50 Fun Facts About Famous Composers

Balanchine staged Stravinsky's 1942 Circus Polka for the Ringling circus; which animals danced it?

Fifty elephants and fifty ballerinas danced the Circus Polka, which Stravinsky wrote after Balanchine phoned him to ask for a piece 'for some elephants'.

Which steak dish topped with foie gras and truffle honours the composer of The Barber of Seville?

Tournedos Rossini is filet mignon on a croûton under a slice of foie gras, one of several rich dishes named for Gioachino Rossini. He wrote no operas after Guillaume Tell in 1829 and spent his last decades in Paris as a gourmet.

Which planet, already known when Holst finished The Planets in 1917, has no movement in the suite?

Earth was skipped because Holst followed astrology rather than astronomy, and Pluto, found in 1930, got a movement only when Colin Matthews wrote one in 2000.

Schoenberg spelled his opera Moses und Aron with one 'a' to dodge a title with how many letters?

Schoenberg's triskaidekaphobia was so strong that 'Moses und Aaron', 13 letters, became 'Moses und Aron'; he died on Friday, 13 July 1951.

Haydn's 1797 birthday hymn for Emperor Francis II is now the national anthem of which country?

Germany's Deutschlandlied sets words Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote in 1841 to Haydn's 'Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser', an Austrian emperor's hymn.

Prokofiev died on 5 March 1953, the same day as which Soviet leader, whose mourners swamped Moscow?

Joseph Stalin's death the same day meant crowds mourning him for three days made it impossible to hold Prokofiev's funeral at the Composers' Union.

Which Scott Joplin rag from 1902 reached the Billboard top three in 1974 as the theme of The Sting?

The Entertainer climbed to No. 3 on the Hot 100 in Marvin Hamlisch's arrangement, seven decades after Joplin wrote it.

Which film composer can be glimpsed in the Buggles' 1979 video for 'Video Killed the Radio Star'?

Hans Zimmer worked with the Buggles long before winning Oscars for The Lion King and Dune.

Which Gershwin work premiered at Paul Whiteman's 1924 concert 'An Experiment in Modern Music'?

Rhapsody in Blue was orchestrated by Whiteman's arranger Ferde Grofé, with Gershwin himself playing the piano part at Aeolian Hall.

The 'Galop infernal', the tune every can-can line kicks to, ends which Offenbach operetta?

Orpheus in the Underworld ends with the gods throwing themselves into the galop, a tune the Moulin Rouge adopted for the can-can in the 1890s.

Which organist did the young Bach travel some 450 km, reportedly on foot, to hear play in Lübeck?

Dieterich Buxtehude's organ playing kept Bach in Lübeck about four months on a four-week leave, a 450-kilometre journey each way that he reportedly made on foot.

Where in London did the fireworks for which Handel wrote his 1749 wind-band suite actually take place?

Green Park's display went badly: rain caused misfires and the right pavilion caught fire, though 12,000 people had paid to hear the rehearsal at Vauxhall Gardens days earlier.

Which travelling eye surgeon operated on both Bach and Handel, and both composers died soon after?

John Taylor, a self-promoting English oculist who toured Europe, operated twice on Bach's cataracts in 1750 and on Handel in 1758; Bach died within four months.

Which part of Haydn did phrenologists steal after his 1809 burial and return only in 1954?

His skull was taken by phrenologists hoping to study a genius's bumps, and Haydn's remains were made whole again only in 1954 in the Bergkirche's north-tower tomb.

Who, Leipzig's first choice in 1723, used the offer to get a raise in Hamburg, leaving the post to Bach?

Georg Philipp Telemann was Leipzig's first pick and Christoph Graupner its second; both used the offer to win better terms at home, so the job fell to Bach.

Monteverdi left the Mantua court in 1613 to run the music at which basilica for the rest of his life?

St Mark's in Venice, the basilica of San Marco, hired Monteverdi as maestro di cappella in 1613 after he auditioned with a Mass, and he stayed until his death in 1643.

Tallis's c. 1570 motet Spem in alium, a Renaissance showpiece, is written for how many independent vocal parts?

