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.
Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) was not only one of the greatest violinists of his time, but he was also a composer, conductor, and teacher. And what is more, great composers inspired him, and in turn, his exceptional artistry inspired them to
In the summer of 1680, Henry Purcell (1659-1695) started to experiment with an older musical form, the fantasia. The basic structure of a fantasia is the construction of several musical phrases, or points, each of which is given a contrapuntal
Sigismond Thalberg (1812-1871) devised one of the most illustrious and financially successful careers the world of music had ever seen. He was one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of his day, and he performed almost exclusively his own compositions based
200 years ago this month, on 9 April 1821, Charles-Pierre Baudelaire was born in Paris. Roughly thirty years later, his Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) was considered the most important and influential poetry collection published in all
80 years ago, on 13 January 1941, the Irish author, novelist and poet James Joyce died in Zürich, Switzerland. One of the most influential and innovative writers of the 20th century, “his innovative language, use of dialogue, characteristic modernist forms,
Britten’s Spring Symphony, completed in 1949, is a unique song-symphony. Not with just one movement set to words, as in Beethoven’s Ninth, but with English texts throughout. Most of the sources are from the 16th and 17th century, but a
Igor Stravinsky had a vast appetite for literature. That appetite basically reflected his constant desire for learning, exploring, and for making new discoveries. Forced into exile by World War I, Stravinsky initially found inspiration in Russian folklore. A collection of
Charles Gounod took the first prelude of Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier and started noodling around on it, and his piano teacher, Pierre Zimmerman, with whom he was studying at the Paris Conservatoire, took note of it. J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier,
