All in the Family Trivia Quiz

Answer: Bach

I have left out the name of the master composer of this family, Johann Sebastian.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is one of the most important baroque composers. He is remembered for his "St. Matthew Passion", over three hundred cantatas, and so on. Johann Sebastian considered his organ music "Das Wohltemperierte Klavier" as his masterpiece, and I'm convinced many of you would recognise the Toccata and Fugue in A Major from this collection.
Johann Sebastian married twice. His two sons from the first marriage (Wilhelm Friedemann, 1710-1784, and Carl Philip Emmanuel, 1714-1788) were talented composers. WF Bach created over 100 works for organ, clavichord and harpsichord. CPE Bach has left us over 60 keyboard sonatas and at least four symphonies, while his most original contribution to classical music may well be the "Thirty Tunes for Musical Clock".
Johann Sebastian's second marriage was blessed with three sons and three daughters. Johann Christoph Friedrich (1732-1795) was a prolific composer, as was Johann Christian (1735-1782). While most of the Bach family composed keyboard works, cantatas, sacred music and chamber music, Johann Christian also left us a number of operas (including "Temistocle" and "Amadis de Gaule").

Answer: Richard Strauss

Johann Baptist Strauss (1804-1849), also known as Johann Strauss Sr. or Johann Strauss I, was the pater familias of this family. He left us over 240 compositions, of which the "Radetzky March" is perhaps the best known. Other works of his include the "Täubern Waltz" and the "Champagner Galopp".
Johann Sr. had three sons who also composed multiple works.
Johann Jr. (1825-1899), also known as Johann II, was the most prolific of these sons, and his key compositions include "the Blue Danube", the "Kaiserswalzer", the "Tritsch Tratsch Polka", and the "Persian March". He is also known for his many operettas (including "Die Fledermaus" and "Der Zigeunerbaron") and even tried his hand at one opera ("Ritter Pazman") and one ballet ("Aschenbrödel", which translates to "Cinderella").
Josef Strauss (1827-1870) wrote over 280 musical compositions. His waltzes include "Dorfschwalben aus Osterreich" and "Hesperusbahnen".
Eduard Strauss (1835-1916) was the youngest son, and he too gave us over 280 pieces of music. Highlights of his productions are the waltz "Fesche Geister" and the polka "Alpenrose".
Eduard was the father of Johann III (1866-1939), who also left at least 30 compositions, and of Eduard II (1910-1969), a conductor of classical music.

Richard Strauss (1864-1939) was not a member of the Viennese Strauss dynasty. This German composer left us several operas (including "Der Rosenkavalier"), lieder (especially "Die vier letzte Lieder") and the tone poem "Also sprach Zarathustra".

Answer: Haydn

Joseph and Michael Haydn were both born in Rohrau, a small Austrian village near the Hungarian border. They started their musical careers as choir boys, but soon Joseph started composing.
Joseph left us (other than his symphonies) at least thirty concerti, fourteen masses, a dozen operas, about 100 compositions for piano (solo or trio), almost 70 string quartets, and the oratorio "Der Schöpfung".
Michael composed 41 or 42 symphonies, about a dozen concerti, twenty-odd serenades, over 160 dances, twenty-odd marches, over sixty other instrumental pieces, more than 45 masses and hundreds of sacred songs.
The other family names are famous victims of the popular superstition "the curse of the Ninth", which indicates the coincidence that many classical composers died before completing their tenth symphony. Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827) finished nine symphonies, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) died whilst working on his tenth symphony, and Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) stuck on nine symphonies.

