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.
We know the ‘barcarolle’ most famously from Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, but relatively few other composers picked up on it. In Offenbach’s opera, the barcarolle, ‘Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour’ (Beautiful night, oh night of love) opens Act III where
What started out as a 16th-century dance song was changed in the 19th century into a Christmas carol. In Thoinot Arbeau’s Orchésographie, a study of late Renaissance French dance, published in 1589, he gave instruction on social behaviour in the
In a longer take on the traditional carol, English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams made a ‘fantasia’ on three carols from southern England to create an atmospheric work for baritone, chorus, and orchestra. Given its premiere at the Three Choirs Festival
That wonderfully inventive composer and arranger Leroy Anderson (1908–1975) may be best known at Christmas time for his Sleigh Ride, with the neighing trumpet horses at the end. However, in 1950, he created a lovely arrangement for the Boston Pops
Arnold Bax (1886–1953) was born in south London and raised in north London, but in his early years sought to develop a link with Ireland. In 1902, after discovering the writing of Irish writer W.B. Yeats, Arnold and his brother
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 novel The Secret Garden is a story of redemption. An unloved and sickly child is left orphaned in British India and is adopted by her uncle in England. Out on the Yorkshire moors, Mary learns to
After winning the prestigious Prix de Rome, the young Charles Gounod (1818-1893) arrived in the Eternal City of Rome in 1840. After experiencing a spell of melancholy and homesickness, which he described “this kind of shroud in which I was
Anatoly Lyadov (1855–1914) was condemned with faint praise: ‘Most recollections of this kind, likeable man suggest that he could have achieved so much more if he had not been so idle.’ A case in point was his commission from Diaghilev.