Forty independent vocal lines make Spem in alium a Renaissance showpiece, possibly written to outdo a 40-part motet the Italian Alessandro Striggio brought to London.

Which Purcell work, his only all-sung opera, ends with the lament 'When I am laid in earth'?

Dido and Aeneas survives in no manuscript in Purcell's hand; the only 17th-century source is a libretto, possibly from the first performance.

Vivaldi's rediscovered manuscripts were bought for which city's library by two fathers mourning their sons?

Turin's National University Library got the collections thanks to businessmen Roberto Foà and Filippo Giordano, each paying in memory of a son; the Gloria was revived from them in 1939.

Domenico Scarlatti wrote his keyboard sonatas mostly for Spain's Queen Maria Barbara; how many survive?

The 555 keyboard sonatas were mostly written for Maria Barbara, and their unconventional harmonies won admirers from Bach to Bartók.

Chopin's Marche funèbre, played at his own Paris burial in 1849, is the third movement of which work?

Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor absorbed the Marche funèbre, which Chopin had composed at least two years before the rest of the work; it has become the archetypal funeral march, heard at Chopin's own funeral in Paris.

Liszt's 1840 concert at London's Hanover Square Rooms was the first billed by what now-common term?

Recital was the word first applied to Liszt's solo concert on 9 June 1840, and he is credited as the first pianist to give solo recitals in the modern sense.

Wagner's second wife Cosima, who outlived him by 47 years, was the daughter of which pianist-composer?

Franz Liszt fathered Cosima with the writer Marie d'Agoult, and Cosima left her first husband, the conductor Hans von Bülow, for Wagner.

In 1859 Italian nationalists chalked 'Viva VERDI' on walls as an acronym for long live whom?

Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia — Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy — hid inside the composer's name, turning Verdi into a password for unification.

Conductor Hans von Bülow ranked which composer with Bach and Beethoven as the 'three Bs'?

Johannes Brahms, von Bülow wrote to his wife, was 'after Bach and Beethoven the greatest, the most sublime of all composers' — praise that Wagner mocked.

Dvořák wrote his 'American' Quartet in summer 1893 in Spillville, a Czech-speaking town in which US state?

Iowa's Spillville, settled by Czech speakers, gave Dvořák a 'summer Vysoká' — a stand-in for his Bohemian country home — during his three American years.

Grieg said 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' reeked of what, though he hoped the irony would show?

Cowpats, 'ultra-Norwegianism' and 'to-thyself-be-enough-ness' were Grieg's own verdict on the troll-king march he wrote for Ibsen's play in 1875, and he said he could not bear to hear it.

How many symphonies did Sibelius finish before the long silence in which he burned an unfinished eighth?

Seven symphonies form the core of Sibelius's output; his wife Aino recalled him collecting manuscripts in a laundry basket and burning them on the dining-room fire.

Mahler composed only in his summer holidays because his year-round living came from which job?

Opera conductor was Mahler's living — Budapest, Hamburg and then Vienna's Court Opera — so composing stayed a part-time activity and his output remained small.

Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune is a 'free illustration' of a poem by which French symbolist?

Stéphane Mallarmé was unhappy that his poem had been set, until he heard the premiere at Debussy's invitation and wrote to thank him.

Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm how?

In the First World War Wittgenstein lost his right arm, and he was at first disappointed with the concerto; Ravel, unable to play it with one hand, demonstrated it with both.

Which newspaper's 1936 editorial 'Muddle Instead of Music' denounced Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk?

Pravda's unsigned editorial called the opera a 'deliberately dissonant, muddled stream of sounds' and set off a campaign in which critics who had praised it recanted in print.

Which 1942 Copland piece for brass and percussion did Emerson, Lake & Palmer turn into a 1977 rock hit?

Fanfare for the Common Man was one of ten fanfares conductor Eugene Goossens commissioned for Cincinnati's war effort, and the only one still in the repertoire.

Britten's War Requiem premiered in 1962 at the consecration of which bombed-and-rebuilt English cathedral?