Answer: Bohemia

Jan Jiri Benda, the father of the dynasty, has not left many musical compositions: he combined his work as musician with a job as weaver.
Franz created 17 symphonies, about 350 violin works and at least 15 works for other instrumentation. Franz' children Maria Carolina (1742-1820), Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich (1745-1814), Karl Hermann Heinrich (1748-1836) and Juliane (1752-1783) also played an instrument and composed music. Juliane married the German composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1815), and their daughter Louise Reichardt (1779-1826) was the fourth generation of composers.
Johann Georg is perhaps the most obscure of Jan Jiri's sons. I found no compositions by Johann Georg, nor his offspring.
Georg Anton Benda is known as an opera composer. His dozen operas includes "Ariane auf Naxos", an opera title which may have inspired the recording company Naxos. Georg Anton's eldest son Friedrich Ludwig (1750 or 1752-1792) was also a composer, and his other three children chose a singing career.
Joseph Benda was a composer, violinist and Kapellmeister. His son Johann Friedrich Ernst Benda (1749-1785) played the violin and the harpsichord. Joseph's grandson Johann Wilhelm Otto set some of Shakespeare's dramas to music.
The youngest of Jan Jiri's children, Anna Franziska Benda (1728-1781) was an operatic soprano and married the Czech composer Dismas Hatas (1724-1777).
None of the other regions (Catalonia, Tuscany, Normandy) are particularly noted for families with multiple classical composers. Most of the families involved in this quiz have their roots in Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Answer: Opera singer

To solve this question, you need to get the family name (Scarlatti) and the era in which this family dominated the musical scene in Naples (late Baroque).
In the late Baroque, women did not choose a career as a conductor nor as a drummer. Probably the first female conductors were the Swedish Elfrieda Andrée (1841-1929) and the Brazilian Chiquinha Gonzaga (1847-1935). Female drummers came even later: perhaps the first female drummer was Viola Smith (born 1912).
Kapellmeister (music director) is a function mostly associated with German speaking countries: Germany, Austria, Hungary. However, there were a few Italian maestri di cappella (the Italian equivalent of Kapellmeister), notably in Rome and in Forli (Northern Italy). The few maestri di cappella I found were all men.
Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) was a prolific composer who left us at least 70 operas, including "Mitridate Eupatore". His brother Francesco (1666-1741) left us one mass and two or three psalms.
Alessandro's sons were Domenico (1685-1757) and Pietro Filippo (1679-1750). Pietro Filippo left us a few cantatas and many keyboard toccatas. Pietro also composed one opera, but the music has been lost.
Domenico wrote at least a dozen operas and up to 555 keyboard sonatas.
Giuseppe may be a cousin of Alessandro's or Domenico's, but he may also be not related at all - sources are contradicting.
Rosa Scarlatti (1727-1775) was Alessandro's niece. She sang in Florence and especially at the Swedish Royal Court.

Answer: Robert Schumann

It was Robert Schumann (1810-1856) who married Clara Wieck (1819-1876) in 1840. As is still the habit in Germany, by this marriage Clara changed her surname into that of her husband's.
Clara performed for all the red herrings of this question.
Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) was a Polish composer, especially for piano and stringed instruments. Apart from his polonaises and mazurkas, his "Funeral March" is widely known.
Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was a Hungarian composer and pianist. Liszt left us at least 350 original compositions and about 650 variations on other composers' works.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was a German composer who completed at least 160 works, mostly for piano and violin. He frequently asked Clara Schumann to play the piano part, and Joseph Joachim (a friend of the Schumann family) to play the violin part.

Answer: Tchaikovsky

The original first names of the brothers in this question are Pyotr Ilyich and Modest Ilyich. The original title of the opera is "Pikovaya Dama" and it tells the story of a gambler who takes his life when the card he takes happens to be the "Queen of Spades" - the nickname of his dearly beloved.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was a prolific Russian composer. He is perhaps best known for his ballet suites "Swan Lake", "The Nutcracker" and "Sleeping Beauty", for his first piano concerto and for his opera "Eugene Onegin". Besides these works, he completed about ten other operas, at least seven symphonies, and other compositions - mainly for piano.
Pyotr's brother Modest (1850-1916) chose a literary career. He left us at least three theatre plays and at least six libretti for operas (composed by his brother Pyotr, or by Sergei Rachmaninoff). Modest also translated Shakespeare's sonnets into Russian. He also wrote a biography of Pyotr's and started an autobiography.
For the red herrings, I chose other composers with the first name Peter or Modest.
Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was one of the most influential Russian composers of the Nineteenth Century. His best known works are the opera "Boris Godunov", the musical poem "Night on Bald Mountain" and the piano suite "Pictures at an Exhibition".
Peter Thomas was born in Breslau (then German Silesia) in 1925. Between 1955 and 2006, he composed scores for (mostly German) movies and television series, especially some German movies based upon the books by Edgar Wallace.
Modest Altschuler (1873-1963) was a cello player, conductor and composer. His birthplace Mogilev was at that time situated in Russia, but nowadays in Belarus (over time the frontiers have shifted). Altschuler composed the score for half a dozen movies of the 1920s to 1940s.

