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

November 19th: This time, it’s a Quiz about knowing your limitations. This Great Composer loved opera. He attended the opera often. He was conversant on contemporary performers and on two centuries of the art form. But when friends urged him to try his composing hand at an opera our Great Composer danced around the subject, explaining how impossible it was to get an opera staged, and how expensive; how one had to wait for the public to tire of the opera composer du jour. And then there was the unavoidable fact that opera was a collaborative enterprise involving a great many people. “That is why,” he said, “I feel that happy is the composer who needs no other interpreter than himself.” So who was this solitary man, this Great Composer?
Frederic Chopin, who never wrote an opera, but stuck mostly to music he could interpret all by himself at the piano.

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November 18th: This time, it’s a Quiz about doing what your heart tells you. This Great Composer once got a divorce in Las Vegas, and the next day remarried to the woman with whom he would spend his remaining twenty years. He did a lot of bold things in the desert, and it took him to Carnegie Hall, where he conducted many times. He taught at the Juilliard School, and served as a panelist on the radio show “A Song Is Born” judging works of unknown composers. He was hardly unknown, but one of the best known figures in music in his day. I mean, he had his own radio show, which had a desert theme song. So who was this man who liked the heat, this Great Composer?
Ferde Grofe, who had his own radio show in the 1930, The Ferde Grofe Show, on NBC, which used “On the Trail” from the Grand Canyon Suite as its sign-on and sign-off theme. He was also orchestra leader for the Fred Allen Show.

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November 17th: This time, it’s a Quiz about knowing what you know and not being shy about saying it. In a letter to the conductor of one of his masterpieces, this Great Composer, in praise, wrote, “It is certain beyond question that the interior rhythm of all music depends on him who evokes it, just as any word depends on the mouth that pronounces it.” Let me run by you again. He said it’s certain beyond question (and by the way that’s the way this Great Composer often talked - with absolute finality) “certain behind question” that the interior of all music depends on the one who plays it, just as any word depends on the mouth that pronounces it. So who as this certain man, this Great Composer?
Claude Debussy. He wrote this observation in a letter to the conductor Andre Messager, who was on the podium for the premiere of Debussy’s opera Pelleas and Melisande.

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November 16th: This time, it's a Quiz about coping with a bad ego day. When this Great Composer was in his early 50s and well-established in his career and in the hearts of his countryman and women, he moved into a new home, the main attraction of which was a splendid library. But perhaps being surrounded by such a splendid library contributed to his self of well, lack of splendor, for at this time he wrote to a friend, "I am like a sham book in a library, only a name and useless for wit or wisdom." So who was this self-described sham, this Great Composer?
Sir Edward Elgar. He and his wife and their 20 year old daughter moved into a flat at 58 New Cavendish Street in London, in March, 1910. By this time Elgar had produced his Enigma Variations, the first four Pomp and Circumstance Marches, his Violin Concerto (that very year) and his First Symphony, in the wit and wisdom key of A-flat.

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November 12th: This time, it’s a Quiz about staying close to your roots. This Great Composer spent the first half of his life struggling as a peasant musician, and the second half of his life as a famous, wealthy, peasant composer, before dying poor. He refused to let success change him. He kept many of his old peasant ways, and his old peasant friends. “It is to the poor,” he said, “that I turn for musical greatness. The poor work hard. They study seriously.” So who was this hard working peasant, this Great Composer?
Antonin Dvorak. In the end Dvorak, never the shrew businessman, had sold the rights to most of his works for a pittance and was nearly destitute at his death.

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November 11th: Veterans Day Edition. This Great Composer already had an established career when war broke out. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps and rose to the rank of corporal, and he was commissioned to write music to support the war effort. Two pieces survived to be played in civilian concert halls during peacetime. So who was this musical officer, this Great Composer?
Samuel Barber. As a military officer he wrote his Symphony No.2, and the Commando March.

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November 10th: This time, it’s a Quiz about recovering from a wound by an old teacher. At age 32, after working long and hard on an opera he hoped would win a prestigious completion, this Great Composer was denied the prize because of his former teacher. This sent him tail-spinning into a depression and along with his perpetual overwork and his lifelong asthma he was reduced to such a state that his doctor ordered him to take time off in a warm climate. He went to Algeria, where he spent much of his time bicycling in the desert. The experience led him to write a major work for orchestra. It was premiered back home, without success, but one important colleague claimed if it had been premiered in Paris it would have made him a household name ten years before he actually did become a household name. So who was this bicycling former student, this Great Composer?
Gustav Holst. The former teacher who stabbed him in the back was Sir Charles Stanford. The result of Holst's biking trip to Algeria was the orchestral suite Beni Mora which bombed when it was first played in London, but Holst’s friend Ralph Vaughan Williams said if it had been premiered in Paris, it would have made Holst a household name. He would have to wait for The Planets for that to happen.

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