William Shakespeare’s mastery of metaphor, lyricism, cadence and phrasing resonates with musicians. His poetic output has so much musicality it’s no wonder that the works of Shakespeare have inspired composers. His influence on music for the last five hundred years
In essence
In 1937, Bohuslav Martinů visited the city of Prague to prepare for the premiere of his opera Julietta. During that visit, he met the highly talented composer Vítĕzslava Kaprálová, who had written her first two compositions for piano solo by
With the German Sixteenth Army strategically entrenched just thirty miles southeast of Leningrad, the city also known as St. Petersburg got ready for the most prolonged siege of World War II. Among the citizens of Leningrad was a thirty-four-year-old composer
What do you do if you’re stuck in the frozen north and are looking longingly at the sunny south where your wife is working? Well, you take a holiday and then, if you’re a composer, you write something that brings
The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin was very interested in relating color and sound. Scriabin had synesthesia – he actually heard in color; his friend Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov had the same sense. In 1910, Scriabin codified his sound and color senses and
Artists tend to find inspiration everywhere; in food, unrequited love, the beauty of nature or even in a textbook on physics! It so happened when Bohuslav Martinů met Albert Einstein in December 1943. Both men had been forced to escape
It has long been suspected that intense sexual relationships are an impediment to artistic creativity. Don’t take my word for it, just read what Frédéric Chopin had to say about the disastrous effect the Countess Delphina Potocka had on his
Ernest Hemingway once famously wrote, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” For