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.
Transcriptions of Bach’s Famous Repertoire — Goldberg Variations Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, hold a special place in music history. Written for Count Kaiserlingk, former Russian ambassador to the court of Saxony, who needed something for those sleepness nights when
We look up at the orb that hangs in our sky and know that it’s been an inspiration for artists of all sorts: authors, poets, painters, and composers. It can be an inspiration for love and for madness – lunacy,
Leonardo Vinci (1690-1730), not to be confused with his more famous countryman Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), was an Italian opera composer active in the city of Naples. He became an overnight success at age 29 with his comic opera in
As a young critic, Robert Schumann famously introduced Frédéric Chopin to European audiences with the words, “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!” In a later review on the Chopin piano concertos, Schumann suggested, “If the autonomous, mighty monarch of the North
Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was one of the most influential figures in the history of classical music. Composer, performer, educator, and ethnomusicologist, Bartók’s powerfully shaped the way subsequent generations approached and listened to music. Born near the Hungarian city of Nagyszentmiklós,
One of the essential things about music is how it’s so hard to pin down, so hard to fix in time, and so hard to be definitive about. In looking at cadenzas, those virtuosic flourishes that appear in concertos, we
The strong public nationalism in America is often a puzzle to visitors – the national flags hanging on people’s houses, the T-shirts that declare one’s love for country, etc. are highly unusual elsewhere. At most, you might have things in
One of the most exciting moments in a concerto is when the orchestra, poised on an incomplete cadence, ceases to play and lets the soloist loose. The soloist gathers together all the melodic strings into one exciting moment of improvisation
