206 Fun Facts About Classical Music

Which Bach work thunders through the opening minutes of Disney's 1940 film Fantasia?

Toccata and Fugue in D minor is an organ piece, but Fantasia plays it in an orchestral arrangement by the film's conductor, Leopold Stokowski; its opening bars are also a staple of horror films.

Which musical form pits a virtuoso soloist against an orchestra, usually with a cadenza for showing off?

Concerto soloists once improvised the cadenza on the spot; Beethoven broke with the habit in his last piano concerto, writing the passage out and forbidding the pianist to add one.

Which instrument is the highest-pitched regular member of the orchestra's brass section?

The natural trumpet of the Baroque era had no valves and could sound only the notes of its harmonic series, which is why its parts climb so high: up there the notes lie close enough together to play a tune.

Which Beethoven work opens with the four-note 'fate knocking at the door' motif, da-da-da-DUM?

Symphony No. 5's short-short-short-long is Morse code for V, so the BBC used it, played on drums, to open wartime broadcasts to occupied Europe; it premiered in 1808 on the same night as the Sixth.

The Classical era turned from the Baroque's interweaving voices toward which texture, one melody supported by chords?

Homophony, one tune over a chordal accompaniment, suited the era's taste for clarity; a pop singer backed by piano or guitar chords is using the same texture.

Which Austrian composer, dead at 31 in 1828, left more than 600 songs and an 'Unfinished' symphony?

Franz Schubert gave only one public concert of his own music, months before he died; he is buried beside Beethoven, whose funeral he had attended as a torchbearer.

Which Russian composer wrote 'Swan Lake', 'The Nutcracker' and 'Sleeping Beauty'?

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky never saw the Swan Lake danced today: its 1877 Moscow staging left the repertoire in 1883, and today's version descends from an 1895 St Petersburg revival, made after his death.

Which monophonic, unaccompanied Latin song was the core music of the medieval Roman liturgy?

Gregorian Chant is named for Pope Gregory I, who by tradition collected it; the repertory sung today took shape later, when Charlemagne's Franks blended Roman chant with their own in the 8th and 9th centuries.

In which Italian city did Antonio Stradivari build his celebrated violins?

Cremona was also home to the Amati and Guarneri workshops; about 650 Stradivari instruments survive, yet in blind tests most professional players could not tell them from fine modern violins.

Which era of music prized personal expression and story-telling programme music over formal balance?

Romantic principles in music were first set out by the writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, whose 1810 review of a Beethoven symphony ranked wordless instrumental music as the art best able to express emotion.

Which Mozart opera features the Queen of the Night's furious aria, famous for its high Fs?

The Magic Flute's first Queen was Mozart's sister-in-law Josepha Hofer, and he apparently wrote the top notes to show off her voice; the opera opened about two months before he died.

What is the term for a recurring theme tied to a character or idea, the device Wagner built his Ring cycle on?

Leitmotif is German for 'leading motif', a label Wagner himself never adopted; John Williams uses the same device in Star Wars, where Darth Vader and the Force each have a theme.

Which American song tradition, sung to him by his student Harry Burleigh, coloured Dvořák's 'New World' Symphony?

Spirituals reached Dvořák through Harry Burleigh, a Black student who sang them to him at his request; Dvořák then declared that America's future music should be founded on African American melodies.

Which woodwind opens Rhapsody in Blue with its famous wailing glissando?

The clarinet's opening smear began as a rehearsal joke by the bandleader Paul Whiteman's clarinettist, Ross Gorman; the composer liked it and asked him to play it that way, with as much wail as possible.

Which Baroque work came with sonnets describing a barking dog?

The Four Seasons came with a sonnet for each season, possibly by Vivaldi himself, and he tied the lines to the notes: in Spring the violas play the sleeping goatherd's barking dog.

Handel's Water Music was first played in 1717 from a barge floating along which river?

The Thames carried King George I's barge from Whitehall to Chelsea on 17 July 1717, with some 50 players on a second barge; he liked the music so much he had it repeated at least three times.

Haydn's 'Surprise' Symphony gets its German nickname from a sudden stroke on which instrument?

The kettledrum stroke gives the German nickname, 'mit dem Paukenschlag'; Haydn told his biographer it was not meant to wake dozers: he wanted something new so that a former pupil, engaged by a rival London series, would not outdo him.

Which pupil completed Mozart's Requiem after the composer died in 1791, leaving it unfinished?

Franz Xaver Süssmayr finished it in secret so that Mozart's widow could collect the fee from Count Walsegg, the anonymous patron, who liked to pass off other composers' work as his own.

Which family member wrote down the five-year-old Mozart's first pieces?

His father Leopold, a court violinist, wrote them into his daughter Nannerl's music book, and from 1763 took both children on a concert tour of Europe's courts that lasted more than three years.

An instrumental 'Ode to Joy' from Beethoven's Ninth serves as the official anthem of which body?

The European Union adopted it in 1985, after the Council of Europe in 1972; it is meant to celebrate the values member countries share, not to replace their national anthems.

Chopin is buried in Père Lachaise, but his heart is sealed in a church pillar in which city?

His eldest sister Ludwika smuggled the heart, preserved in alcohol, to Warsaw in 1850; it rests inside a pillar of Warsaw's Church of the Holy Cross.

Verdi's Aida, set in ancient Egypt, had its 1871 premiere in which city?

Cairo's Khedivial Opera House staged Aida on 24 December 1871, months late: the sets and costumes had been stuck in Paris during the Prussian siege of the city.

Which work did Mahler leave unnumbered as a symphony, reportedly hoping to dodge the 'curse of the ninth'?

Das Lied von der Erde is a symphony in all but name, written after eight numbered ones; the dodge failed, since Mahler went on to finish a Ninth and died in 1911 with his Tenth in draft.

Debussy's 'Clair de lune' is the third movement of which larger piano work?

Suite bergamasque was begun around 1890 but appeared only in 1905, after revision; Debussy is said to have thought the early pieces immature and to have yielded to a publisher counting on his fame.

Ravel's Boléro is built on one unchanging rhythm, tapped from start to finish on which instrument?

A snare drum keeps the same pattern going from first bar to last; Ravel himself described the piece as 'orchestral tissue without music', one long crescendo written for the dancer Ida Rubinstein.

Who choreographed the tumultuous 1913 premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring?

