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.
A serious infection robbed Antonio de Cabezón (1510-1566) of his eyesight at a very early age. Blindness, however, could not prevent him from becoming a master of keyboard performance during the Spanish Renaissance. In addition, Cabezón was a pivotal transitional
Vivaldi and Bach never met! While the Italian master led the life of an international jetsetter, racing from one lucrative appointment to the next, Bach never strayed far away from home. Although Vivaldi came in contact with a variety of
Morton Feldman had strong opinions on everything, and he certainly wasn’t shy of voicing them. “Because I’m Jewish,” he wrote, “I do not identify with Western civilization music. Polyphony sucks! Our moral in music is nineteenth-century German music, but I
In 1876, Nadezhda von Meck—widow of a fabulously wealthy railroad proprietor—first encountered the music of Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky. This initial musical encounter quickly developed into a relationship of musical patronage that would last the better part of 14 years. Von
Between 1859 and 1862, Johannes Brahms eagerly participated in the musical and social life of his native city of Hamburg. Clearly, he was looking to establish the foundations for what he hoped would be a lifelong career in his hometown.
With his Cello Concerto in B minor, Op.104, Antonín Dvořák created one of the all-time greatest works in the genre. Yet curiously, Dvořák had written in 1865, “The cello is a beautiful instrument, but its place is in the orchestra
In Act II of Edvard Grieg’s music of the play Peer Gynt, our eponymous hero enters the hall of the mountain king. As the scene’s introduction describes: “There is a great crowd of troll courtiers, gnomes and goblins. The Troll
You may be surprised how many quotes come from the 1606 play King Lear, perhaps William Shakespeare’s greatest of tragedies—a work, which continues to electrify and has stirred composers Debussy, Shostakovich, and Berlioz as well as some popular music. The
