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.
Most of us are familiar with ‘Saint-Saens’ ‘Carnival of the Animals’ or Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and The Wolf’, two works in which animals are brought to life and characterised through imaginative instrumentation, melody and rhythm – from the shimmering, darting fish
Recently, I had a chat with a young colleague who suggested that the writing of biographies of great composers was a boring myth-making exercise practiced in a cultural galaxy far away and two centuries removed. She had a point about
“As time goes on most of my works will be more and more neglected” Max Bruch (1838-1929) is almost exclusively associated with his famed G-minor violin concerto. However, throughout his long and industrious musical career he composed well over 200
One of my all-time favorite childhood snacks was a corn-wheat-potato concoction with a slightly spicy paprika seasoning. Produced by a Viennese snack manufacturer, this product was branded “Zigeuner Räder” (Gypsy Wheels), and it was simply delicious. Against the current backdrop
How to you show the various facets of a great and complex city? In his Four Pictures from New York, composer Roberto Molinelli takes a range across a day, with a focus on the inherent music of the city. The
Carlo Gozzi’s play Turandot was first performed in Venice in 1762. It was a deliberate attempt to counter the new literary trend of bourgeois realism so prevalent in the works of Carlo Goldoni. When Friedrich Schiller fashioned his German translation,
He was proclaimed “Britain’s greatest living composer” in the Performing Right Gazette of 1929. That assessment was based on the overall number of performances of his works, and his apparent popularity caused a good deal of professional jealousy. Today, he
You might never have heard of the composer Franz von Suppé (1819-1895), but there is a very good chance that you know some of his music. Suppé composed tantalizing music mainly for the theater, in particular operettas, ballets and comedies.