Vaslav Nijinsky shouted the step counts from the wings to dancers who could not hear the orchestra over the uproar; even so, the performance on 29 May 1913 ran to its end and took curtain calls.

Which movement of Holst's The Planets ends with an offstage wordless female chorus fading into silence?

In 'Neptune, the Mystic' the women's chorus sings from an adjoining room while a door is slowly closed, an early orchestral fade-out; Earth is omitted, and Colin Matthews added a 'Pluto' in 2000.

Elgar's 'Nimrod' variation puns on friend August Jaeger's surname, which is German for what?

Nimrod is described in Genesis as 'a mighty hunter before the Lord'. Elgar never revealed the hidden theme behind the fourteen variations.

Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony is nicknamed for which city, where it was performed under siege in 1942?

The 'Leningrad' Symphony was played inside the besieged city on 9 August 1942 by the depleted Radio Orchestra; the score reached the West on microfilm via Tehran, and Toscanini gave the American radio premiere that July.

Which American composer wrote 4′33″, in which the performer plays nothing for three movements?

John Cage called it his most important work; at the 1952 premiere pianist David Tudor only opened and closed the keyboard lid, and the music was the wind, rain on the roof and a restless audience.

Which 12th-century abbess, mystic and composer wrote the sung morality play 'Ordo Virtutum'?

Hildegard of Bingen wrote both words and music around 1151; the Virtues and the soul all sing, but her Devil is given no melody and can only speak or shout.

Which pianist-composer's portrait appeared on Germany's last 100 Deutsche Mark banknote?

Clara Schumann performed for six decades and was among the first pianists to play in public from memory, which then became the norm; the banknote's reverse showed a grand piano.

Which American composer's Adagio for Strings, heard in the film Platoon, began as a string quartet movement?

Samuel Barber's Adagio became America's music of mourning, broadcast when Franklin Roosevelt died in 1945 and again after John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963.

Carl Orff's Carmina Burana opens and closes with which thunderous chorus?

'O Fortuna', a hymn to fortune's fickle wheel, frames the cantata's 24 medieval poems; after the 1937 Frankfurt premiere Orff told his publisher that everything he had written before it could be destroyed.

Which composer wrote Finlandia for an 1899 rally against tsarist press censorship?

Jean Sibelius wrote it to close a pageant that was really a press-freedom rally in the tsar's Grand Duchy of Finland; first called 'Finland Awakes', it took the name Finlandia a year later.

The galloping finale of which Rossini overture became the theme music of The Lone Ranger?

William Tell (1829) was Rossini's last opera: he was 37, lived for almost forty more years and never wrote another.

Brahms signed a fan with the opening bars of which Strauss waltz, adding 'Unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms'?

The Blue Danube began in 1867 as a choral number for a Vienna men's singing society; Brahms, a friend of Johann Strauss II, wrote his rueful tribute on a fan belonging to Strauss's family.

Which 1968 film made the 'Sunrise' fanfare from Also sprach Zarathustra world-famous?

2001: A Space Odyssey kept the fanfare from Stanley Kubrick's temporary guide tracks: late in production he discarded the score he had commissioned from the Hollywood composer Alex North.

The Halberstadt church performance of the organ piece 'As Slow As Possible' is scheduled to last how many years?

639 years was chosen because Halberstadt's first documented organ dated from about 1361, 639 years before the planned start in 2000; the performance began in 2001 and is due to end in 2640.

Most symphony orchestras tune to an A sounded by which instrument?

The oboe gives the A because its pitch is secure and its penetrating tone carries across the whole orchestra.

The Three Tenors first sang together at Rome's Baths of Caracalla in 1990 on the eve of what event?

The FIFA World Cup final was played in Rome the next day; the concert also welcomed José Carreras back after treatment for leukaemia, and its live recording became the best-selling classical album to date.

Which New York-born soprano was hailed as 'La Divina'?

Maria Callas was born to immigrant parents in 1923; her mother took her to Athens in 1937, and she made her professional debut in a leading role there in 1942, during the wartime occupation.

In which city was Beethoven born?

Bonn was Beethoven's home until he left for Vienna in November 1792, and he never returned; his birth house on Bonngasse is now a museum.

Which nickname, coined by a critic after Beethoven's death, is attached to his Piano Sonata No. 14?

Moonlight comes from the critic Ludwig Rellstab, who is said to have likened the first movement to moonlight on Lake Lucerne; Beethoven's own heading was 'Sonata quasi una fantasia'.

Beethoven's Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802, despairing at his growing deafness, was a letter addressed to whom?

His brothers probably never saw it: Beethoven kept the letter among his papers, where it was found after his death in 1827; in it he says that only his art held him back from suicide.

Which Beethoven opera, his only one, premiered in 1805?

Fidelio opened at the Theater an der Wien on 20 November 1805 to an audience of French officers, Vienna being under occupation; Beethoven revised it in 1806 and 1814, and its early versions carry the heroine's name, Leonore.

Beethoven wrote a ten-page love letter in 1812 to a woman known only as what?

The Immortal Beloved, 'Unsterbliche Geliebte' in his German, appears in a pencilled letter of July 1812 that was apparently never sent: it was found in Beethoven's estate after his death, and her identity is unproven.

Which nickname is attached to Mozart's Symphony No. 41, the last he wrote?

Jupiter was never Mozart's title: it is said to have been coined by a London concert promoter after his death. He finished the work in August 1788, his third symphony of that summer.

Who compiled the first edition of the catalogue of Mozart's works in 1862?

Ludwig von Köchel, an Austrian botanist and music lover, published his chronological-thematic catalogue in 1862, which is why Mozart's works carry 'K' numbers; Otto Jahn's biography had appeared a few years earlier.

Mozart's 1781 break with the Archbishop of Salzburg ended, by his own account, with what from the archbishop's steward?

A kick in the backside from Count Arco, the archbishop's steward, sealed Mozart's dismissal in June 1781; he stayed on in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer.

Mozart's opera Idomeneo follows a king of Crete sailing home from which war?

The Trojan War is over when a storm makes Idomeneo vow to sacrifice the first living creature he meets ashore, which proves to be his own son; Mozart wrote the opera for the Munich court.

Which two Mozart operas, with Figaro, set librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte?

Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte followed Figaro; their librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte later fled his creditors to America, where he briefly ran a grocery and became Columbia's first professor of Italian.

In which town was Johann Sebastian Bach born in 1685?

Eisenach lost him early: both parents were dead before he turned ten, and Bach went to live with his eldest brother, an organist in Ohrdruf, who gave him his first keyboard lessons.

How many children did J. S. Bach have across his two marriages?

20 children came from the two marriages, but only ten lived to adulthood; his second wife Anna Magdalena, who bore thirteen of them, was a professional soprano at the Köthen court when they met.

Mendelssohn's 1829 Berlin revival of which Bach work launched the modern Bach Revival?

The St Matthew Passion reached Mendelssohn as a gift: his grandmother gave him a copy of the score, and in 1829, aged 20, he conducted the Berlin performance that set off the revival of Bach's music.

Which set of 30 keyboard variations did Bach publish in 1741?

The Goldberg Variations were written, in the story told by Bach's first biographer, for a count who could not sleep; his young harpsichordist Johann Goldberg played them to him through the night.

Chopin gave barely 30 public concerts after settling in Paris, preferring to play in which setting?

Salons suited him better than concert halls; rather than tour, Chopin lived by selling his compositions and giving piano lessons, for which he was in high demand.

With which French writer did Chopin have a long, troubled relationship?

George Sand, the pen name of Aurore Dudevant, at first repelled him: 'Is she really a woman?' he asked after they met in 1836. They became a couple two years later.

Which island did Chopin visit with his novelist lover in the winter of 1838–39?

Mallorca's old monastery at Valldemossa housed Chopin and his companion that winter; despite the cold, his illness and unfriendly locals he finished his 24 Preludes there.

Which nickname is attached to Chopin's Waltz in D-flat major, Op. 64 No. 1?

The Minute Waltz usually lasts between one and a half and two and a half minutes: the publisher's nickname is generally explained as 'minute' meaning tiny, not sixty seconds.

Which Paris piano maker's hall hosted Chopin's first and last concerts in the city?

Pleyel pianos were, in Chopin's phrase, the 'non plus ultra'; the firm's head, Camille Pleyel, became a friend, and Chopin sent him the finished 24 Preludes, whose French edition is dedicated to him.

Which two teachers gave the boy Liszt lessons in Vienna?

Carl Czerny and Antonio Salieri taught him piano and composition; Czerny, once Beethoven's pupil, had not wanted another student but was so struck at the audition that he taught the boy free of charge.

Which German poet coined the word 'Lisztomania' for the frenzy at Liszt's 1840s concerts?

Heinrich Heine coined it in an 1844 report on the Paris concert season; Liszt's admirers fought over locks of his hair and the piano strings he broke.

Which orchestral genre did Liszt pioneer in the 1850s with works such as Les préludes?

Symphonic poem was Liszt's own term for a one-movement orchestral work that follows a poem, story or picture; Richard Strauss later took the idea further in pieces such as Don Juan and Don Quixote.

Which Bavarian king, who came to the throne at 18 in 1864, transformed Wagner's fortunes?

Ludwig II, later the builder of Neuschwanstein, sent for Wagner within months of becoming king and went on to provide most of the money for the Bayreuth festival theatre.

What did Wagner call his ideal of uniting poetry, music, visuals and drama?

Gesamtkunstwerk means 'total work of art'; to realise it Wagner built his own theatre at Bayreuth, hiding the orchestra under a hood so that nothing would distract from the drama on stage.

Wagner's Bridal Chorus, known to wedding guests as 'Here Comes the Bride', comes from which of his operas?

Lohengrin makes it an odd wedding choice: the couple are hardly alone in the bridal chamber before Elsa asks the one question her husband has forbidden, and he has to leave her.

Which Coppola film puts Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries on its soundtrack?

Apocalypse Now (1979) blasts the Ride of the Valkyries from helicopter loudspeakers during Colonel Kilgore's beach assault; the Looney Tunes short What's Opera, Doc? also builds on Wagnerian themes.

Which Wagner opera opens with a famously unresolved chord that loosened the rules of harmony?

Tristan und Isolde opens with the 'Tristan chord', which resolves only onto another dissonance; its restless chromatic harmony is often named as a first step away from traditional keys and toward atonality.

Which chorus from Verdi's Nabucco became an anthem of Italian unification?

'Va, pensiero', the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Act III of Nabucco (1842), was taken up as an anthem of the Risorgimento; Verdi himself sat in the first Italian parliament in 1861.

Which three operas of 1851–53 crown Verdi's middle period?

Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata arrived within two years, though La traviata's 1853 premiere went badly: 'Was the fault mine or the singers'? Time will tell,' Verdi wrote.

What did Verdi build and endow in Milan in his final years?

Verdi founded the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, a rest home for retired musicians, in 1896 and left it his royalties; he and his wife Giuseppina are buried in its crypt.

Which two late operas did Verdi write after Aida and his Requiem?

Otello and Falstaff, both drawn from Shakespeare, came after Verdi had given up composing; his publisher Ricordi spent years coaxing him back, and the secret Otello project went by the code name 'chocolate'.

Which is the only opera Claude Debussy completed?

Pelléas et Mélisande opened in 1902 over its playwright's protests: Maurice Maeterlinck, angry that his partner was not cast as Mélisande, publicly wished it 'immediate and decided failure'.

Which label did Debussy vigorously reject, though it is often applied to him?

Impressionist was a word Debussy scorned: in a letter of 1908 he wrote of 'what the imbeciles call impressionism', a term he thought as poorly used as possible, above all by critics.

Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun opens with a languid, unaccompanied solo for which instrument?

The flute plays the faun of Mallarmé's poem; Pierre Boulez dated modern music from this 1894 opening, saying the flute of the faun 'brought new breath to the art of music'.

Which 1910 ballet, Stravinsky's first for the Ballets Russes, brought him international fame?

The Firebird went to the little-known Stravinsky, then 27, only after more established composers had dropped out or declined; its Paris success led straight to Petrushka and The Rite of Spring.

Which subject was Stravinsky studying at university when he met Rimsky-Korsakov?

Stravinsky enrolled in law at St Petersburg University in 1901 and befriended Rimsky-Korsakov's son there; he studied privately with the older composer until Rimsky-Korsakov's death in 1908.

Stravinsky died in America in 1971 but was buried in which Italian city, near Diaghilev?

