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.
The last two months of the year seem crowded with festivities. In the US, Thanksgiving, the harvest festival, is simultaneously the start of the giving holiday season. American composer Paul Reale took indicative melodies for each holiday and used them
She was one of the most beautiful and desirable women of the Belle Epoque. She was romantically linked to Kaiser Wilhelm II, Prince Albert I of Monaco, King Edward VII, King of Serbia, and King Alfonso XIII of Spain, as
Keyboard instruments in the middle of the 18th century, including harpsichord, spinet, virginal and organ, had a rather small range of about five octaves. In addition, the keys were usually very narrow, much tighter than those for modern pianos. As
In 1932, Aaron Copland (1900–1990) was in Mexico, hanging out with the Mexican composer and conductor Carlos Chávez, when they visited a nightclub, El Salón México, that was later immortalised in Copland’s 1936 orchestral work of the same name. His
The turbulent years of World War I saw Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), who had extensively travelled throughout Europe and Africa, confined to his family’s estate in the Ukraine. Physically isolated from the rest of Europe, Szymanowski began a process of drawing
We all know the great Venetian opera librettist and poet Lorenzo da Ponte (1749-1838) from his collaboration on three of Mozart’s most celebrated operas, The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790). It is much
Arnold Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon, Op. 41, for string quartet, piano, and reciter, was completed on 12 June 1942. The reciter takes his text from Lord Byron and his Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, written in 1814. The occasion was the
We’ve looked at compositions dedicated to Johannes Brahms before, let’s put our focus on various chamber music pieces dedicated to Brahms this time. Heinrich von Herzogenberg: Piano Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 95 Heinrich von Herzogenberg: Piano Quartet in B-flat
