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.
Medical research has clearly shown that infants are active listeners! Their attention is selectively drawn to particular musical genres, and to particular performing styles associated with maternal singing. Regardless of culture and living environment, infants reveal a clear preference for
We are most familiar with a ‘cantata’ as a sacred work, usually on a subject from the Bible, that’s written for vocalists. For Béla Bartók to write a work entitled ‘Cantata Profana’ is to write an oxymoron. Yet, if we
When Frédéric Chopin graduated from High School his final report stated, “Chopin F., third year student, exceptional talent, musical genius.” His hometown of Warsaw, however, had long known about this gifted musical prodigy, who was dubbed “a second Wolfgang Amadeus
On her wedding night, the heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune climbed atop an armoire armed with an umbrella and told the groom “I am going to kill you if you come near me!” Winnaretta Singer had married Prince
Albert Einstein once famously remarked “Mozart’s music is so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master.” In the end, both Einstein and Mozart were successful in untangling the complexities
The initial meeting between Winnaretta Singer aka Princesse de Polignac and Maurice Ravel was described as “an audacious feat of social climbing” in 1899. The Prince and Princess de Polignac had established a salon in Paris, and the music room
Her father was the American sewing-machine inventor Isaac Merritt Singer, and her mother the Parisian model Isabelle Boyer. Winnaretta was born in New York in 1865, and her 14th birthday present was a private performance of the Beethoven Op. 131
Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) was supremely gifted, intellectually and musically. Even before reaching his teenage years, he spoke fluent French, German and Russian, and his interest in music and philosophy was insatiable. Receiving instructions from Gustav Neuhaus, Karol read Schopenhauer and