Venice held his funeral at the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, where his own Requiem Canticles were performed, before burial on the cemetery island of San Michele a few metres from Diaghilev's tomb.

Which three periods is Stravinsky's career usually divided into?

Stravinsky's output is usually split into a Russian period (The Rite of Spring, Les noces), a neoclassical period opened by Pulcinella in 1920, and a serial period after 1950, when he adopted twelve-tone methods in works like Threni.

Which disastrous 1897 premiere plunged Rachmaninoff into a depression that lasted for years?

His First Symphony was savaged after a poor performance under Glazunov; daily sessions with the physician Nikolai Dahl in 1900 restored his confidence, and he dedicated the Second Piano Concerto to Dahl.

Which early Rachmaninoff piano piece became the encore audiences kept demanding?

Prelude in C-sharp minor was first heard at the Moscow Electrical Exhibition on 26 September 1892 and made his name; concert-goers called for it so relentlessly that Rachmaninoff grew thoroughly tired of it.

Where did Rachmaninoff die in 1943?

Beverly Hills, California, became his home in 1942 because his health was failing; he died there of melanoma on 28 March 1943, four days short of his 70th birthday.

Vivaldi wrote much of his music for the all-female ensemble of which Venetian institution?

The Ospedale della Pietà was a Venetian home for foundlings that trained its girls in music; Vivaldi became violin master in 1703, and their much-praised concerts helped it win patrons and donations.

By what nickname was Vivaldi known in Venice?

'Il Prete Rosso', the Red Priest, referred to his red hair; ordained in 1703, he soon stopped saying Mass, citing a chest complaint, probably asthma.

Which 1711 collection of twelve Vivaldi concertos did Bach partly transcribe for keyboard?

L'estro armonico, Op. 3, was Vivaldi's first printed set of concertos and a success across Europe; Bach learned the Italian style by arranging several for keyboard, one of them for four harpsichords.

In which city was Handel born in 1685?

Halle made Handel its cathedral organist on probation at 17; when the year was up he left to play violin in an opera orchestra, and by 1712 he had settled in London for good.

Which Handel coronation anthem has been sung at every British coronation since 1727?

Zadok the Priest was written for George II's coronation in 1727 and has been sung at every one since; in 1992 Tony Britten reworked it into the anthem heard before UEFA Champions League matches.

Handel travelled to which city in 1741 at the invitation of the Duke of Devonshire, leading to Messiah's premiere?

Dublin heard Messiah first, at the Fishamble Street music hall on 13 April 1742 in aid of local charities; to squeeze in more listeners, gentlemen were asked to come without swords and ladies without hoops.

Which noble family employed Haydn for most of his career as their Kapellmeister?

The Esterházys, Hungary's richest princely family, employed Haydn from 1761 to 1790; isolated at their country palace, he said he was 'forced to become original'.

Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony famously ends with the orchestra's players doing what?

Walking off one by one, each snuffing out his candle, was Haydn's hint that the musicians were overdue home from the prince's summer palace; only two violins remained, and the court left the next day.

Haydn's Symphony No. 92 is nicknamed after which British university, which made him an honorary doctor in 1791?

Oxford gave Haydn an honorary doctorate of music in July 1791, during the London visit arranged by impresario Johann Peter Salomon; the symphony he is said to have conducted there was written two years earlier for a French count.

Mahler converted to which faith to secure the directorship of the Court Opera (Hofoper) in 1897?

Mahler converted to Catholicism, being baptised in February 1897, since a Jew could not be appointed to the Hofoper; he still faced anti-Semitic press hostility during his ten years as director.

Which Mahler symphony, dubbed the 'Symphony of a Thousand', was premiered to great acclaim in 1910?

The Eighth calls for such vast forces that Mahler's concert agent billed it as the 'Symphony of a Thousand', a label the composer disliked; its Munich premiere in September 1910 was a critical and popular success.

Which American orchestra did Mahler lead from 1909 until his final illness in 1911?

The New York Philharmonic hired Mahler in 1909 after his seasons at the Metropolitan Opera; he conducted it for the last time at Carnegie Hall in February 1911, already gravely ill, and died three months later.

Whom did Mahler meet in November 1901 and later marry?

Alma Schindler met Mahler at a Vienna salon in November 1901 and married him four months later; when he discovered her affair with the architect Walter Gropius in 1910, he sought out Sigmund Freud for advice.

Brahms's 'Wiegenlied' of 1868, Op. 49 No. 4, is known around the world as what kind of song?

Lullaby is the word: Brahms wrote this cradle song in 1868 for his friend Bertha Faber on the birth of her second son, and it was first sung in public the following year.

Brahms scored a huge commercial hit with two sets of dances in what national style?

The Hungarian Dances, issued for piano duet from 1869, sold hugely; Brahms had learned the style as a young man from the Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi, whose accompanist he was.

In which city was Brahms born in 1833?

Hamburg was where Brahms grew up, the son of a double-bass player, but its Philharmonic passed him over for the conductorship in the 1860s, and he made his career in Vienna instead.

Which musical dispute of the 19th century saw Brahms deemed the conservative?

The War of the Romantics set Brahms's circle against the 'New German School' of Liszt and Wagner; Hans von Bülow, a conductor who had championed Wagner, later ranked Brahms with Bach and Beethoven as the 'three Bs'.

Which Christmas carol uses a melody by the composer of the Hebrides Overture?

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing has been sung since the 1850s to a tune William Cummings lifted from Mendelssohn's Festgesang, a cantata written in 1840 for the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg's printing press.

Which orchestra did Mendelssohn accept the direction of in 1835?

The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra got Mendelssohn as conductor at 26; he turned the city into one of Europe's musical centres and in 1843 founded its conservatory, where he taught piano and composition himself.

Whose Easter Sonata was for decades wrongly credited to Felix Mendelssohn?

His sister Fanny's Easter Sonata of 1828 resurfaced in France in 1970 signed only 'F. Mendelssohn' and was recorded as Felix's; a scholar who examined the manuscript in 2010 showed the handwriting was hers.

In which Tuscan city was Puccini born in 1858?

Lucca's cathedral had employed Puccinis as its musicians for generations, and when his father died the organist's post was reserved for young Giacomo, an uncle filling in meanwhile; he chose the opera house instead.

