By all accounts, Peter Tchaikovsky was an emotionally troubled man. He suffered from nervous depression, which was heightened by the constant social presssure to hide his homosexuality. The composer had affairs with women and even married Antonina Miliukova -- with disastrous emotional effects to bot

Dark, Dramatic, Elegant, Grand, Lush, Psychological, Romantic music, Voluminous

Gaudi believed that the straight line belonged to man and the curved line to God. His work has been called "impassioned, savage, and poetical to the point of frenzy." The most prestigious figure in Catalan architecture, his stature is due to the originality and audacity of his technical solutions, hi

Art nouveau architecture, Dreamy, Fantastic, Lush, Psychedelic, Quirky, Round, Surreal, Surrealist literature

Just before his death in 1991, Miles Davis teamed up with rapper Easy Mo Bee to make a jazz/hip-hop album called "Doo Bop." This wasn't the first time Davis had done something utterly new -- his entire career was devoted to jazz-faring exploration. Playing with such supernovae as Charles Mingus

Bebop, Classical, Composed, Cool, Cool jazz, Electronic, Elegant, Expansive, Fusion, Fuzzy, Hard bop/post-bop, Improvised, Intimate, Loose, Lush, Mathematical, Minimal, Open-ended, Quiet, Sexy, Sincere, Spare, Subtle, Trippy

"I began writing in March of 1978, prodded by a seminal idea: I felt like poisoning a monk." This dark inspiration led Umberto Eco to begin his career as novelist at the somewhat tardy age of 46. Already established as one of the world's leading semioticians, a lecturer in constant demand, and a thin

Dense, Layered, Lush, Mathematical, Postmodern fiction, Semiotics