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.
One of the most prolific Italian composers in the second quarter of the 19th Century, Gaetano Donizetti’s (1797-1848) reputation invariably stands or falls with his 70 works for the operatic stage. Robert Schumann spitefully called Donizetti “a composer of music
In the month before his friend Ferdinand Walcher quit Vienna for a posting in Venice, Schubert had been a torchbearer at Beethoven’s funeral. The death of his greatest inspiration, whom he had only been able to meet days before Beethoven’s
When Joseph Haydn arrived in England in January 1791, he found lodgings with the impresario Salomon in Great Pulteney Street, opposite the pianoforte shop of John Broadwood. At that time, Haydn was the most famous composer in Europe, and London
Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) is still known to this day for his ‘complicated and elaborate affairs with women’ – not bad for someone nearly 300 years old. He ran in the highest social circles in Europe, and in addition to the
The historiography of music primarily remembers Charles Gounod as the composer of Faust, Mireille and Roméo et Juliette. However, in his 12 total works for the operatic stage Gounod engages with the entire range of operatic types available in the
Charles Gounod unabashedly referred to Pauline Viardot as “The godmother of my career.” He first met her around a rather difficult time in his life. His brother Urbain had unexpectedly passed away, leaving behind a two-year-old child and a widow
Pauline Elisabeth Ottilie Luise zu Wied (1843– 1916), the Queen of Romania as the wife of King Carol I of Romania, led her literary life as the author Carmen Sylva. She wrote across a wide number of genres, including poems,
How do different composers approach the same text? In a recent review of a new biography of the poet and landscape artist Edward Lear, there was extensive discussion of the great love story Lear put into poetry. In its extensive
