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.
Giacomo Meyerbeer followed the tremendous financial and artistic success of Robert le diable with another blockbuster. Les Huguenots, five years in the making, dramatically staged the bloody events of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Paris in August of 1572,
On December 11, 1803, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), who might be considered one of the fullest embodiments of the Romantic Movement, was born in a small provincial town in the French Alps. In his memoirs, he detailed with great clarity and
In November 1901, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) first met Alma Schindler, Vienna’s most eligible Bachelorette. Stepdaughter of the painter Carl Moll, Alma took painting lessons from Gustav Klimt and composition lessons from Josef Labor and Alexander Zemlinsky, with whom she also
During his tenure in Magdeburg (1834-6) and Riga (1837-8), Richard Wagner rehearsed and conducted the opera La muette de Portici (The Mute Girl of Portici). Composed by Daniel François Esprit Auber to a libretto by Augustin Eugène Scribe — one
Here is a little trick question; see if you know the answer? What major composition by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had to wait 147 years after his death before it was performed again? The answer is truly amazing as it involves
By 1834, Richard Wagner was not only honing his musical and dramatic skills, he was also starting to express himself in a series of essays. In his article Die Deutsche Oper (German Opera), published in Laube’s Zeitung für die elegante
3 Poems by Henri Michaux Although Witold Lutosławski experimented with serial and post-serial techniques, he always found the results rather unsatisfactory. This was particularly true of compositions utilizing the human voice. Awkward intervals and highly complex rhythms demanded a high
Richard Wagner consistently downplayed the significance of his musical education. Undoubtedly, he was very keen to cultivate the notion of the untutored genius, just as Ludwig van Beethoven had done. However, as we saw in our last episode, his first
