98 Fun Facts About Orchestra

Which New York concert hall did violinist Isaac Stern lead the campaign to save from demolition?

Carnegie Hall was set to be demolished once its main tenant planned a move to Lincoln Center, until Stern's campaign saved it; its largest auditorium now bears his name.

Which Richard Strauss piece opens Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Also sprach Zarathustra was one of Kubrick's temporary tracks; he dropped Alex North's commissioned score, and North only found out at a screening.

Which is the largest of an orchestra's four main sections?

The strings; orchestras field so many of them because massed string players give a fuller sound.

The word 'orchestra' comes from the Greek name for what?

The space where the chorus danced sat in front of the skené, a backdrop whose name gave English the word 'scene'.

What is the leader of the first violins, who sits to the conductor's left, called in the United States?

The concertmaster also leads the tuning, and the conductor shakes the concertmaster's hand as a greeting to the whole orchestra.

Jean-François Paillard's recording revived which Baroque piece?

Pachelbel's Canon went on to become one of the most popular pieces played at weddings.

Which composer added a chorus and vocal soloists to the finale of his Ninth Symphony?

Beethoven's Ninth ends with the 'Ode to Joy', whose theme the Council of Europe adopted as its anthem in 1972, and the EU later followed.

Which famous conductor gave up the baton and led orchestras with his bare hands?

Leopold Stokowski made free-hand conducting a trademark, and the Bugs Bunny cartoon Long-Haired Hare spoofed it by having Bugs snap a baton in half.

Which Baroque composer died after striking his own foot with the heavy staff he used to beat time?

Jean-Baptiste Lully refused to have the injured toe amputated, and the wound spread until it killed him.

Before conductors took over, Baroque orchestras were often directed by a player at which keyboard instrument?

The harpsichord player filled in the chords of the basso continuo while directing the tempo, a way of leading that some early-music ensembles still revive.

Which German court orchestra did English music historian Charles Burney praise as 'an army of generals'?

Mannheim's orchestra was famed for effects such as the 'Mannheim roller' crescendo, which later gave the Christmas band Mannheim Steamroller its name.

Which is the only modern bowed instrument in the orchestra tuned in fourths rather than fifths?

The double bass is written higher than it sounds, and the electric bass guitar kept its same E-A-D-G tuning.

Which orchestral instrument's music is written mainly in the alto clef?

The viola reads mostly alto clef, which keeps its middle-range notes on the staff instead of piling up the ledger lines the treble clef would need.

The word 'cello' is short for violoncello, which in Italian means what?

Little big viol; Bach's cello suites stayed little known until Pablo Casals, who found an old copy in a second-hand music shop at 13, played and recorded them.

What retunes every C on a concert harp at once?

Pedal: a concert harp has seven, one for each note name, and they let it play in any key.

Which instrument plays the famous Largo melody in Dvořák's New World Symphony?

The cor anglais carries it, and the tune was only later fitted with words as 'Goin' Home', a song often mistaken for a traditional spiritual.

The contrabassoon sounds which interval below the ordinary bassoon?

An octave lower, because the contrabassoon's tube is about twice as long as the bassoon's.

The Wagner tuba, despite its name, is usually played by members of which section?

The horns: Wagner had it made to bridge the gap in sound between the horns and the trombones.

Which invention by Heinrich Stölzel transformed the brass section in the early 1800s?

The valve: a natural trumpet sounds only one harmonic series, so changing key had meant stopping to swap in a crook.

Timpani bowls are traditionally made of which metal?

Copper: the bowl's kettle-like shape is why timpani are also called kettledrums.

The celesta stars in which dance from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker?

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy: Tchaikovsky had his publisher order the new instrument from Paris and tried it first in his symphonic ballad The Voyevoda.

In Peter and the Wolf, which instrument represents the wolf?

Three horns play the wolf; theatre director Natalya Sats commissioned the piece to introduce children to the instruments of the orchestra.

In Peter and the Wolf, which instrument plays the duck?

