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60 free Beethoven trivia questions with answers. Beethoven is the composer everyone can hum but few really know. This quiz covers the whole story: the Bonn childhood and the father who lied about his age, the move to Vienna and lessons with Haydn, the hearing loss that began in his twenties, the conversation books and ear trumpets, the custody fight over his nephew, and the funeral that stopped the city. The music gets equal weight. Expect questions on all nine symphonies, the piano sonatas and concertos, Fidelio, Für Elise, the Missa solemnis and the late quartets, plus the afterlife of the man in statues, paintings, Peanuts and a St. Bernard movie. About a third of the questions are easy enough for anyone who has heard the Fifth; the rest climb to the level of a music student. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, mostly Wikipedia's Beethoven articles, and each question shows its citation.
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Q 01In which German city was Beethoven born?
Bonn
His birthplace at Bonngasse 20 is now the Beethoven-Haus museum, which also displays several of his ear trumpets.
Q 02Beethoven's exact birth date is unknown, but his baptism was recorded on which date?
17 December 1770
Because babies were usually baptised within a day or two, his birthday is generally celebrated on 16 December.
Q 03In November 1792 Beethoven left Bonn for good and settled in the capital of which empire?
Austria
He arrived amid rumours of war spilling out of revolutionary France and never returned to Bonn.
Q 04On arriving in Vienna, Beethoven studied composition with which celebrated older composer?
Joseph Haydn
Count Waldstein's farewell note promised he would receive "Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands".
Q 05Which physical affliction, which began around 1798, famously did not stop Beethoven composing?
Hearing loss
He told the English pianist Charles Neate in 1815 that the trouble had started in 1798, when he was still in his twenties.
Q 06How much did Beethoven's father shave off his real age on posters for his first public performance in 1778?
One year
Johann was consciously copying Leopold Mozart, who had toured Wolfgang and Nannerl around Europe as children.
Q 07Who was Beethoven's most important Bonn teacher, the man who published his first work in 1783?
Christian Gottlob Neefe
Neefe put Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier into the boy's hands and made him assistant court organist while still a teenager.
Q 08Beethoven's grandfather, also named Ludwig, rose to which post at the Bonn court in 1761?
Kapellmeister
The elder Ludwig came from Mechelen in what is now Belgium, which is why the family name carries the Flemish 'van' rather than the German 'von'.
Q 09What annual pension did three nobles promise Beethoven in 1809 to keep him in Vienna?
4,000 florins
Kinsky was called to military duty, never paid his share and died in 1812 after falling from his horse, so the promised sum arrived only in part.
Q 10From about 1818, how did visitors communicate with the almost totally deaf Beethoven?
Writing in notebooks
Around 400 of these 'conversation books' survive; his secretary Schindler destroyed 264 and altered others to protect an idealised image.
Q 11Which inventor, better known for patenting the metronome, designed Beethoven's ear trumpets?
Johann Nepomuk Maelzel
Maelzel also built the panharmonicon, the mechanical orchestra for which Beethoven first wrote 'Wellington's Victory'.
Q 12After his brother Kaspar died in 1815, Beethoven fought sister-in-law Johanna over custody of whom?
His nephew Karl
Kaspar's will gave joint guardianship to Beethoven and Johanna, which Beethoven refused to accept; the dispute dragged on for years.
Q 13Which pianist-composer gave the first public performance of the Hammerklavier Sonata, in 1836?
Franz Liszt
Q 21At which Vienna venue did Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth both premiere on 22 December 1808?
Theater an der Wien
The under-rehearsed programme ran more than four hours in an unheated hall and consisted entirely of Beethoven premieres.
Q 22In which key is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony written?
C minor
C minor was Beethoven's key for storm and struggle; the Pathétique sonata and the Coriolan overture use it too.
Q 23How many movements does Beethoven's Sixth Symphony have, one more than was usual at the time?
Five
The extra movement is the thunderstorm, which is interrupted only when the shepherds' song of thanksgiving arrives.
The same year Liszt played it in Paris, Berlioz wrote an enthusiastic review; the sonata is still regarded as Beethoven's hardest piano work.
Q 14Which London piano maker presented Beethoven with one of its instruments in 1818?
Broadwood
Beethoven had earlier owned an Érard from Paris, which he gave to his brother Johann in 1824 after declaring it no longer of any use.
Q 15Beethoven died in Vienna on 26 March 1827. How old was he?
56
Only his friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner and a 'Frau van Beethoven' were in the room; the funeral three days later drew a crowd of around 10,000.
Q 16The Peanuts character Schroeder, who worships Beethoven, lives at a house whose street number is what?
1770
Charles Schulz gave Schroeder the address 1770, the year Beethoven was born, and had him play the composer's music on a toy piano.
Q 17What does Beethoven's reported late remark 'Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est' mean?
Applaud, friends, the comedy is over
Later that same day, when a gift of wine arrived from his publisher Schott, he whispered 'Pity – too late'.
Q 18To whom did Beethoven originally dedicate his Third Symphony before scratching the name off?
Napoleon Bonaparte
The nickname 'Eroica' (heroic) replaced it, and the symphony is often called the first Romantic symphony.
Q 19What is the Italian nickname of Beethoven's Third Symphony?
Eroica
Its second movement is a funeral march, and the whole work runs about 50 minutes, roughly twice the length of a typical Haydn symphony.
Q 20The four-note opening of Beethoven's Fifth resembles the Morse code for which letter?
V
Dot-dot-dot-dash is Morse V, for Victory, so the motif became a signature of Allied broadcasts to occupied Europe.
Q 24Beethoven described his Sixth Symphony as 'more the expression of feeling than painting'. What is its nickname?
Pastoral
He was a devoted country walker who regularly left Vienna to compose in rural villages such as Heiligenstadt.
Q 25Which movement of Beethoven's Seventh drew an immediate encore at its 1813 premiere?
The Allegretto
The concert was a charity benefit for soldiers wounded at the Battle of Hanau, and the orchestra included Spohr, Hummel, Meyerbeer and Salieri.
Q 26Which of Beethoven's symphonies did he fondly call 'my little Symphony in F'?
The Eighth
It is his shortest symphony, written in just four months in 1812 and unusually carries no dedication.
Q 27The choral finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony sets a poem by which German writer?
Friedrich Schiller
Schiller wrote 'An die Freude' in 1785; Beethoven had wanted to set it since his Bonn years, decades before the symphony.
Q 28Who turned the deaf Beethoven around to see the applause at the 1824 premiere of the Ninth Symphony?
Contralto Caroline Unger
Umlauf officially conducted while Beethoven shared the stage; the singers had been told to follow Umlauf and ignore the composer's beat.
Q 29The 'Ode to Joy' melody from the Ninth Symphony was adopted in 1972 as the official anthem of which body?
Council of Europe
The European Communities, now the EU, followed in 1985; the anthem is played without words so no one language is favoured.
Q 30Legend says the CD's 74-minute playing time was chosen to hold which Beethoven work?
The Ninth
Sony's Norio Ohga is usually credited with the story; whatever the truth, the Ninth was among the first works pressed on CD.