159 Fun Facts About Classical Music

Which prolific Baroque composer spent much of his career as Thomaskantor in Leipzig?

Johann Sebastian Bach held the Thomaskantor post from 1723 until his death in 1750, directing the music of Leipzig's four main Lutheran churches, including St Thomas's.

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

Concerto comes from the Italian for 'to agree' or 'to contend', and the form does both; Vivaldi alone wrote hundreds of violin concertos.

Which of these instruments belongs to the brass family and is known for its bright, penetrating sound?

Its sound starts as a lip buzz into the mouthpiece; the family runs from the piccolo trumpet down to the bass trumpet an octave below the standard B-flat.

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 period, around 1750 to 1820, moved away from the Baroque's interweaving voices toward which texture, a single melody over chords?

Homophony, a tune with accompaniment, suited the era's taste for clarity; it is how almost every pop song is built today.

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 wrote all three: Swan Lake premiered at Moscow's Bolshoi in 1877, The Sleeping Beauty in 1890 and The Nutcracker in 1892, both at St Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre.

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

Gregorian Chant is a single melodic line sung without instruments to Latin text; it carried the Roman Catholic Mass and Office for centuries and is named after Pope Gregory I.

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

Antonio Stradivari worked his whole life in Cremona, the Lombard town that also housed the Amati and Guarneri workshops; roughly 650 of his instruments survive.

Which musical era emphasised intense emotion, individualism and often programmatic music?

Romantic composers like Berlioz and Liszt wrote programme music with plots; E. T. A. Hoffmann's essays argued instrumental music was the truest art, in deliberate opposition to Classical restraint.

Who composed The Marriage of Figaro, premiered in Vienna in 1786 to Lorenzo Da Ponte's Italian libretto?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote it from a Beaumarchais play banned in Vienna for mocking the nobility; its success won him a Prague commission that became Don Giovanni.

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', and John Williams uses the same trick in Star Wars, giving Darth Vader and Leia their own themes.

In which of his symphonies did Antonín Dvořák incorporate elements inspired by American folk music?

Symphony No. 9, 'From the New World', was written in New York in 1893; Dvořák's student Harry T. Burleigh sang him spirituals, and a first-movement theme recalls 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot'.

Which of these instruments belongs to the woodwind family?

The clarinet is a member of the woodwind family, which includes instruments where sound is produced by air vibrating a reed or across an edge.

Vivaldi's The Four Seasons was first published in 1725 in which city?

Amsterdam publisher Michel-Charles Le Cène issued the four concertos in 1725 as the opening of Vivaldi's Op. 8, 'Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione'; each came with a descriptive sonnet.

Handel's Water Music was premiered in 1717 for King George I aboard a barge on which river?

The royal barge went up the Thames from Whitehall to Chelsea on 17 July 1717; George I liked Handel's suite so much he had it played three times that evening.

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

The German nickname 'mit dem Paukenschlag' means 'with the kettledrum stroke': a fortissimo chord with timpani breaks the quiet Andante theme. Symphony No. 94 premiered at London's Hanover Square Rooms in March 1792.

Which pupil completed the Requiem in D minor left unfinished at its composer's death in 1791?

Franz Xaver Süssmayr finished the Requiem for Constanze Mozart after Joseph Eybler gave up; only the Introitus was fully orchestrated at Mozart's death, and Count Walsegg had commissioned it for his late wife.

The Salzburg-born composer of The Magic Flute was already writing little pieces at what age?

Mozart was 5 when his father Leopold wrote down his first little keyboard pieces in 1761; he went on to produce more than 600 catalogued works before dying at 35.

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

The European Union adopted it after the Council of Europe did in 1972; at the 1824 premiere the deaf Beethoven had to be turned around to see the applause he could not hear.

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?

Aida opened at Cairo's Khedivial Opera House on 24 December 1871; Khedive Isma'il Pasha had first wanted a work for the house's 1869 opening, and Verdi finally accepted a fee of 150,000 francs.

Which work did Mahler refuse to number as a symphony, hoping to dodge the 'curse of the ninth'?

