Composers Of Classical Music Trivia Quiz

Answer: Szymanowski

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

Answer: Wagner

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

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

Answer: Beethoven

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

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

Answer: Györg Ligeti

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

Answer: Shostakovich

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

Answer: Prokofiev

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

Answer: Manuel de Falla

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

Answer: Both had musically gifted wives

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

Answer: a French composer in Medieval times

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

Answer: Sweelinck

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