Animals in Classical Music Trivia Quiz

Answer: Actaeon

Believe it or not, but all these Greek characters appear in some operas.
Let's start with the unfortunate Actaeon, for he is the character we were looking for. There is no unanimity on the reason for his fate. Some sources say Actaeon witnessed Artemis taking a bath, others state that he boasted to be a better hunter than Artemis (goddess of the hunt).
Marc Antoine Charpentier (1634-1704) was a French opera composer. His best known work is the hymn "Te Deum", which is used as the opening tune to any Eurovision television broadcast.
Orpheus' music calmed all animals. His fate inspired composers such as Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) and Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880). Offenbach's opera "The Cat Turned into a Woman" quite fits the theme of this quiz.
Phaeton was the son of Apollo who once drove the sun chariot. Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) dedicated an opera to him.
Aeneas was one of the Trojan survivors to the Trojan war. Henry Purcell (1659-1695) composed an opera about Aeneas' meeting the Carthaginian queen Dido.

Answer: Johann Sebastian Bach

Georg Christian Schemelli assembled a songbook containing almost a thousand sacred songs. Sixty-nine of these songs have musical scores on which J.S. Bach has worked, and "Erwürgtes Lamm" is one of these songs. It is not clear whether Bach only wrote the bass part, or rearranged the complete musical score.
Classical musical buffs will certainly have recognised the abbreviation BWV as "Bach Werke Verzeignis", the most commonly used classification of all compositions ascribed to Johann Sebastian Bach.
According to the BWV, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) has left us at least 1080 works. Bach considered himself that his masterpiece was "Das Wohltemperierte Klavier" (BWV 846 - 893), a set of preludes and fugues in every possible key.
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was a German abbess. At least 70 of her musical compositions have survived the ages.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was a German pianist and composer. His "Lullaby" is quite famous.
Max Bruch (1838-1920) was a German composer, conductor and violinist.

Answer: Gioacchino Rossini

In this opera a young girl is accused of robbery. She is acquitted when one finds a spoon and a silver coin in a magpie's nest.
To call a magpie a common thief is a bit harsh. But of course this bird would occasionally pick up some unattended shiny objects to embellish its nest.
Rossini(1792-1868) started his career in 1810 and created at least 50 operas in 21 years. I'll just mention two of his masterpieces: "The Barber of Sevilla" and "William Tell".
Those of you who are familiar with the timetable of the listed composers will immediately have picked the correct answer. Indeed: the Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), the German opera composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and the French opera composer Georges Bizet (1838-1875) all started their careers after 1825.
Because some of you insist, I'll give some titles for the operas composed by Verdi ("Aida"), Wagner ("Der Ring des Nibelungen") and Bizet ("Carmen").

Answer: Trout

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) was a prolific Austrian composer. Besides nine symphonies, he left us over 500 songs and some chamber music. The Piano Quintet, popularly named "Die Forelle" ("The Trout"), is played on piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass.
The other animals have also given their names to classical compositions.
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) composed a ballet "Le Rossignol" ("The Nightingale").
Jules Massenet (1842-1912) left us theatre music for the Victorien Sardou's play titled "Le Crocodile". Surely you don't need a translation for this title.
And Vincenzo de Crescenzo (1875-1964) has created music and lyrics to the popular tune "Rondine al Nido" ("Swallow on the Nest").

Answer: Johann Strauss II

The title of the operetta "Die Fledermaus" would be translated into English as "The Bat". It relates how the notary Falke has his revenge on the nobleman Gabriel von Eisenstein. Once after a costumed ball, Eisenstein had left a drunk Falke disguised as a bat in the town square, making him into the laughing stock of that year. Now Falke gets even with Eisenstein by throwing a costumed ball himself. After a long night all of the drunken guests land in prison.
This operetta was composed by Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), nicknamed "The Waltz King". Other masterpieces of his are "The Blue Danube" and "The Tritsch-Tratsch Polka".
Mikis Theodorakis (born 1925) is a Greek composer, best known for the music to the movie "Zorba the Greek". His tune "Ippes" ("Horses") might fit this quiz.
George Gershwin (1898-1937) is the American composer of (among other works) the opera "Porgy and Bess" and "Rhapsody in Blue".
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist, most famous for the theatre music "Peer Gynt".