Das Lied von der Erde, a song-symphony for two voices and orchestra, was left unnumbered after his Eighth; the dodge failed, as he finished a Ninth and died in 1911 with the Tenth in draft.

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

Suite bergamasque takes its name from Paul Verlaine's poem 'Clair de lune', whose opening stanza mentions bergamasks; the movement is marked 'andante très expressif' in D-flat major.

Ravel's Boléro is built on an unchanging rhythm repeated 169 times on which instrument?

A snare drum taps the same two-bar ostinato throughout, 169 times in all; Ravel called the piece 'orchestral tissue without music', a single unbroken crescendo written for the dancer Ida Rubinstein.

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

Vaslav Nijinsky's stamping, turned-in choreography drew as much protest as the score at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, yet the performance ran to the 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.

John Cage's silent piece 4'33" was premiered in Woodstock, New York in 1952 by which pianist?

David Tudor sat at the piano in the Maverick Concert Hall on 29 August 1952, closing and opening the lid to mark three silent movements of 30 seconds, 2 minutes 23 seconds and 1 minute 40 seconds.

Hildegard of Bingen's 12th-century 'Ordo Virtutum' is the oldest surviving example of what?

Ordo Virtutum, written around 1151, is the earliest known morality play, a sung drama in which the Virtues battle the Devil for a soul; Pope Benedict XVI named Hildegard a Doctor of the Church in 2012.

Which pianist-composer appeared on Germany's 100 Deutsche Mark banknote from 1989 until the euro?

Clara Schumann, trained from childhood by her father Friedrich Wieck, sustained a concert career of some 60 years and premiered many of Robert Schumann's works; the 100 DM note paired her portrait with a grand piano.

Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings began life as the slow movement of what?

It is the slow movement of Barber's String Quartet, Op. 11, of 1936, rescored for string orchestra; Toscanini gave the radio premiere in 1938, and it was broadcast when Franklin D. Roosevelt's death was announced in 1945.

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

'O Fortuna', a hymn to fortune's fickle wheel, frames the 24 medieval poems in Latin, Middle High German and Old French; after the 1937 Frankfurt premiere Orff told his publisher his earlier works could be destroyed.

Sibelius's Finlandia was performed under cover titles to evade censors from which empire?

Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire in 1899 and Russian censors disliked patriotic music, so Finlandia went out under titles like 'Happy Feelings at the Awakening of Finnish Spring'; its hymn tune is Sibelius's own.

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

William Tell, of 1829, was the last of Rossini's 39 operas, after which he all but retired; its overture opens with five solo cellos before the storm, pastoral and galloping finale.

Which composer signed a fan with the opening of The Blue Danube and 'Unfortunately not by' himself?

Johannes Brahms wrote the waltz's opening bars on a fan belonging to a member of Strauss's family and signed it 'Unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms'; the piece began in 1867 as a choral number for a Vienna men's singing society.

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

Stanley Kubrick used the fanfare under the opening sunrise and the bone-toss sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey; the tone poem is based on Nietzsche's book, and Eumir Deodato's 1973 jazz-funk version reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

How many years is the Halberstadt performance of John Cage's As Slow As Possible, begun in 2001, scheduled to run?

The performance is scheduled for 639 years, ending in 2640, because Halberstadt's pioneering organ of 1361 was 639 years old in 2000; the first pipes sounded only in 2003, and sandbags hold the keys down.

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

The oboe gives the A because its penetrating tone carries through the ensemble and its pitch is hard to adjust; that A is 440 Hz, adopted as an international standard in 1955 and reaffirmed as ISO 16 in 1975.

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

The concert on 7 July 1990 came the night before the FIFA World Cup final at Rome's Stadio Olimpico; the live album, crowned by Pavarotti's 'Nessun dorma', became the best-selling classical album ever, topping 10 million copies.

Soprano Maria Callas, known as 'La Divina', was born in 1923 where?

Maria Callas was born in Manhattan, New York, to Greek immigrant parents on 2 December 1923 and moved to Athens at 13; she died in Paris in 1977 at 53, her ashes later scattered over the Aegean.

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 composer took Beethoven on as a pupil when he arrived in Vienna in 1792?

