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.
In 1935-36, the Mexican composer and conductor Carlos Chávez brought out his second symphony, the Sinfonía India. Written in 1935 while he was in New York, the symphony received its premiere in a radio broadcast with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra
Giacomo Meyerbeer’s five-act opera Robert le diable premiered at the Paris Opera on 21 November 1831. It was the first of four works for which Meyerbeer was to become one of the most prominent composers of opera at the time.
The song Misirlou first hit the airways in 1927 and went on to capture an international audience. From this recording, which found its popularity in the US in the Greek/Armenian diaspora of the 1920s, started to appear in recordings of
Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado (1886) wasn’t the first sign of the West’s fascination with the exotic East. The Paris Exposition of 1867 brought Japanese art to the world in its first national pavilion and artists including Vincent van Gogh
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known under his stage name “Molière,” is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language. He spent 13 years as an itinerant actor before he started to write his own plays. Combining elements
Ernest Hemingway never met a drink he didn’t like! In fact, he had a rather tumultuous lifelong affair with alcohol. Given such expertise, we should probably pay close attention to what this great novelist and journalist had to say about
Representing his crowning achievements as a composer, Couperin published four harpsichord books, containing roughly 220 pieces. In the preface to his 1713 collection he wrote, “In composing these pieces, I have always had an object in view, furnished by various
Entire academic careers have been built on situating the fictional character of Carmen—the heroine in Bizet’s opera—within a feminist context. The battlefield in this war between the sexes is Carmen’s body, and it is fought over by male roles attempting
