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.
After grooming his conducting career under Hans von Bülow in Meiningen between October 1885 and April 1886, Richard Strauss was offered the post as third conductor at the Munich Hofoper. Before he took up his post in Munich, Strauss —
We’ve already looked at Modest Mussorgsky’s creation for piano, Pictures at an Exhibition. This best-known of Mussorgsky’s works had an afterlife as an orchestral work that has resulted in dozens of orchestrations. There are also arrangements for other performing forces
Carl Maria von Weber : Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 73, J. 114 The comparatively late addition of the clarinet family to our modern catalogue of musical instruments at the turn of the 18th-century immediately spawned countless
Famous musical sons frequently have famous musical fathers. And Richard Strauss is no exception. In his day, his father Franz was recognized as an important artistic personality. Foremost, he became a celebrated horn virtuoso, by “breathing soul into the unthankful
Like practically every composer working in the nineteenth century — regardless of their origin or nationality — Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904) was profoundly nationalist in many respects. In fact, he was expressively patriotic regarding Czech rights within the German dominated Habsburg
Modest Mussorgsky’s piano work Pictures at an Exhibition take us on a tour around an art gallery of the work of the Russian artist and architect Viktor Hartmann. The seemingly passive title might be clearer if we look at the
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Contemporary young composers of classical music are frequently taken to task for placing marketability and profit orientation above artistic integrity and compositional skill. In reality, however, placing the emphasis on the profitability of
Although Jean-Philippe Rameau had established a solid reputation as a teacher, organist and theorists, his musical fortune rested squarely on the shoulders of Alexandre-Jean-Joseph Le Riche de la Pouplinière. A leading patron of music in France, La Pouplinière was fabulously