Answer: The swan

All these are included in "Carnaval des Animaux" (1886), as well as "The Aquarium", "Hens and Roosters", "The Aviary" and "Wild Asses". In all, the suite "Carnaval des Animaux" has fourteen movements, of which at least eleven are named after animals.
"The Swan", performed on two pianos and one cello, is the most famous of these movements. It was rearranged to the ballet movement "The Dying Swan", a signature piece for Anna Pavlova.
"The Elephant" is a movement for piano and double-bass. "Tortoises" is played on piano and strings. "Kangaroos" is intended for two pianos. In each of this movements, the character of the portrayed animal will show through the music.
Saint-Saens (1835 -1921) was a French organist, pianist and composer. Other of his famous works include "Dance macabre" and "Samson and Delilah".

Answer: Flight of the Bumble Bee

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) was a Russian opera composer. Some of his works are "The Girl from Pskov" and "Sadko".
His opera "Tsar Saltan" is based upon a poem by Alexander Pushkin. When the Tsar chooses to marry the youngest of three sisters, while appointing the others as a cook and a weaver, the eldest sisters naturally become jealous. The eldest sisters throw the Tsarina and her son into sea. But the son meets some enchanted swan princes and takes revenge in different disguises, one of which is the famous bumble bee.
"Puss in Boots" is a fragment from the second ballet by Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), named "Sleeping Beauty". In this fragment Puss in Boots congratulates Sleeping Beauty on her marriage to the Prince.
"White Raven" is a composition by Philip Glass (born 1937).
"The Goose of Cairo" is an opera by the notorious composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).

Answer: Sergei Prokofiev

All the people listed are Russian composers.
"Peter and the Wolf" is a short orchestral composition. The story (told by a narrator, while the other characters are played by typical instruments) relates how a young boy catches a wolf. Prokofiev (1891-1953) wrote the text and the music to this work. Although this opus received only a lukewarm welcome on the first night, it is now considered Prokofiev's prime masterpiece.
Glinka (1804-1857) is best known for his opera "Ruslan and Ludmila".
Mussorgski (1839-1881) composed (among others) the opera "Boris Godunov" and the piano suite "Pictures at an Exhibition".
Cui (1835-1918) has left us all kinds of compositions. The connoisseurs of Russian music will perhaps be familiar with operas as "William Ratcliff" or "Feast in Time of Plague". His opera "Puss in Boots" would fit in the theme of the present quiz.
Incidentally, I've used the English translation of the titles of all these works to avoid confusing my spell checker.

Answer: Darius Milhaud

The surrealist story "Le boeuf sur le toit" is set in a speakeasy during Prohibition. When a police officer enters the club and finds everyone enjoying alcoholic beverages, the bartender tries first a cover-up in redesigning the bar into a milk saloon. As this is of no avail, the bartender then beheads the police officer and one of the ladies parades the officer's head in a parody on Salome with the head of John the Baptist.
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) is the composer we were looking for. Other masterpieces of his are "La création du monde" and "Saudades do Brasil". He was one of the members of "Les Six", a group of young composers working in Paris who knew each other and sometimes put in a joint effort. Milhaud composed at least fourteen operas, including "David" and "Christophe Colomb".
Kurt Weill (1900-1950) was a German-Jewish composer. When Adolf Hitler came to power, Weill fled Germany and ended up finally in the USA. Weill's best known composition is "Die Dreigroschenoper", for a play written by Bertolt Brecht. More fit for this quiz is Weill's operetta "Die Kuhhandel" ("The Cow Trade").
Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) was one of the first French opera composers. His masterpieces include dramas such as "Proserpine" and "Acis et Galathée".
Jean Renoir (1894-1979) was not a composer. This Frenchman won international fame as a movie director and producer. I'll name just two titles of his: "La grande illusion" (1937) and "Les règles du jeu" (1939).

Answer: Cats

The answer would probably be a giveaway if I had mentioned the song "Memory" sung by Grizabella.
This musical was set to music by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber (born 1948). The lyrics are based upon the poems by T.S. Eliot.
During the storyline of this musical, several cats present themselves to the audience. Then Old Deuteronomy chooses the one and only cat that can go to live in the "Heavyside Layer".