Puccini became a leading exponent of which style of Italian opera?

Verismo put ordinary people and raw passions on stage in place of kings and myths; Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, a one-act tale of Sicilian villagers that won a publisher's contest, launched it in 1890.

Which opera did Puccini leave unfinished when he died in 1924 after cancer treatment in Brussels?

Turandot lacked its final scenes when Puccini died; at the 1926 La Scala premiere Toscanini stopped the performance at the point where the composer had laid down his pen, and told the audience so.

Grieg's Peer Gynt music was written for a play by which Norwegian dramatist?

Henrik Ibsen asked Grieg in 1874 for music to stage his verse drama; Grieg agreed reluctantly and called it 'a terribly unmanageable subject', yet it produced 'Morning Mood' and 'In the Hall of the Mountain King'.

Which Norwegian city, Grieg's birthplace, has a concert hall and academy named after him?

Bergen had been home to the Griegs since his Scottish great-grandfather, Alexander Greig, set up in business there around 1770; the Grieghallen and Grieg Academy bear the name, and his villa Troldhaugen is a museum.

Which Grieg work did Liszt sight-read from the manuscript in Rome in 1870?

His Piano Concerto went to Rome in manuscript on a travel grant that Liszt's own testimonial had helped Grieg win; Liszt played it straight off at the piano and praised it warmly.

Which set, commissioned by Brahms's publisher Simrock, made Dvořák's name abroad?

Slavonic Dances was Simrock's idea: Brahms had urged him to publish Dvořák's Moravian Duets, and when those sold well he asked for a set of dances, which proved an immediate hit.

Which New York institution did Dvořák direct from 1892 to 1895?

The National Conservatory of Music lured Dvořák with $15,000 a year from its founder Jeannette Thurber; when her fortune shrank after the 1893 financial panic the salary fell into arrears, and a homesick Dvořák went home in 1895.

Which is by far the most successful of Dvořák's operas, premiered in 1901?

Rusalka, a water nymph, gives up her voice to become human for a prince, so the opera's heroine spends much of the middle act silent; before that she sings the 'Song to the Moon', a soprano favourite.

Saint-Saëns served for two decades as organist at which Paris church?

La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire, had Saint-Saëns as its organist for some twenty years; Liszt heard him improvise there and called him the greatest organist in the world.

Which Saint-Saëns work did he bar from public performance during his lifetime?

The Carnival of the Animals was written for fun in 1886, and Saint-Saëns thought it too frivolous to carry his name; only 'The Swan' was printed while he lived, and the whole suite emerged in 1922.

Mussorgsky belonged to which group of Russian nationalist composers?

The Five, or Mighty Handful, were Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov; for decades Mussorgsky's works, Boris Godunov included, were known mainly in versions revised by Rimsky-Korsakov.

Which Mussorgsky piano suite did Ravel orchestrate in 1922?

Pictures at an Exhibition walks through a memorial show of works by Mussorgsky's friend Viktor Hartmann, who had died suddenly the year before; Ravel's 1922 orchestration is the version most listeners know.

Which Rimsky-Korsakov symphonic suite draws on the Arabian Nights?

Scheherazade (1888) gives the storyteller's voice to a solo violin; Rimsky-Korsakov had been made a conservatory professor in 1871 and then had to teach himself the craft he was hired to teach.

Which 1917 Satie ballet had sets by Picasso and choreography by Massine?

Parade, devised by Jean Cocteau for the Ballets Russes, put a typewriter and pistol shots in the score; after one critic panned it, Satie sent him an insulting postcard and was sentenced to eight days in jail.

Which set of three slow, spare piano pieces from 1888 became Erik Satie's best-known music?

Gymnopédies date from Satie's early twenties, when he played piano in Montmartre cabarets; when his fortunes sank in the 1890s his friend Debussy orchestrated two of them, bringing the set a wider public.

Which teacher in Paris shaped Aaron Copland over three years of study?

Nadia Boulanger taught Copland for three years from 1921; before he sailed home she asked him for a work for organ and orchestra for her American tour, which gave him his first big New York premiere.

Which three ballets are among Copland's best-known "populist" works?

Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid and Rodeo put pioneers and cowboys on the ballet stage; the first was just 'Ballet for Martha' to Copland until Martha Graham took a title from a Hart Crane poem.

Which Gershwin presidential satire was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama?

Of Thee I Sing sends John P. Wintergreen to the White House on a 'love' platform, pledged to marry the winner of an Atlantic City beauty contest; he falls for someone else, and trouble follows.

Leonard Bernstein was born with which first name?

Louis was his legal first name, but his parents always called him Leonard, and at 16 he had the change made official; to friends he was simply Lenny.

Which Bernstein musical retold a Shakespeare tragedy among New York street gangs?

West Side Story was first planned around a feud between a Catholic and a Jewish family at Easter and Passover; only later did the rivals become street gangs.

Which Prokofiev ballet is the source of "Dance of the Knights"?

Romeo and Juliet was first drafted in 1935 with a happy ending, which drew objections from Soviet cultural officials and was dropped; 'Dance of the Knights' is also known as 'Montagues and Capulets'.

Which composer toured villages collecting peasant songs with Zoltán Kodály?

Béla Bartók went on to collect in Romania, Slovakia, Turkey and North Africa as well as at home, and the scales and rhythms he found reshaped his own music.

Which work is Bartók's only opera, a one-act drama for just two singers?

Bluebeard's Castle was finished in 1911 but reached the stage only in 1918, after Bartók's ballet The Wooden Prince had succeeded; a duke and his new wife are the only singers as she opens seven locked doors.

Which two composers did Schoenberg mentor in the Second Viennese School?

Anton Webern and Alban Berg became Schoenberg's pupils in 1904 and followed him into atonal and twelve-tone music; Webern's life ended in 1945 when an American soldier shot him by mistake in occupied Austria.

Schoenberg, a refugee from Nazi Germany, taught from 1936 to 1944 at which California university?

UCLA employed Schoenberg from 1936, after a year at USC, until age forced him to retire in 1944; on settling in America he also dropped the umlaut from his name, turning Schönberg into Schoenberg.

Which musical movement is Philip Glass most associated with?

Minimalism is the label, though Glass prefers 'music with repetitive structures'; he drove a New York taxi into his forties to pay the bills.

