Musical Trivia Quiz
Test your knowledge of completely useless facts of musical history!
1. At the 1st performance of which now famous violin concerto, did the soloist also play a piece on just 2 strings and with the violin upside down? Clue: the composer saw the sea only once and as a child.
2. Where, in Wagner's Ring cycle, can you hear some English sung? (At the English National Opera is not the answer!).
3. How did Mozart foresee the space age in his 31st Symphony K.297?
4. Which famous conductor would put on black gloves to conduct the funeral march of Beethoven's 3rd symphony?
5. What is Gesumtkunstwerk?
A bavarian sausage?
A bullet - proof Mercedes?
Wagner's theory of Opera?
6. Who said "Tradition is the last bad performance"?
7. Who had 3 YEARS worth of rehearsals before performing Beethoven's 9th symphony?
8. Apart from music, what 2 other things did Dvorak have a passion for?
9. Who is reputed to have said "I wish I could write tunes like Tchaikovsky, so that people would whistle them when leaving the hall"?
10. Why were the reviews of the 1st performance of Prokofiev's Scythian Suite op.20 particularly interesting?
11. Which English composer wrote 21 of his 32 symphonies after the age of 80?
12. Who said "You should have the score in your head and not your head in the score"?
13. Name 2 composers who wrote their best music after going deaf.
14. What did Brahms write in his copy of the Blue Danube?
15. Of which work was it said " It sounds as if somebody smeared the score of Tristan whilst it was still wet"?
16. Who said about Richard Strauss " To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man, I put it on again"?
17. What is the connection between Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss and the Trojan War?
18. What did Carl Maria von Weber say about Beethoven on hearing his 7th symphony?
19. What is the similarity, yet difference, between the lives of Liszt and Rachmaninov?
20. Fom which work of Richard Strauss did Andrew Lloyd Webber steal the "theme" to his "musical" Jesus Christ Superstar?
21. Who said "dissonance is relative"?
22. Which famous composer was so obsessed with the Dies Irae that he used it in nearly every major work? (Clue : for most of his life he had a skinhead haircut).
23. In which Italian opera overture does the composer get the music stands to join in?
24. Why did the 1st performance of Berlioz' Requiem nearly grind to a halt?
25. Who said "melody is the surface of harmony"?
26. What did Brahms say to the person who pointed out to him the similarity between the theme of the finale of his 1st symphony and the finale of Beethovens 9th?
27. When the young Schoenberg sent his sextet Verklerte Nacht in for a composers competition, why did it not only fail to win, but was rejected outright?
28. How did James Henderson of the New York "Sun" describe the 1st American performance of Richard Strauss' Ein Heldenleben under the composers direction?
29. Which famous composer was called "Signore Crescendo" and why?
30. Which "Pop" star of the 1860's had female fans remove hairs from his head (often while he was still playing!) and lovingly preserved these and his cigar butts in glass cases?
31. Which famous composer wrote an oboe solo in the middle of an orchestral work in which you can tell that it portrays a woman with red hair?
32. Who said "Nobody ever put up a statue to a critic"?
If you'd like to see if you got all the answers right please e-mail me.