Coventry's new cathedral rose beside the ruins of the 14th-century one destroyed in a wartime raid, and Britten's Requiem interleaves Wilfred Owen's war poems with the Latin Mass for the Dead.

Bernstein's 1971 Mass, commissioned by the widow of a US president, opened which Washington venue?

The Kennedy Center opened with Bernstein's Mass on 8 September 1971, choreographed by Alvin Ailey; President Nixon stayed away, saying the night should be Mrs Onassis's.

Which composer of Einstein on the Beach drove a New York cab and worked as a plumber into his forties?

Philip Glass worked as a plumber and cab driver from 1973 to 1978, years that included the premiere of Einstein on the Beach, and ran a moving company with his cousin.

Arvo Pärt, who invented the bell-like 'tintinnabuli' style, was born in which country?

Estonia's Pärt has worked in his tintinnabuli style since the late 1970s; Fratres, Spiegel im Spiegel and Für Alina are among his most performed works.

Ennio Morricone won his only competitive Oscar in 2016, at 87, for which Quentin Tarantino film?

The Hateful Eight brought Morricone the Best Original Score award after five losing nominations going back to Days of Heaven in 1978; he had received an honorary Oscar in 2007.

Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann had to win a court case in 1840 against whom before they could marry?

Her father, Friedrich Wieck, who had trained Clara into a touring virtuoso, refused his permission; the judge allowed the wedding, held the day before her 21st birthday.

Queen Victoria praised Felix Mendelssohn's song 'Italien' to his face in 1842; who actually wrote it?

His sister Fanny wrote Italien, one of six of her songs published under Felix's name in his Op. 8 and Op. 9 because of family reservations about a woman composing.

Florence Price's lost manuscripts turned up in 2009 in a derelict summer house in St. Anne, in which state?

Illinois was Price's adopted home, and the dilapidated house outside St. Anne yielded dozens of scores, including her two violin concertos and her fourth symphony.

Hildegard of Bingen, 12th-century abbess and composer, was given which title by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012?

Doctor of the Church was conferred on 7 October 2012, five months after Benedict XVI extended Hildegard's veneration to the whole Catholic Church in an 'equivalent canonization'.

Nadezhda von Meck bankrolled Tchaikovsky for 13 years on one strict condition — what was it?

They must never meet was her rule, yet the two exchanged over 1,200 letters of extraordinary intimacy before she abruptly ended the allowance in 1890.

Which Rimsky-Korsakov opera turns Prince Gvidon into an insect, cueing 'Flight of the Bumblebee'?

Tsar Saltan's magic Swan-Bird transforms the prince so he can fly off to visit his father, the tsar, and the buzzing interlude closes the first tableau of act 3.

Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, the US graduation processional, has a trio tune known as what?

Land of Hope and Glory is what the tune became when Elgar reused it in his 1902 Coronation Ode for Edward VII, and the march is a fixture of every Last Night of the Proms.

Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time was written and first performed in January 1941 in what kind of place?

A prisoner-of-war camp, Stalag VIII-A at Görlitz, held Messiaen after his 1940 capture, and a sympathetic guard found him the paper and pencil to write the quartet.

Bizet died of a heart attack three months after the 1875 premiere of which opera, convinced it had failed?

Carmen, condemned by almost the whole press at its Opéra-Comique premiere, was declared a masterpiece within months of Bizet's death at 36.

Robert Schumann threw himself into which river in 1854 before two final years in an asylum at Endenich?

The Rhine gave him up to fishermen who pulled him out; Schumann asked to be admitted to the Endenich sanatorium himself and died there at 46.

On a cut budget, Bernard Herrmann scored Psycho for which ensemble rather than the jazz Hitchcock wanted?

Strings only, muted except in the shower scene, gave Herrmann a black-and-white sound to match the film; Hitchcock said '33% of the effect of Psycho was due to the music'.

Who became the first female composer to win an Oscar for a film score, for the 1996 Jane Austen film Emma?

Rachel Portman was also the first female composer to win a Primetime Emmy, for the 2015 film Bessie, and earned two more Oscar nominations for The Cider House Rules and Chocolat.