Which 1982 film did Philip Glass score, along with The Truman Show and Kundun?

Koyaanisqatsi has no dialogue or narration at all, so Glass's score carries Godfrey Reggio's images of landscapes and cities; his later music for Kundun earned an Oscar nomination.

Which Paganini set, Op. 1, has inspired variations by many later composers?

The 24 Caprices for Solo Violin end with the A minor theme that Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Lutosławski all varied; Paganini's feats seemed so uncanny that rumour had him in league with the devil.

Paganini spent years as court violinist to Princess Elisa Baciocchi, the sister of which ruler?

Napoleon Bonaparte made his sister Elisa ruler of an Italian principality in 1805; Paganini played in her court orchestra and taught her husband the violin, then walked out at the end of 1809 to tour as a soloist.

Bizet won which prestigious prize in 1857 during his student career?

Bizet won the Prix de Rome in 1857 at 18 with the cantata Clovis et Clotilde, earning years of study in Italy; Carmen, his final work, became a hit only after his death at 36 in 1875.

Which profession did Berlioz's father send him to Paris to study before he abandoned it for music?

Medicine was his physician father's choice; Berlioz loathed the dissecting room and haunted the opera house instead, and when he chose music his father cut his allowance, leaving him to sing in a theatre chorus.

Which Robert Schumann piano cycle, Op. 15, contains the piece 'Träumerei'?

Kinderszenen, 'Scenes from Childhood', grew from Clara's remark that Schumann sometimes seemed 'like a child'; he wrote some 30 miniatures in 1838 and kept 13, with 'Träumerei' (Dreaming) the seventh.

Which music journal did Robert Schumann co-found?

The Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, founded in Leipzig in 1834, let Schumann attack the shallow salon music of the day under invented names, fiery Florestan and dreamy Eusebius; he edited it for about a decade.

Which Shakespeare play did Purcell adapt as The Fairy Queen?

A Midsummer Night's Dream supplied the spoken play, but Purcell set none of Shakespeare's words, only masques between the acts; the score was lost after his death and resurfaced early in the twentieth century.

Which 1945 opera brought Benjamin Britten to international fame?

Peter Grimes was born of homesickness: in America in 1941 Britten read an E. M. Forster article on the Suffolk poet George Crabbe, resolved to go home, and built the opera on Crabbe's poem.

With which French composer did Vaughan Williams study in 1907–08 to clarify his textures?

Maurice Ravel, though the younger man, taught Vaughan Williams in Paris for three months in 1907-08; home again, he followed the lessons with On Wenlock Edge and a run of major works.

Which orchestra made Herbert von Karajan its conductor for life?

The Berlin Philharmonic accepted Karajan's condition that the post be his for life; yet from 1982 a series of disputes estranged him from the players, and he resigned in April 1989, months before his death.

Herbert von Karajan's family, originally Karajannis, was of which ancestry?

Greek is the usual account, though an Aromanian origin is also claimed: the family came from Macedonia, now northern Greece, and in Vienna the next generation was still baptised Greek Orthodox and sent to the Greek school.

Which nickname did Luciano Pavarotti earn for his tone?

'King of the High Cs' stuck after Pavarotti rang out the nine high Cs of 'Ah! mes amis' in Donizetti's La fille du régiment at the Met in 1972; he was a baker's son from Modena.

Which Italian term names the closing passage that rounds off a movement?

Coda, Italian for 'tail', is a closing passage added once a movement's main business is done; Beethoven stretched his codas so far that they can feel like a second development section.

How many keys does a standard modern piano have?

88 keys, 52 white and 36 black, span just over seven octaves from A0 to C8; some older pianos stop at 85, and Bösendorfer's Imperial grand adds nine more in the bass for a full eight octaves.

What are felt-covered piano hammers made of underneath the felt?

Wood forms the core of every piano hammer; early makers covered it in leather, until felt, which Jean-Henri Pape brought to the piano in 1826, proved a more consistent material.

A violin's four strings are usually tuned in which interval?

The strings are tuned in perfect fifths, G3, D4, A4 and E5, as are the viola's and cello's; the double bass is the odd one out, tuned in fourths.

What is the term for playing the violin by plucking the strings?

Pizzicato tells string players to pluck with a finger until 'arco' calls the bow back; Monteverdi was among the first composers to demand it, instructing his players to pluck the strings with two fingers.

The first operas, Jacopo Peri's Dafne and Euridice, were staged around 1600 in which Italian city?

Florence's poets and musicians set out to revive the sung tragedy of the ancients and invented opera instead; Dafne, of the late 1590s, is mostly lost, while Euridice was staged in 1600 for a Medici wedding to the King of France.

Which lively movement usually closes a Baroque dance suite?

Gigue closes the standard suite after the allemande, courante and sarabande; it began as the British jig, crossed to France in the mid-1600s, and ends each of Bach's six cello suites.

Which shorthand notation system for harmony was developed in the Baroque period?

Figured bass prints numerals under a bass line and leaves the keyboard or lute player to improvise the chords above it, so no two performances of a Baroque continuo part need sound alike.

Which 'father of Czech music', composer of The Moldau, had gone completely deaf by the end of 1874?

Bedřich Smetana wrote Má vlast, including The Moldau, after losing his hearing; the persistent high note he heard in his deafness is written into his first string quartet.

Which Russian composer of the opera Prince Igor was a chemist by profession who wrote music in his spare time?

Alexander Borodin regarded science as his real work and published research on aldehydes; Prince Igor was unfinished when he died, and its 'Polovtsian Dances' later became the Broadway song 'Stranger in Paradise'.

Who in 1933 became the first Black woman to have a symphony played by a major American orchestra?

Florence Price won a Wanamaker prize in 1932 for her Symphony in E minor, which the Chicago Symphony played the next year; in 2009 a trove of her lost scores turned up in an abandoned house in Illinois.

Who in 1913 became the first woman to win France's top prize for young composers, five years before dying at 24?

Lili Boulanger won at 19 with the cantata Faust et Hélène, a year after illness made her collapse mid-competition; her elder sister Nadia had tried for the same prize and never took the top award.

Which Baroque piece did a slow French recording rescue from obscurity?

Pachelbel's Canon lay unpublished until the early 20th century; Jean-François Paillard's recording, far slower than its rivals, turned it into a hit and a wedding standard.

