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 1944, John Cage wrote a work for prepared piano that reached beyond the sound into emotion. The Perilous Night takes its title from Arthurian legend, where the knight Gawain, in the Marvelous Castel, encounters a bed on ruby wheels
Of all the water animals, the frog appears most often in music. Most of the time it’s for its repetitive and rhythmic sound, but sometimes, particularly in vocal music, as a representative of various human characteristics, most often envy of
For American composer Paul Reale—born in 1943 in New Jersey—the “most significant element which is under the control of the composer is time. By controlling the way the listener perceives time, a well-written musical composition garners the full attention of
American author Ann Patchett’s 2001 book Bel Canto, which used the 1996-97 Japanese Embassy Hostage Crisis in Lima, Peru, as its inspiration, was, in turn, inspiration for American composer Elena Ruehr (b. 1963) to write her String Quartet No. 5,
The elements of nature frequently are represented in music: water, snow, and, of course, wind. We looked at a number of different works that might, literally, blow us away. We never see the wind but only the effect of the
We looked at how the Dies Irae melody was used in music from the 18th to the 21st centuries. Now let’s look at how the Dies Irae text was used. Composers didn’t always choose to use the melody regularly associated
Operatic Works Inspired by the Moon and Space Last year, I shared some music inspired by the moon to celebrate the moon festival. This year, I have compiled a collection of operatic works inspired by the moon and space. Il
The lawyer Nikolay Kondratyev (1832-1887) was first introduced to Tchaikovsky in 1864 at the estate of Prince Aleksey Golitsyn. They became fast friends in 1870, when the Kondratyev family moved to Moscow for the winter. Tchaikovsky was a frequent guest