Answer: Giselle

Adolphe Adam has left us more than thirty operas and vaudevilles, as well as a dozen ballets. His operatic masterpieces are "Le postillon de Longjumeau" and "Si j'étais roi", and his ballet "Giselle" (1841) still draws large audiences.
"Giselle" is about a peasant girl wooed by the noble Albrecht, who disguises himself as a peasant. When Albrecht's deception is discovered, Giselle dances herself to death. In the second act, her spirit joins a troupe of vindictive female ghosts, and they force Albrecht to dance till exhaustion (after which the ghosts are to drown Albrecht). Fortunately for Albrecht, he holds on till sunrise, so the power of the spirits is broken. Albrecht survives and Giselle's spirit returns happily to her grave.
"Méthode de piano du Conservatoire" is an impressive textbook by Jean-Louis Adam (1758-1848). It contains over 240 pages of sheet music for piano.
"Maria Veronika" is one of the three operas completed by Jeno Adam.
And "Der Ring des Nibelungen" is of course an opera cycle by ... Richard Wagner. I've included this composition as a red herring because the German bass-baritone Theo Adam (born 1926) recorded a fabulous role as Wotan in this opera cycle. Besides his several main roles in Wagner's operas, Theo Adam also gained fame in a number of Bach cantatas and in the oratorio "Elijah" by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

Answer: Mozart

Giving the first names of the son would obviously give away the correct answer. The son was Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus, but he is best known under his German first name Wolfgang or his Latinised first name Amadeus. The question is indeed all about the Mozart family.
Leopold Mozart (1717-1789) has not gained the musical fame his son would acquire. Leopold's best known work is the "Versuch einer gründliche Violinschule", a textbook to study the violin.
Maria Anna Mozart (1751-1829) and Wolfgang Amadeus (1756-1791) were the only two of Leopold's children who reached adulthood. Five siblings of theirs died young.
In 1762, Leopold took his family on a grand European tour, which took about five years. During this tour the family performed for the nobility in Germany, France, England, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart left us plenty of masterpieces: at least 56 symphonies, thirty-odd piano concertos, seventeen masses (plus one that was completed by his pupil), twenty-odd operas (including "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "Die Zauberflöte", which still are very popular), and so on.
Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) was a Polish conductor, well known for his performance in the Disney movie "Fantasia" (1940).
Maria Anna de Raschenau was a Viennese composer and Augustinian nun. Little is known about her life and works, even her date of birth or death are hard to find. Her oratorio "Le sacre visione di Santa Teresa" was first performed in 1703.
Maria Anna von Genzinger (1754-1793) was a Viennese music dilettante, and she befriended Joseph Haydn. One source suggests that there may have been some romantic affair between them, but this is uncertain.

Answer: Siegfried

Siegfried Wagner (1869-1930) was Richard's only son. His mother Cosima Liszt, daughter of the Hungarian composer Franz, married Richard after Siegfried's birth. Richard adopted also the two daughters Cosima had from the conductor Hans von Bülow: Isolde and Eva.
Siegfried Wagner is best known as the third director of the famous Bayreuth Festspiele, after his father Richard and his mother Cosima. The line of directors would continue with Siegfried's wife Winifred, his sons Wieland and Wolfgang, and Wolfgang's daughters Eva and Katharina. Needless to say the Bayreuth Festspiele are totally committed to the operas composed by Richard Wagner.
Siegfried Wagner left us at least fifteen completed operas, and two unfinished operas. The less obscure operas composed by Siegfried are "Der Schmied von Marienburg" and "Sonnenflammen".
The false options are also family members of Richard Wagner's. Albert Wagner (1799-1874) was Richard's eldest brother and was active as opera singer and stage director. Wieland Wagner (1917-1966) is, as I've already pointed out, one of Richard's grandsons, and Eugenio is the grandson of Wieland's brother Wolfgang.