Which American statesman invented the glass armonica, an instrument Mozart and Beethoven both wrote music for?

Benjamin Franklin built it in 1761 after seeing water-filled wine glasses played in England. He named it after the Italian word for harmony.

Which pet bird, given a funeral by Mozart, could sing a tune from the last movement of his Piano Concerto No. 17?

A starling caught Mozart's ear in 1784: he wrote down its version of the tune in his expense book the day he bought it. When it died three years later, he buried it in the garden with a poem.

Which part of Haydn's body was stolen from his grave soon after his burial and reunited with his remains only in 1954?

His skull was taken by two followers of phrenology, who wanted to study a genius's head. A substitute had been buried in its place and was never removed, so Haydn's tomb now holds two.

Mozart's Twelve Variations for piano, K. 265, decorate a French tune that English speakers sing as which nursery rhyme?

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star borrows the French melody Ah! vous dirai-je, maman, which first appeared in 1761. The same tune carries the alphabet song, so Mozart's showpiece begins like a child's lesson.

Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony, in which the players walk off one by one, was a hint for his prince to do what?

Send them home was the message: the prince had kept his orchestra at a summer palace far longer than planned, away from their wives. He took the point, and the court left the next day.

Haydn wrote the hymn tune now used for the German national anthem after hearing London crowds sing which song?

God Save the King so impressed Haydn that in 1797 he gave Austria a royal hymn of its own, written for the emperor's birthday. In his final illness he took comfort in playing it at the piano.

The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a violinist-composer of Mozart's Paris, was also famed as a champion in which sport?

Fencing made him famous first, so Paris was amazed in 1769 when the celebrated swordsman turned up playing violin in a new orchestra. Within four years he was conducting it.

Young Haydn was caned and thrown out of the St Stephen's Cathedral choir after snipping off a fellow chorister's what?

Pigtail gone, the choirmaster had his excuse: Haydn's voice had broken, and the empress had already complained that his singing sounded like crowing. He was put out on the street.

Haydn's 'Miracle' Symphony is named for a tale that what fell from the concert-hall ceiling without hurting anyone?

A chandelier is said to have crashed down just after the audience had crowded forward to applaud, leaving the seats beneath it empty. Scholars now think it happened at his Symphony No. 102 instead.

A popular story has the teenage Mozart writing out Allegri's Miserere from memory after hearing it in which building?

The Sistine Chapel kept the piece for its own Holy Week services, which is why a 14-year-old copying it by ear made such a tale. Historians doubt parts of it, as the music was already known abroad.

Which German city's court orchestra, hailed as 'an army of generals', gave its name to a rising musical 'rocket'?

Mannheim had an orchestra famed for discipline and the skill of every player. Its composers made trademarks of the rocket, a fast-climbing broken chord, and of a swell in volume across the whole band.

Which courtly French dance in triple time became the standard third movement of the four-movement Classical symphony?

Minuet and trio was the usual pairing, and Johann Stamitz was the first to use it there regularly. Lully had brought the dance to the stage a century earlier, writing no fewer than 92 for his theatre works.

In sonata form, the plan of most Classical first movements, which section brings the main themes back in the home key?

Recapitulation is the homecoming: themes first heard in two rival keys return together in the main one, settling the argument. Before it come the exposition, which sets them out, and the development.

Which form, used for the last movement of Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4, keeps circling back to its main theme?

Rondo form brings its opening tune round again between contrasting episodes, in patterns such as ABACA. Classical composers also crossed it with sonata form to make the sonata rondo.

Which pattern of rippling broken chords fills the left hand as Mozart's Piano Sonata in C, K. 545, begins?

Alberti bass takes its name from Domenico Alberti, who used it constantly though he was not the first. Playing each chord low, high, middle, high keeps the harmony flowing smoothly under a tune.

Opera buffa, the comic style Mozart later made his own, first flourished in the early 1700s in which Italian city?

Naples gave the genre its everyday settings, local dialect and rapid patter singing, and from there it spread to Rome and northern Italy. Its signature voice is the basso buffo, a comic bass.

Mozart's The Magic Flute belongs to which genre of opera, in which spoken dialogue alternates with the songs?

Singspiel is the German-language form, with folk-like songs between spoken scenes. Mozart wrote several, beginning with Bastien und Bastienne at the age of twelve.

Which composer led the 1760s reform of opera with Orfeo ed Euridice, ending the long dominance of opera seria?

Christoph Gluck broke the stranglehold of the older style with a series of radical works in Vienna. He then moved to Paris in 1773 and wrote eight operas for the French stage.

Which German literary movement, named after a 1776 play, gives its name to Haydn's turbulent minor-key symphonies?

Sturm und Drang, usually translated as storm and stress, set out to shock audiences with extremes of emotion. Haydn never used the label himself: historians attached it to his works of around 1770 later.

Which flute-playing monarch, a composer himself, employed C. P. E. Bach as a court musician for about thirty years?

Frederick the Great composed 121 flute sonatas himself and hired Bach while still crown prince of Prussia. A set of keyboard sonatas Bach dedicated to him in 1742 helped make the younger man's name.

Mozart's catalogue entry 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik', now the title of his most famous serenade, means what in English?

A little night music was just Mozart's note for a short serenade, not a grand title. The piece went unpublished until about 1827, over thirty years after his death, and one of its five movements is lost.

Mozart's Symphony No. 41, his last and longest, is known by the name of which Roman god?

Jupiter was not Mozart's own title: the nickname was probably coined by a London concert promoter. He finished the work in August 1788, the last of three symphonies he completed that summer.

Which nickname, coined by a poet and not by Beethoven, belongs to his hushed, rippling Piano Sonata No. 14?

Moonlight was the poet Ludwig Rellstab's image of a lake after dark; Beethoven himself headed the sonata simply 'Quasi una fantasia'. Some critics call the title absurd for music so close to a funeral march.

Which nickname belongs to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, with its flowing brook, birdcalls, peasant dance and thunderstorm?

Pastoral was Beethoven's tribute to the countryside, and he named the birds in the score: a nightingale, a quail and a cuckoo. The storm passes into a shepherds' song of thanksgiving.

The piano, which displaced the harpsichord in the Classical period, is named from Italian words for which contrast?

Soft and loud, piano e forte, was the selling point: hammers let a player shade the volume by touch, which a harpsichord's plucked strings never could.

