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Read onto discover 15 composers who travelled the world, experiencing everything from remote desert canyons to thundering avalanches as inspiration for their art…<\/strong><\/p> Musicians have always travelled. It goes with the territory. But familiar as we might be with the wandering minstrel, strolling player, peripatetic music teacher, busker or touring band, composers are different as they have to sit still in order to write. Without an instrument, they have no excuse to travel except for holiday or escape.<\/p> Some composers travel, as Steve Reich says, not physically but \u2018in the mind\u2019. Bach<\/a><\/strong>, for instance, ventured nowhere distant but absorbed foreign styles by studying scores. His kind are not represented here, nor are those fugitive composers who became forced emigrants.<\/p> Our focus is on those who for inspiration have journeyed to exotic locations and distilled the experience into new works. We highlight those who have risked the physical dangers of travel to abandon themselves to the sensations of a fresh environment. All composers need an impetus to fill the blank page. The following do it out of Wanderlust\u2026 <\/p> Classical composers wrote idealised foreign-sounding music from their imagination. Think of Mozart<\/a><\/strong> and the Turks. Romantics like Mendelssohn<\/a><\/strong>, however, prioritised actual experience in the creative process. Books, paintings and nature were the main sources of inspiration. Most went south to the ruins of antiquity, but 19-year-old Felix, at Goethe\u2019s suggestion, went north on a gap-year jaunt to Scotland and into the wild Celtic culture beyond the Roman wall (his mum made him visit Sir Walter Scott, whose novels she loved). He crossed the Highlands, bathed in waterfalls, sketched mountains, suffered bagpipes and threw up on the Hebridean swell. Despite the queasiness, Fingal\u2019s Cave<\/em> came to him with clarity enough to notate and send home in a letter to sister Fanny<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>1. Composers who travelled the world… Felix Mendelssohn: Scotland<\/strong><\/h2>