Joseph Haydn taught Beethoven from late 1792 until leaving for London in 1794; Neefe had taught him back in Bonn, and Prince Lichnowsky soon became his Vienna patron.

What is the Heiligenstadt Testament?

Written in 1802, it records his thoughts of suicide and his resolve to live on for his art.

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was first performed on 7 May 1824 at which theatre?

The Kärntnertortheater, Vienna's court opera house by the Carinthian Gate, hosted the premiere; three sections of the Missa solemnis shared the programme, and contralto Caroline Unger turned the deaf composer to face the applause.

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

Fidelio opened at the Theater an der Wien on 20 November 1805, days after Napoleon's troops occupied Vienna; Beethoven revised it in 1806 and 1814, and its early versions and overtures carry the heroine's name, Leonore.

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

Beethoven addressed her as 'Unsterbliche Geliebte', the Immortal Beloved, in a letter written at Teplitz on 6-7 July 1812 and never sent; Antonie Brentano and Josephine Brunsvik are the leading candidates.

In which key is Mozart's Symphony No. 40, K. 550?

Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, was completed in July 1788; Mozart's only other minor-key symphony, the 'little' No. 25 of 1773, is also in G minor.

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 was dismissed by his Salzburg employers while visiting which city in 1781?

He stayed there for the rest of his life, finding fame but no long-term security.

Idomeneo, Mozart's 1781 opera seria, was commissioned for the court of which city?

Idomeneo was commissioned by Elector Karl Theodor of Bavaria and premiered at Munich's Cuvilliés Theatre on 29 January 1781, two days after Mozart's 25th birthday.

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

Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1790) complete the trio of Italian comedies Mozart wrote with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte; his last three symphonies and the Clarinet Concerto also date from these final years.

In which town was Johann Sebastian Bach born in 1685?

Bach was born in Eisenach, Thuringia, on 21 March 1685 (old style); orphaned at ten, he lived five years with his eldest brother Johann Christoph, an organist in Ohrdruf.

How many children did J. S. Bach father, four of whom became composers?

Bach had twenty children, seven with Maria Barbara and thirteen with Anna Magdalena, though only ten reached adulthood; Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian all became composers.

Whose 1829 performance of the St Matthew Passion launched the Bach Revival?

Mendelssohn was 20 at the time; the performance re-established Bach as a giant of Western music.

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

The Goldberg Variations, published in 1741 as the fourth part of Bach's Clavier-Übung, set 30 variations over the bass of an opening Aria; the name comes from harpsichordist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg.

Roughly how many public performances did Chopin give after settling in Paris?

Chopin gave only about 30 public concerts in his 18 Paris years, preferring the salon; he lived by selling compositions and teaching piano to wealthy pupils.

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

George Sand, pen name of Aurore Dupin, was Chopin's companion from 1838 to 1847; the break with her and her children came two years before his death.

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

Chopin and George Sand wintered at the Carthusian monastery of Valldemossa on Mallorca from November 1838; despite rain, illness and a hostile village he finished the 24 Preludes there.

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

The Minute Waltz, Op. 64 No. 1, got its name from 'minute' meaning small rather than sixty seconds; a typical performance runs close to two minutes.

Which piano maker did Chopin form a long, close association with in Paris?

Friedrich Kalkbrenner introduced him to Camille Pleyel soon after he arrived.

Which two teachers gave the young Liszt lessons?

In Vienna from 1822 the boy Liszt studied piano with Carl Czerny, himself a Beethoven pupil, and composition with the elderly Antonio Salieri.

What term was coined for the frenzy Liszt inspired in audiences during his 1840s tours?

His stardom was unlike anything earlier virtuosos had experienced.

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

Symphonic poem was the term Liszt coined for single-movement orchestral works on literary or pictorial subjects; he wrote twelve of them in Weimar between 1848 and 1858, Les préludes among them.

Which Bavarian king, crowned at 18 in 1864, transformed Wagner's fortunes?

Ludwig's support eventually made the Bayreuth Festspielhaus possible.

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

Gesamtkunstwerk translates as 'total work of art'; Wagner set out the ideal in essays such as 'The Artwork of the Future' (1849) and 'Opera and Drama' (1851).