Mozart joined which brotherhood in 1784, later filling his opera The Magic Flute with its symbols and rituals?

The Freemasons admitted Mozart to a lodge called Beneficence, and he wrote music for their ceremonies. In The Magic Flute their significant number three recurs in the ladies, the boys and the temples.

The famous march that ends Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11 mimics the Janissary military bands of which empire?

Ottoman Janissary bands played in Vienna in 1699, when a Turkish delegation brought one to the city to celebrate a peace treaty. Mozart headed his imitation of their sound Alla turca, in the Turkish style.

At the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, the deaf Beethoven had to be gently turned around on stage to see what?

The audience cheering went unheard: he was still beating time, several bars adrift, until the contralto Caroline Unger turned him round. People waved hats and handkerchiefs so that he could see the ovation.

A string quartet, the Classical period's favourite chamber group, has two violins, a cello and which other instrument?

Viola, the violin's deeper-voiced cousin, takes the inner line. Some of the earliest quartets came about by chance, written for a baron's ad hoc group of a steward, a priest and a local cellist.

Which Habsburg archduchess, a future queen, met the six-year-old Mozart at Schönbrunn Palace when she was six herself?

Marie Antoinette, born Maria Antonia, was only a little older than the prodigy who played for her family in 1762. Both died in the 1790s, he at 35 and she on the guillotine at 37.

Beethoven's Für Elise, discovered 40 years after his death, belongs to which genre of short, light piano piece?

Bagatelle comes from the French for a trifle, a thing of no importance. The Elise of the title has never been identified: researchers have put forward at least three different women.

Mozart wrote the Queen of the Night's sky-high arias in The Magic Flute for which relative, the role's first singer?

His sister-in-law Josepha Hofer had an extraordinary upper register, so Mozart wrote two blockbuster arias to show it off. The second spans two octaves, peaking on the F above a soprano's high C.

Which German poet wrote the 1785 ode that Beethoven set for soloists and chorus to end his Ninth Symphony?

Friedrich Schiller wrote the poem in the summer of 1785 and revised it in 1803. Beethoven did not set it whole: he used only part of the text and added a few introductory words of his own.

Beethoven was the first notable composer to mark his scores with settings for which device, patented in 1815?

Metronome maker Johann Maelzel was a personal acquaintance of Beethoven. The design was not wholly his own: he added a number scale to a pendulum device invented a year earlier by Dietrich Winkel.

Which fast, forceful type of movement did Beethoven widely adopt for his symphonies in place of a polite courtly dance?

Scherzo is Italian for joke or jest, yet in Beethoven's hands it could turn savage. It kept the three-beat pulse of the dance it replaced but moved considerably quicker.

Which Haydn oratorio, inspired by Handel performances he heard in England, opens with an orchestral picture of chaos?

The Creation retells the Book of Genesis. Haydn paints the void by leaving his phrases unresolved, then unleashes a sudden blaze of C major at the word for light.

After his brother Kaspar died in 1815, Beethoven fought the widow in court for years over custody of which relative?

His nephew Karl was nine when the fight began. Beethoven had the boy removed from his mother's care in 1816, yet the legal battles were still preoccupying him two years later.

Mozart's Symphony No. 38 is named after which city, which had invited him after going wild for The Marriage of Figaro?

Prague heard the symphony's premiere in January 1787, on Mozart's first visit. Unusually for its day the work has only three movements, with no dance movement, perhaps because he ran out of time.

Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro is based on a comedy, at first banned in Vienna, by which French playwright?

Beaumarchais had filled his play with class conflict, so the emperor's censor forbade it. The opera got through because its librettist stripped out the political references in six weeks of rewriting.

Which violinist gave his name to Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 9, although he disliked the piece and refused to play it?

Rodolphe Kreutzer got the dedication only after Beethoven fell out with George Bridgetower, who had sight-read the premiere. Tolstoy later borrowed the sonata's name for a novella.

Which pianist, inspired as a toddler by a Tom and Jerry cartoon, played at the opening of the Beijing Olympics?

Lang Lang was two when the cartoon The Cat Concerto made him want to play. His performance at the 2008 opening ceremony reached a television audience put at between one and four billion.

Which American pianist earned a ticker-tape parade by winning a major Moscow competition at the height of the Cold War?

Van Cliburn was 23, and the judges felt obliged to ask the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev before giving first prize to an American. His homecoming parade was the first ever given to a classical musician.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski, a superstar touring pianist, became prime minister of which newly independent country in 1919?

Poland made him prime minister and foreign minister for most of 1919, and he signed the Treaty of Versailles on its behalf. After resigning that December he went back to music.

Which film won Geoffrey Rush the Best Actor Oscar for playing the troubled Australian pianist David Helfgott?

Shine traces Helfgott's path from a childhood under a perfectionist father to a mental breakdown and years in institutions. It earned seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Which Canadian pianist gave up public concerts at 31 and played all his life on a low chair his father had made?

Glenn Gould disliked performing in public and gave his last concert in 1964, turning to the recording studio. The chair let him sit very low and pull down on the keys instead of striking from above.

Which pianist, who left the Soviet Union in 1925, made a televised return to play in Moscow 61 years later?

Vladimir Horowitz had not been back since 1925. In his early touring days there, hardship after the civil war meant he was often paid in bread, butter and chocolate instead of money.

Which Argentine pianist, a concert performer at eight, launched her career by winning the 1965 Chopin Competition?

Martha Argerich was born and raised in Buenos Aires before training further in Europe. At sixteen she had already won both the Geneva and the Busoni international competitions.

Which pianist-conductor co-founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra with the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said?

Daniel Barenboim has also led the Chicago Symphony, the Orchestre de Paris and La Scala. He and Said went on to plan a Berlin academy where young musicians from the Arab world and Israel study together.

Which Austrian pianist commissioned concertos for the left hand alone after losing his right arm in World War I?

Paul Wittgenstein, older brother of the philosopher Ludwig, resolved to carry on one-handed while a prisoner of war in Siberia. Prokofiev wrote him a concerto that he said he did not understand and never played.

During the Second World War, the pianist Myra Hess organised nearly 1,700 lunchtime concerts in which London landmark?

The National Gallery gave her a daytime stage when concert halls were blacked out at night against German bombers. Hess never took a fee for her own appearances in the series.