the middle horse trotting and the outside horses cantering. At
Max Bruch: Symphony No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 28 It has been said that Johannes Brahms and Max Bruch (1838-1920) enjoyed a long but superficially cordial relationship. Actually, Bruch considers Brahms “an arrogant and disagreeable man, liable to react
