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.
When Francis Poulenc described the musical scene in wartime Paris to musicologist André Schaeffner, he singled out two composers who took notice of modern trends. One was unsurprisingly Olivier Messiaen, who was forging ahead with a “synthetic modal techniques within
A good many commentators consider Gabriel Fauré the “greatest master of French song.” He composed stylish and elegant melodies, etched with sleight-of hand urbanity. His music flows effortlessly, “magically combining Monet’s liquid cool with the warmth of a Pisarro landscape.”
It is probably not common knowledge that the composer Charles Gounod and Fanny Hensel—sister of Felix Mendelssohn—met in Rome in 1839. Gounod had just been awarded the Prix de Rome and a scholarship to spend 12 months in the Eternal
How many composers can rightfully claim to have single-handedly invented a genre? Not that many, in fact, but Felix Mendelssohn would certainly be a strong candidate with his “Songs without Words.” Although Mendelssohn relied on an existing tradition of writing
When we think of composers as creative inspirations, we don’t often think of them appearing as coffee cups. The English ceramic artist, Clarice Cliff (1899-1972), started working in the pottery business when she was just 13 and became one of
What does Spring mean to you – a season of soft breezes? A season of soft mud? The return of the birds? The return of liquid water? The return of the green trees? Flowers pushing up through the snow? Or
America is a land of immigrants and this is just as true of its classical music as its cities. Clarinetist and composer Derek Bermel opens his mind to the musical influences in the world around him and his ears to
One of the greatest stories of ancient times is the tale of how the Buddhist scriptures came to China. Immortalized in Journey to the West, in a 16th-century text attributed to Wu Cheng’en, the mighty foursome of The Monkey King