Composers Of Classical Music Quiz | Composers Mixture

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Born and raised on the manor, he became to be undoubtedly the foremost Polish composer of his time. He wrote a great deal of compositions for the piano, like his Mazurkas and Variations on a Polish theme. After his death Poland gave him a state funeral. What was his name?

Answer: Szymanowski

Karol Szymanowski died in 1937. Janacek was a Czech composer of the 19th century, and Sobieski was the Polish King, who defeated the Turks, who were beleagering Vienna in 1683. As for Chopin (yes! you were thinking about him, admit it!), who also wrote much for the piano, there was no Polish State in his time to honour him.

2. He lived in luxury, thanks to a mad king. He thought that music began with him. He thought himself a great philosopher, whereas a real great philosopher, once his friend, broke off relations with him. He stole the wife of one his admirers, who, amazingly, continued to admire him. The father of this wife was himself a great composer. He hated a lot of people, but especially the Jews. Well, obviously we are speaking about ...

Answer: Wagner

The mad king was Louis II of Bavaria, who probably saved him from destitution, and certainly made it possible for him to make and execute his music in very favourable circumstances. The philosopher, who had once been his friend but turned away from him in disgust, was Nietzsche.

The woman, Cosima, who devoted her whole life to him, was the former wife of the well-known conductor Hans von B�low, and the daughter of Franz Liszt and the French comtesse d'Agoult. Wagner had in his time, but also later on, many admirers. One of them was a German lance-corporal in the First World War. Everybody knows his name, therefore I think it superfluous to mention him.

3. Which composer suffered in his later years from a physical handicap, the same which afflicted a famous Spanish painter, a contemporary of his?

Answer: Beethoven

Both suffered from deafness in their later years. The Spanish painter was Goya, who, in my view, had some similarities shared with Beethoven (amongst those: a complicated and rather ambiguous relationship to the ideals of the French Revolution and Napoleon).

His deafness didn't prevent Goya from continuing painting. More amazingly, it did not prevent Beethoven to continue composing and conducting music...

4. Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey" used fragments of two classical composers. One, a German, became, in old age, a functionary in one of the cultural organizations of Hitler's Third Reich. The other was much younger, and still can be considered as a real modern composer, and was at any rate not German. Who was this second composer?

Answer: Gy�rg Ligeti

A Hungarian national, as his name might suggest.
Philip Glass is an American composer (in the tradition of the so-called minimal music), Olivier Messiaen a French one, but they have absolutely nothing to do with this famous film of Kubrick. Neither did Bela Bartok, the famous Hungarian composer. The chap whose opening of his orchestral work "Also sprach Zarathustra" was used by Kubrick in his film, was Richard Strauss; he certainly was very German and went so far as to accept the post of president of the "Reichsmusikkammer" in Hitler's Germany.

5. There were a lot of Russian composers who had to suffer from Stalin's harsh regime. One of them composed an opera. But during the first performance Stalin, who was present, withdrew from his seat, probably because he didn't like the modern sounds of this composer, or for other reasons. Of course this did have a negative influence on the existence of this composer, but at any rate he had the luck of not being shot or sent to a labour camp. Who was this composer?

Answer: Shostakovich

The opera in question was the "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" (yes,and NOT from Minsk!). Amazingly, none of the four candidates herewith-mentioned died before the execution squad or in a labour camp. Least amazingly so in the case of Rachmaninoff: he had fled from Russia before Stalin came to power, and never returned.

6. The death of another Russian composer went, at that time, nearly unnoticed, because he died on the same day as Josef Stalin- 5th March 1953. Who was that composer?

Answer: Prokofiev

Tchaikovsky had passed away before the Russian Revolution. Szymanowski was a Pole, Bartok a Hungarian. Prokofiev, like Rachmaninoff, had fled from Russia, but, unlike Rachmaninoff, he returned to Russia, then firmly under Stalin's control. Not a wise act, in my opinion.

7. Which composer created "El Sombrero de Tres Picos" ("The Three-cornered Hat") for monolinguistic Anglo-Saxons?

Answer: Manuel de Falla

Well, just Manuel de Falla, perhaps the foremost Spanish composer of the 20th century. Like those of his near-contemporaries Alb�niz and Granados, his compositions are very often based on Spanish folk music. By the way: Heitor Villa-Lobos, as his first name indicates, was not a Spaniard at all. Portuguese? Guess another time (no, neither Icelandic).

8. What had Robert Schumann and Gustav Mahler in common, in regard to their wives?

Answer: Both had musically gifted wives

Schumann's wife (Clara Schumann-Wieck) was the daughter of the man who first taught music to Schumann. Alma Mahler (not Alma Mater, hence) sacrificed first all pretense of becoming a renowned composer in admiration for her husband; but later on, she took her revenge in having affairs with Franz Werfel and other European celebrities, which leads me to the conclusion that she couldn't have been that ugly.

9. Guillaume de Machaut. Does this name mean anything to you? Then guess!

Answer: a French composer in Medieval times

Of course I made the other options up. What else could you expect? And of course, this thing with "L'Enfant J�sus" was meant as an indication towards Messiaen.

10. Let's not underestimate Dutch claims in international renown as to musical performances. Who is, beyond any doubt, the most important Dutch composer in the late Renaissance period?

Answer: Sweelinck

Yes, Jan Pietersz Sweelinck (1562 - 1621) became in short time a world celebrity. Don't ask me why, something with fugues, I believe.
All the other ones were internationally renown personalities in the first half of the 20th century; Badings as composer, Mengelberg as conductor. But I cannot be proud of them. Both, alas! collaborated with the German occupation authorities during WW II. Pijper, also a composer, certainly did not.

Source: Author Oblomov

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Composers Of Classical Music Trivia Quiz

Yes, some facts, and some gossip! Enjoy it! Anyway, I will try to make it make it easy, but don't blame me, if it is not quite that.....

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