Wagner's "Bridal Chorus" — the wedding processional "Here Comes the Bride" — comes from which opera?

The Bridal Chorus opens Act III of Lohengrin (1850), sung as Elsa and Lohengrin are led to the bridal chamber; Mendelssohn's Wedding March traditionally plays the couple back out.

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 is regarded as an important precursor to modernist music?

Tristan und Isolde (1865) opens with the unresolved 'Tristan chord'; its extreme chromaticism and shifting tonal centres pushed harmony to its limits and pointed toward Schoenberg's 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 form the peaks of Verdi's middle period?

Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore and La traviata (both 1853) came in a two-year burst; Macbeth (1847) is often called his first masterpiece.

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 (1887) and Falstaff (1893), both Shakespeare adaptations with librettos by Arrigo Boito, came after a long silence following Aida and the Requiem; Verdi was 73 and 79 at their premieres.

Which is the only opera Claude Debussy completed?

Pelléas et Mélisande, on Maeterlinck's play, opened at the Opéra-Comique in April 1902 when Debussy was 39; Rodrigue et Chimène and the Poe opera La chute de la maison Usher were left unfinished.

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

Debussy rejected 'Impressionist', writing in 1908 of 'what the imbeciles call impressionism'; he preferred links to symbolist poetry and subtitled La mer 'three symphonic sketches'.

With which cantata did Debussy win France's top composition prize in 1884?

He had entered the Paris Conservatoire at ten, originally as a pianist.

Which impresario commissioned Stravinsky's first three ballets for the Ballets Russes?

Sergei Diaghilev commissioned The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913) for his Paris-based Ballets Russes, making the young Stravinsky famous.

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 is buried on which Venetian cemetery island, near Diaghilev's tomb?

Stravinsky died in New York in 1971 but was buried on San Michele, Venice's cemetery island, in the Orthodox section a few steps from Diaghilev; he had become a French citizen in 1934 and an American in 1945.

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 sent Rachmaninoff into a four-year depression?

Therapy helped him recover and finish the hugely successful Second Piano Concerto in 1901.

Where did Rachmaninoff premiere his Prelude in C-sharp minor at his 1892 public debut?

He played it on 26 September 1892 at the Moscow Electrical Exhibition; the prelude, from his Morceaux de fantaisie, Op. 3, haunted him as a demanded encore for the rest of his life.

Where did Rachmaninoff die in 1943?

He had moved there in 1942 for his health and died of melanoma.

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

The Ospedale della Pietà was a Venetian home for foundling girls whose musical training made its choir and orchestra famous; Vivaldi taught violin there from 1703 and wrote concertos for its players.

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, published in Amsterdam in 1711, was Vivaldi's first printed set of concertos; Bach arranged six of its twelve for harpsichord or organ.

In which city was Handel born in 1685?

He settled in London in 1712 and became a naturalised British subject in 1727.

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

Zadok the Priest, one of four anthems Handel wrote for George II's coronation in October 1727, has been sung at every British coronation since, most recently for Charles III in 2023.

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

Handel reached Dublin in November 1741 and gave Messiah its premiere at the Fishamble Street Music Hall on 13 April 1742 for local charities; his last Italian opera, Deidamia, had already appeared in January 1741.

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'.

Which three "Father of" titles are commonly given to Haydn?

Haydn is called the father of the symphony (he wrote over a hundred) and of the string quartet (more than sixty), and his sonata-form movements set the Classical model; he was the elder brother of composer Michael Haydn.

With which impresario did Haydn set out for London in December 1790?

Johann Peter Salomon, a Bonn-born violinist turned London impresario, fetched Haydn in person from Vienna; they crossed the Channel on New Year's Day 1791, and the twelve London symphonies followed.

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 had a triumphant premiere in 1910, unusual for his controversial works?

The Eighth, nicknamed the 'Symphony of a Thousand', was sketched at Maiernigg in eight weeks in 1906; its Munich premiere on 12 September 1910 was the greatest public triumph of Mahler's life.

Which two American institutions did Mahler briefly direct late in life?

Mahler conducted at the Metropolitan Opera from January 1908, under a four-season contract signed with Heinrich Conried in 1907, and led the New York Philharmonic from 1909 until his final illness in 1911.

