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.
Victor Hugo’s 1829 poetry collection, Les Orientales, was inspired by the Greek War of Independence, where, between 1821 and 1829, the Greeks worked to overthrow the Ottoman Empire. Assisted by the British, the French, and the Russians, the Greeks overthrew
Charles-Valentin Alkan In our exploration of musical double takes—composers who wrote multiple sets of preludes and/or fugues in all major and minor keys—we have to honour one of the most enigmatic composers in the history of music. Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888)
Mendelssohn was only 26 when he took up his appointment as Director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1835. Mendelssohn was internationally famous, and Schumann, who had just founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, was still struggling to find his way
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) and his sister Fanny were born into a prosperous and prominent Jewish family. Extraordinarily talented, they grew up in a highly intellectual environment. Visitors to the salon organized by their parents included the poets Heinrich Heine and
What do Kismet, Song of Norway, Gypsy Lady, and The Great Waltz all have in common? They were all productions using the music of long-dead composers with updated lyrics. Robert Wright (1914-2005) worked with George Forrest (1915-1999) to bring classical
Johann Sebastian Bach was one of the first composers to contemplate a collection of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys. However, the concept of basing a musical collection on a theoretical system of scales/harmonies was not
In all, Leonard Bernstein composed twenty-nine musical vignettes that he published in four collections called Anniversaries. The final set, containing thirteen pieces, was written between 1964 and 1988, and published as 13 Anniversaries in 1989. As in his previous attempts,
Basque composer Jesús Arámbarri (1902-1960) used both his Spanish and Basque links in his music. On one hand, the Spanish tradition of composers such as Felipe Pedrell, and Isaac Albéniz were valuable, but the addition of the music of his
