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 the early 20th century, ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev changed the way he put on ballets: he would now commission original scores. Not only that, but for one of his first ballet productions, it would be based on a new
We don’t often think of Beethoven as a composer for the ballet – as an original composer, that is, rather than having his music used in later times for ballet. In 1801, however, Salvatore Viganò (1769-1821) came to Vienna and
Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) started working on his Tre Preludi sopra melodie gregoriane (Three Preludes on Gregorian Melodies) in 1919, finishing them in 1921. His wife, Elisa Olivieri-Sangiacomo, had brought Gregorian chant to his attention.
One of the fundamental beliefs of Greek medicine, and one that extended up to the 19th century and the beginnings of modern medicine, was that of the four humours that regulated the body. The four humours were the four liquids
Renard, the Fox, is a long-established character in the folk tales of many countries. He’s reputed to be sly, be a creature cunning and trickery. Stravinsky took up the character in his comic masterpiece Renard, or, to give it its
One of the most prolific of modern composers, the American composer Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) seems to figure rarely on the modern concert stage. He wrote some 70 symphonies, and his surviving works number over 500 pieces.
The Austrian Emperor Joseph II was crazy about Italian opera buffa! And since he had the required resources and lots of taxpayer money, he simply went ahead and founded a new opera company in 1783. Since the Emperor took his
Oedipus Rex, subtitled an “Opera-Oratorio after Sophocles,” has been recognized as one of the high points of Stravinsky’s work, yet is rarely performed today. Sophocles’ drama tells of an entire family’s attempts to avoid their fate, while at the same
