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.
The English rock band The Beatles, formed in Liverpool in 1960, is widely considered the most influential band of all time. Led by songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the band was part of 1960s counterculture and inspired an international fan frenzy
In the last days of WWII, German composer Richard Strauss saw the world he knew in tatters around him. Germany was occupied by foreign powers, the great monuments of German culture had been destroyed – its opera houses and theatres,
Italian cellist Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) made his home in Vienna in 1806. In 1813 he played in the famous performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony during a gala event, which saw the participation of many of Vienna’s most celebrated musicians, including
The German symbolist poet Stefan George (1868-1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) probably never met – as one commentator said, ‘One reason could be that as charismatic leaders of cults, they too much resembled each other.’ In Paris in 1889, Stefan
“The Last Rose of Summer” reached a world audience as part of the romantic opera Martha by Friedrich von Flotow (1812-1883), premiered in Vienna on 25 November 1847. Adapted from a ballet to a story by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges,
In his 1928 work Gli uccelli (The Birds), Ottorino Respighi brings us classical European birds, using music from earlier times as his inspiration. The core of the work is a selection from 5 seventeenth- and eighteenth-century composers’ compositions for harpsichord
As summer is stormily giving way to autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, and the next corona lockdown is just around the corner, we still fondly remember those warm and carefree summer days. The passing of the seasons and a deep
J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould) We were thinking about Bach’s Goldberg Variations the other evening. Written, as related by Bach’s biographer Johann Forkel, for the ill and often sleepless Count Kaiserling, who wished for some night music that was
