One of my great Russian hero composer-songwriters is Vladimir Vysotsky - he was a great actor, too.
Truffaut, who takes the lead role, makes felicitous additions: he sets the story in the long wake of the First World War, when millions still grieved for their lost loved ones; he introduces a child, a deaf-mute; and he makes the hero a composer of obituaries.
Yet Berlioz, in presenting his take on "The Aeneid," with his own libretto, pays homage to his composer hero Gluck.
Sooner or later, they come up against the disappointing realization that modern American culture has no space for a composer hero.
Later that same morning, another dilemma: a work by another musical hero, the Danish composer Carl Nielsen, written in response to the sinking of the Titanic.
In a strange twist, Berg's own life took on a Schrekerian tinge: like the composer hero of "Der Ferne Klang," he died with the last act of his opera unfinished.
The film broke a number of barriers: the hero, a young composer and musician in a rock band, played the sort of lively music that would not be allowed in a real-life concert in Iran.
What about the achievements of Soviet science, of the spectacular space flight of Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, of the art and music of cultural heroes like the composer Dimitri Shostakovich".
The orchestration shifts, the stage clears, and for four glorious minutes composer and hero pour their hearts out in one of the most moving passages Britten ever wrote.
Splendidly done by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Philadelphia Singers Chorale, six solo voices, all under Sir Simon Rattle, Schoenberg's 23-part, 2 1/2-hour piece reveled in sheer size and seethed with the same raw elements that the composer's hero had turned loose on the world a generation before.
I've hero-worshipped the French composer Erik Satie for many years.
