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.
Along with the usual terrestrial subjects, composers have not hesitated to look to the skies for inspiration, starting with our own moon. In 1920, Leoš Janáček took two popular Czech novels by Svatopluk Čech and created The Excursions of Mr.
Around Christmas time, opera houses around the world open their stages to special seasonal productions. And it doesn’t get more festive than watching your favorite Christmas ballet! Combining highly technical performance dance, choreography, music and lavish costumes and staging, the
Many passages in the Gospel according to Luke read like poetry. Among the most beautiful chapters is the story of Christ’s nativity and childhood. In Luke 1:46-55, the angel Gabriel has visited Mary and announced that she will bring forth
Depending on your location, there might already be a touch of frost in the air. Days might be getting shorter and nights much darker and longer. But whatever your geographic location, you will undoubtedly have noticed that Christmas is once
Gustav Holst is best known for a single work: The Planets. A unique symphonic work, it has little precedent in the orchestral literature. It might be compared to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition or even Elgar’s Engima Variations, but both
Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was one of the few composers to take on the Ave Maria multiple times. His own religious interests would have guided him to the Ave Maria text, and when he made it his own, he carries us
The comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of Shakespeare’s most popular works, which has spurred composers’ imaginations, is next in our ten-part series of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare was a young man when he wrote this fanciful tale—two couples that become
Nikolai Gogol, a dramatist, novelist and short story writer of Ukrainian ethnicity, is considered a seminal figure of Russian literary realism. His fundamental romantic sensibility is marvelously infused with strains of Surrealism and the grotesque. In fact, Gogol established a