Whom did Mahler meet in November 1901 and later marry?

Alma Schindler, stepdaughter of the painter Carl Moll, met Mahler at a Vienna dinner in November 1901 and married him in March 1902; she later wed Walter Gropius and Franz Werfel.

Which musical couple's support and guidance did Brahms gain through Joseph Joachim?

Joachim sent Brahms to Robert and Clara Schumann in Düsseldorf in 1853; Robert hailed him in print as a genius, and after Robert's 1854 breakdown Brahms stayed on to support Clara, remaining devoted to her for life.

Brahms's most lucrative compositions were two sets of dances in what style?

The Hungarian Dances, published in two sets in 1869 and 1880, out-earned everything else Brahms wrote; touring with Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi in 1853 had introduced him to 'gypsy-style' music such as the csardas.

In which city was Brahms born in 1833?

Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg on 7 May 1833, the son of a double-bass player; he settled in Vienna in the 1860s, never married, and destroyed many early works out of self-criticism.

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

The War of the Romantics pitted Brahms, Joachim and Clara Schumann against the 'New German School' of Liszt and Wagner; Hans von Bülow later crowned Brahms the third B after Bach and Beethoven.

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

'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing' is sung to a tune Mendelssohn wrote for his 1840 Festgesang honouring Gutenberg, adapted by William Cummings in 1855; his A Midsummer Night's Dream music also gave the world the Wedding March.

Which orchestra did Mendelssohn accept the direction of in 1835?

Mendelssohn took over the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1835, declining the Munich Opera and the editorship of a Leipzig music journal; he made it one of Europe's finest and founded the Leipzig Conservatory in 1843.

Which Mendelssohn sibling's Easter Sonata was for a time mistakenly attributed to Felix?

Some of Fanny's early songs were published under her brother's name.

In which Tuscan city was Puccini born in 1858?

Puccini was born in Lucca on 22 December 1858, the sixth of nine children; for generations his family had supplied the maestro di cappella of the city's cathedral of San Martino.

Which realistic style of Italian opera did Puccini become a leading exponent of?

Verismo, the 'realist' school launched by Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana in 1890, found its leading exponent in Puccini, whose La bohème (1896), Tosca (1900) and Madama Butterfly (1904) brought it worldwide popularity.

Puccini's doctors sent him to which city for experimental radiation treatment for throat cancer?

Puccini went to Brussels in November 1924 for experimental radium treatment of his throat cancer; he died there on 29 November, leaving Turandot to be finished by Franco Alfano.

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

Henrik Ibsen asked Grieg in 1874 to write incidental music for Peer Gynt, staged in 1876; taking the job offended Bjørnson, with whom Grieg had been planning an opera, Olav Trygvason.

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

Grieg was born in Bergen in 1843; the city's Grieghallen concert hall and Grieg Academy carry his name, and his villa Troldhaugen on its outskirts is now the Grieg Museum.

Which composer sight-read Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor from the manuscript in 1870?

Franz Liszt played the concerto at sight from the manuscript in Rome in April 1870, shouting encouragement at the finale; Grieg had written it on holiday in Denmark in the summer of 1868.

Which publisher commissioned Dvořák's Slavonic Dances on Brahms's recommendation?

Fritz Simrock, Brahms's Berlin publisher, commissioned the Slavonic Dances in 1878 after Brahms praised Dvořák's Moravian Duets; their sales launched Dvořák's international career.

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

Jeannette Thurber hired Dvořák to direct her National Conservatory of Music of America at $15,000 a year; his 'New World' Symphony and the 'American' Quartet date from the stay.

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

Rusalka, premiered in Prague in March 1901, is Dvořák's one opera in the international repertoire; its 'Song to the Moon' is a soprano favourite.

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

Saint-Saëns was organist of La Madeleine from 1857 to 1877, after four years at Saint-Merri; the Madeleine was the official church of the Second Empire, and Liszt called him the greatest organist in the world.

Which Saint-Saëns work was conceived with his students in mind but not finished until 1886?

The Carnival of the Animals was first sketched for his pupils at the École Niedermeyer in the 1860s and finished in February 1886; Saint-Saëns banned public performance in his lifetime, allowing only 'The Swan' to be published.

