“(…) Posing as the doctor to the King of England and the Pope, this charlatan had no real expertise but was yet recommended to two composers. (…)”

What I generally like to have is a direction, or a sort of fil rouge of any kind. It can be a musical motive, or an instrumentation that I particularly like or a text (which might also then not be used, but be there as a sub-text for me). What I generally do is that I start writing and often I feel stuck because my music indicates a pulse and a time very clearly, which I don’t really like often. So what I do, and most of the times helps me out, is to write a choral without using the piano. Just from the skeleton idea of a harmonic or melodic 3/4 voice piano part, I start imagining that it will be sung by 4 voices from Bach’s time. That often gets me out of the "stuck mode”.

What I like to have, is a little notebook with music paper where I write down small ideas, that seem insignificant, and then after a while I open it and often one of the many ideas pops out and feels right to be used.