Читать книгу The Nightmare - Ларс Кеплер, Lars Kepler - Страница 7
ОглавлениеThe word ‘music’ actually refers to the artistry of the muses, and comes from the Greek myth of the nine muses. All nine were the daughters of the great god Zeus and the titan Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. The muse of music itself, Euterpe, is usually depicted with a double-flute between her lips, and her name means ‘bringer of joy’.
The talent known as musicality has no generally accepted definition. There are people who lack the ability to discern shifting frequencies of notes, and there are people who are born with an extensive musical memory and the sort of perfectly attuned hearing that enables them to identify any given note without any points of reference whatsoever.
Through the ages a number of exceptionally talented musical geniuses have emerged, some of whom have become extremely famous, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who toured the courts of Europe from the age of six, and Ludwig van Beethoven, who composed many of his greatest works after he had become totally deaf.
The legendary Nicolò Paganini was born in 1782 in the Italian city of Genoa. He was a self-taught violinist and composer. To this day there have been very few violinists capable of playing Paganini’s fast, complicated compositions. Up to his death Paganini was pursued by rumours that he had only acquired his unique talent by signing a contract with the devil.