Mussorgsky belonged to which group of Russian nationalist composers?

The Five, or Mighty Handful, were Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov; many of Mussorgsky's works, including Boris Godunov, were long known only in Rimsky-Korsakov's revisions.

Which Mussorgsky piano suite did Ravel orchestrate in 1922?

Pictures at an Exhibition honours the artist Viktor Hartmann, who died at 39; Ravel's 1922 orchestration is the version most people know, and 'The Great Gate of Kiev' is its finale.

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

Scheherazade (1888), named for the storyteller of the Arabian Nights, gives her voice to a solo violin across four movements; Rimsky-Korsakov had become a professor at the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1871 while still learning Western technique.

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

Parade, devised by Jean Cocteau for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in May 1917, featured Picasso's Cubist sets and costumes and Satie's score with typewriter and siren; Satie also inspired the group Les Six.

Which Paris music school did Satie enter as a mature student after failing to distinguish himself at the Conservatoire?

Satie enrolled at the Schola Cantorum in 1905, aged 39, to study counterpoint under Vincent d'Indy and Albert Roussel; in the 1880s he had earned a living playing piano in Montmartre cabarets like Le Chat Noir.

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

Nadia Boulanger taught Copland at Fontainebleau and in Paris from 1921 to 1924, the first of many Americans she trained; he was later dubbed the 'Dean of American Music'.

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

Fanfare for the Common Man and the Third Symphony belong to the same vein.

Why did the famed Paris teacher Boulanger refuse to take on George Gershwin?

Ravel voiced similar objections when Gershwin asked to study with him.

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

Of Thee I Sing won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the first musical to do so; it went to George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin, while composer George was left out because music was not considered.

Leonard Bernstein was born with which first name?

He was the first American-born conductor to win international acclaim.

How many Grammy Awards did Leonard Bernstein win, including a Lifetime Achievement Award?

Bernstein collected 16 Grammys, counting his 1985 Lifetime Achievement Award, alongside seven Emmys and two Tonys, plus an Oscar nomination for the On the Waterfront score.

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

'Dance of the Knights', also called 'Montagues and Capulets', accompanies the Capulets' ball in Romeo and Juliet (1938); Prokofiev also wrote Peter and the Wolf and the March from The Love for Three Oranges.

Bartók's study of folk music helped found which discipline?

Bartók's field recordings of Hungarian, Romanian and Slovak peasant songs, begun with Kodály in 1906, made him a founder of ethnomusicology, a discipline first known as comparative musicology.

Which Bartók opera and ballet appear among his most notable works?

Bluebeard's Castle, a one-act opera of 1911, and the pantomime-ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, banned after its 1926 Cologne premiere, are Bartók's stage landmarks; Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and the six quartets are also central.

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

Anton Webern and Alban Berg studied with Schoenberg from 1904 and followed him into atonal, expressionist music before he formulated the twelve-tone method around 1921.

At which American university did Schoenberg teach from 1936 to 1944?

Schoenberg taught at UCLA from 1936 until mandatory retirement at 70 in 1944, after a year at USC; he had been forced out of the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1933 under Nazi civil-service laws.

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, Godfrey Reggio's wordless 1982 montage of landscapes and cities, was Glass's first major film score; he later scored Kundun (1997), which brought an Oscar nomination, and The Truman Show (1998).

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

The 24 Caprices for Solo Violin, Op. 1, published in 1820, end with the A minor theme that Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Lutosławski all varied; Paganini's Paris casino venture failed in 1837 and he died in Nice in 1840.

Which sister of Napoleon employed Paganini as first violin at her court in Lucca?

Elisa Bonaparte, made Princess of Lucca and Piombino by her brother in 1805, appointed Paganini first violin at her court, where he played for four years; Pauline and Caroline were her younger sisters.

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 was Berlioz expected to follow, attending a Paris college before defying his family?

Berlioz was sent to Paris in 1821 to study medicine, as his physician father wished, but fled the dissecting room for the Conservatoire; the Symphonie fantastique of 1830 made his name instead.

