Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Adrian Boult, the conductor, decided to perform five movements only of this composer's new work, on the grounds that with such a new style of music, "half an hour of it was as much as they could take in". Who had to wait another two years, until 1920, to hear all seven movements of his 'Planets Suite' performed?
2. Which conductor gave advance warning that he was "not a conductor of festival pieces" and that his '1812 Overture' would be "very loud and noisy, but [without] artistic merit, because I wrote it without warmth and without love".
3. Conductor Pierre Monteux later recalled: "One of my bass players... told me that many a gentleman's shiny top hat or soft fedora was ignominiously pulled by an opponent down over his eyes and ears, and canes were brandished like menacing implements of combat all over the theatre." Whose 1913 'Rite of Spring' became more of a 'Riot of Spring'?
4. "I was thus compelled to do patchwork... in no case had I opportunity to write as I wanted... Hence the brevity of the pieces." Which composer expressed his frustration about his new work, 'Peer Gynt'?
5. Before. "I hope that even these idiots will find something in it to like."
After. "Well, hearing it and clapping was one and the same. I was so delighted, I went right after the Sinfonie to the Palais Royal, bought myself a large ice, prayed a rosary as I had promised, and went home."
Which 22 year-old Austrian genius, despite evident contempt for the audience, was pleased by their response to their 'Paris Symphony'?
6. "The musicians were particularly angry because when a blunder was made through carelessness in the simplest, plainest place in the world, I stopped them suddenly, and loudly called out 'Once Again'! The public showed its enjoyment of this".
Which irritable composer made the orchestra have another go at getting his new 'Fifth Symphony' right? (Dot-dot-dot-dash!)
7. In 1721, this composer submitted a collection of six concertos as a resumé to accompany a job application. He didn't even receive an acknowledgement. Who never heard a performance of what is now acknowledged as one of his greatest works, the 'Brandenburg Concertos'?
8. "How trite, feeble and conventional the tunes are; how sentimental and vapid the harmonic treatment, under its disguise of fussy and futile counterpoint! Weep over the lifelessness of the melody and harmony, so derivative, so stale, so inexpressive!" Whose 'Rhapsody in Blue' got such a bad review from the New York Tribune's Lawrence Gilman, after its first public performance in 1924?
9. "The product of a deaf and aging composer". Whose Ninth 'Choral' Symphony gave no joy to the critics the first time that they heard it in 1824?
10. The Dublin Journal's review proclaimed that "the best judges allowed it to be the most finished piece of music. Words are wanting to express the exquisite delight it afforded to the admiring crowded audience. The sublime, the grand, and the tender, adapted to the most elevated, majestic and moving words, conspired to transport and charm the ravished heart and ear." Who composed 'Messiah'?
Source: Author
Radain
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor
agony before going online.
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