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Read "The World's Most Popular Music - Bolero" by your friendly DJ.

The Great Composer Quiz - Previous Answers
(Highlight the area under the question
to reveal the Composer or Masterwork)

November 5th: This time it’s a Quiz being attacked on two fronts. After a successful career, this Great Composer was reviled in the press of his native country as a traitor. However bad that was at least our Great Composer did not live in his native country. He lived in another country, and had made his career there. But now in his adopted country, which had gone to war with his native country, those in power who were defeated suddenly denounced him as well, saying he was “turning royalty into a farce and the army into a joke,” and therefore he was partly responsible for the defeat at the hands of his native country. So who was this man without a country, this Great Composer?
November 4th: This time, it’s a Quiz one hundred years in the making. This Great Composer made his first public appearance in the United States with his first completely solo recital one hundred years ago today. The recital took place at a college at which our Great Composer’s sister-in-law was later a professor of botany. So who was this campus visitor, this Great Composer?
Jacques Offenbach, who left Germany when he was just fourteen, for France, and made his career there writing of the stage. Offenbach left France during the Franco-Prussian war, and when he returned, after the Germans had defeated the French, he found he had fallen out of favor with the defeated Bonapartes, and so had his operettas.

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Sergei Rachmaninoff. The debut took place at Assembly Hall on the campus of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. It’s surprising that this was his first completely solo recital. By this time he was an established pianist in Russia, at age 36, but had never presented a recital entirely on his own. Rachmaninoff appeared three more times at Smith College - in 1921, 1928, and 1941, then the next year his sister-in-law (and cousin) Sophie Satin became a research associate to Albert Blakeslee in his Genetics Experiment Station, and later she became a visiting associate professor of botany at Smith for more than ten years.

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November 3rd:This time, it’s a Quiz trying to read the future in the grounds left at the bottom of your coffee cup. This Great Composer never composed in the afternoon or evening (always in the morning). After lunch he went to a coffee-house, drank a little black coffee and smoked for an hour or two while reading the newspapers. In the evening he went to theaters or other entertainments. He had a certain affection for Rossini operas, but thought, in the long run, they would not last because of their intrinsic lack of worth. He preferred the operas of Mozart and Beethoven’s Fidelio. Otherwise, he hardly knew the music of Bach, but loved Handel’s music. So who was this morning person who thought Rossini wouldn’t last, this Great Composer?
Franz Peter Schubert

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November 2nd: This time, it’s a Quiz about a mother’s tough love. When this Great Composer was a boy of ten years old, his mother took him to another city and placed him in a preparatory school for the School of Jurisprudence. He was to study law for the next several years. Our young Great Composer was very attached to his mother, adored her, and had never been separated from her. His first two years at school were intensely unhappy for him, until his family moved to the city where the school was located and he was again able to see his mother on a regular basis. So who was this heartsick child, this Great Composer?
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (“the porcelain child”). Tchaikovsky did enter Law School, and at 19 he became a clerk in the Ministry of Justice, and he remained there three years. But Tchaikovsky was so disinterested in his work that, years later, when he tried, he couldn’t remember what his duties had been.

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October 29th: This time, it’s a Quiz about what to leave behind, or to let others know about. This Great Composer wrote his will (that is, the last will he wrote) three days before his death, listing his property, which included four string instruments, two pistols, a salt-shaker, jewels, linen, clothes, music and books, and a French gold medal, sent by King Louie (well, one of the Louies, that would set it in too fine a time). So who was this gold medalist, this Great Composer?
Ludwig van Beethoven. The gold medal came from Louis the 18th of France. The French king had sent it to him in 1823, four years before Beethoven's death, with the message “The king graciously welcomed the homage paid to him by the score of your Mass.”

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October 28th: This time, it’s a Quiz about finding pleasure in oneself. This Great Composer is said to have been vain about his hair, and in some respects it was his most striking feature. His soft, effeminate face was almost always pale. He was of slight build, and his head seemed a little too large for his body. One acquaintance said that a new pair of lace cuffs would bring on almost the same kind of delirium that went into composing. So who was this small, pale, delirious, vain man, this Great Composer?
It might be Franz Liszt or Richard Wagner. They were vain about so much else about themselves. Berlioz had wild, attractive hair. But he was of medium build - not slight, and his face could not be described as effeminate. The answer is Mozart. He had an attractive shock of blond hair, which must have looked striking with his lace cuffs.

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October 27th: This time it’s a Quiz about the stresses of marital life. When this Great Composer was thirty-two he and his wife went mountain-climbing. Afterward he wrote, “Today she was more vigorous than I, which both pleased and angered me, because a husband doesn’t like to be left twenty paces behind his wife.” Shortly before this hike our Great Composer was excluded from a gathering held in his wife’s honor. He complained of this “rude impropriety,” and of his wife’s decision to attend the event anyway. It left him in a “miserable mood” for days. So who was this slow and excluded husband, this Great Composer?
Robert, husband of Clara Schumann. He had other reasons for his wounded pride. Clara, who of course was an outstanding pianist, was also reluctant to play his music in concert. Mostly she played works of Bach, Weber, Schumann’s friend Mendelssohn, and Schumann’s rival Liszt. In fact, once was asked to play one of her husband’s works and she replied she didn’t know any.

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