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

Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood), Op. 15, of 1838 is thirteen short pieces for adults looking back on childhood; 'Träumerei' (Dreaming), the seventh, is the best known.

Which music journal did Robert Schumann co-found?

Schumann co-founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in Leipzig in 1834 and edited it for a decade, using it to champion Chopin and, in 1853, Brahms; born in Zwickau, he had first studied law at Leipzig and Heidelberg.

Which Shakespeare play did Purcell adapt as The Fairy Queen?

The Fairy Queen (1692) is a semi-opera built on an anonymous adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, with Purcell's masques inserted between the spoken acts; his Dido and Aeneas remains his best-known stage work.

Which 1945 opera brought Benjamin Britten to international fame?

Peter Grimes, about a Suffolk fisherman from Crabbe's poem, opened at Sadler's Wells on 7 June 1945, a month after VE Day; Britten, born in Lowestoft to a dentist, went on to write Billy Budd and Death in Venice.

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

Vaughan Williams spent three months with Maurice Ravel in Paris in 1907-08, learning, he said, to orchestrate 'in points of colour rather than in lines'; a late developer, he found his true voice only in his late thirties.

For how many years was Herbert von Karajan principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic?

Karajan led the Berlin Philharmonic for 34 years, from his 1955 appointment 'for life' until he resigned in April 1989, three months before his death; by one estimate he sold 200 million records.

Herbert von Karajan's family was of which ancestry?

His great-great-grandfather Georgios Karajannis left Kozani for Vienna in 1767.

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.

Pavarotti's last appearance in a staged opera, at the Met in 2004, was in which role?

Pavarotti sang Cavaradossi in Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera on 13 March 2004, his final staged opera; he had made his Met debut in 1968 as Rodolfo in La bohème.

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

Coda, Italian for 'tail', is the closing passage added after a movement's main structure has run its course; Beethoven's codas, like the one ending the Fifth Symphony's finale, can rival a development section in length.

How many keys does a standard modern piano have?

A standard piano has 88 keys, 52 white and 36 black, spanning A0 to C8; Bösendorfer's Imperial adds nine extra bass keys, and Stuart & Sons build pianos with 102 and 108.

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

Piano hammers are wooden, usually hornbeam or maple, with compressed wool felt glued over the head; most notes have three strings, and the bass graduates down to two and then one.

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, Italian for 'pinched', tells the player to pluck with a finger; 'arco' returns them to the bow, while col legno means striking the strings with the wood of the bow.

Which composer wrote the first operas, at the dawn of the Baroque era?

Jacopo Peri's Dafne (1598), now mostly lost, and Euridice (1600) are counted as the first operas, created in Florence by the Camerata circle; Monteverdi's L'Orfeo followed in 1607.

Which lively movement usually closes a Baroque dance suite?

Gigue is the fast closing movement of the standard Baroque suite, after the allemande, courante and sarabande; descended from the British jig, it ends all six of Bach's cello suites.

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

Figured bass, or basso continuo notation, writes numerals under a bass line to tell the keyboard or lute player which chords to fill in; tablature and neumes are far older systems.

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 of Russia's 'Mighty Handful', composer of the opera Prince Igor, was a chemist by day who called music a hobby?

Alexander Borodin's 'Polovtsian Dances' from Prince Igor became the Broadway tune 'Stranger in Paradise'; he published real chemistry on aldehydes and left the opera unfinished.

Florence Price, the first Black woman to have a symphony played by a major US orchestra, was born in which Southern capital?

Little Rock was Price's birthplace in 1887; her Symphony in E minor won the 1932 Wanamaker prize and the Chicago Symphony played it in 1933.

Who in 1913 became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome for composition, five years before her death at 24?

Lili Boulanger won at 19; her older sister Nadia, who had tried and failed to win it, became the 20th century's most famous composition teacher, training Copland and Glass.

Whose 1968 chamber-orchestra recording pulled Pachelbel's Canon out of centuries of obscurity?

Jean-François Paillard's slow, lush 1968 recording with his chamber orchestra turned the Canon in D into a hit; one theory says Pachelbel wrote it for Johann Christoph Bach's wedding in 1694, and by the 1970s it was recorded everywhere.