The oboe plays the duck, whom the wolf swallows whole, though Disney's 1946 cartoon reverses the ending and lets her escape.

Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra is built on a theme by which composer?

Henry Purcell supplied the theme, and Britten wrote the piece because he was asked to contribute to an educational film about the symphony orchestra.

Which instrument repeats one rhythm throughout Ravel's Boléro?

Snare drum; Nintendo meant to open The Legend of Zelda with Boléro until, just before release, it learned the piece was still under copyright.

Which dancer commissioned Ravel's Boléro in 1928 for a ballet she would star in herself?

Ida Rubinstein had first asked Ravel to orchestrate pieces from Albéniz's Iberia, but copyright got in the way, so he wrote Boléro instead.

Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture is best known for its climactic use of what?

Cannon fire made it famous, yet Tchaikovsky called it 'very loud and noisy', without artistic merit and written without warmth or love.

Which song does Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture quote to represent Napoleon's invading army?

La Marseillaise stands for the French army, and Russian folk tunes chase it into retreat as the invaders are driven back.

In Haydn's Farewell Symphony, what do the players do one by one during the final adagio?

Players snuff their candles and leave one by one, a musical hint to Prince Esterházy, though accounts differ on whether they wanted home leave or to save the orchestra.

Which Mahler symphony is nicknamed the 'Symphony of a Thousand'?

He conducted its 1910 Munich premiere himself, the last of his works premiered in his lifetime.

Which famous orchestra admitted its first woman as a full member only in 1997?

The Vienna Philharmonic admitted harpist Anna Lelkes, who had played with it for years without membership, just as a US tour facing protests began.

Members of the ensemble behind Vienna's New Year's Concert are all drawn from where?

The State Opera's pit orchestra: players must first win a seat there and prove themselves for three years before they can apply to join.

Which march traditionally closes the Vienna New Year's Concert?

The Radetzky March first joined the concert in 1946 under Josef Krips, and since 2020 the orchestra has played it from its own edition instead of Weninger's arrangement.

Which conductor led the Berlin Philharmonic for 34 years, longer than anyone else in its history?

Herbert von Karajan pioneered new recording technologies for classical music, from early stereo onward, to bring it to a wider audience.

Which orchestra takes its name from its city's cloth merchants' hall, where it began playing in 1781?

Leipzig Gewandhaus, which Felix Mendelssohn later turned into a first-rate ensemble as its conductor.

Which orchestra gave the world premiere of Dvořák's New World Symphony?

The New York Philharmonic gave the 1893 premiere, and the audience applauded so long that Dvořák had to acknowledge it from his box.

Which London orchestra, founded in 1904, claims to be the world's most recorded?

The LSO began when members of the Queen's Hall Orchestra quit over Henry Wood's ban on sending deputies to rehearsals and concerts.

Leonard Bernstein became famous overnight in 1943 by stepping in for which ailing conductor?

Bruno Walter had the flu, so Bernstein conducted without a rehearsal, and the next day his debut was front-page news.

On Christmas Day 1989, which event did Leonard Bernstein celebrate by conducting a concert in Berlin?

The fall of the Wall: Bernstein led players from both German states and from the Soviet Union, Britain, France and the US.

Which opera did 19-year-old cellist Arturo Toscanini step in to conduct in Rio de Janeiro in 1886?

Aida: the audience had booed the replacement conductor off the podium, and the young cellist silenced them by starting the orchestra himself.

Which Leonard Bernstein protégée became the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, in 2013?

Marin Alsop was immediately invited back and conducted the Last Night again in 2015.

Gustavo Dudamel is a product of El Sistema, the youth-orchestra programme of which country?

Venezuela: José Antonio Abreu founded El Sistema in 1975 believing that playing in an orchestra could lift children in the poorest slums away from crime.

El Sistema's flagship youth orchestra is named after which South American liberator?

Simón Bolívar gives the orchestra its name; it grew into the peak of a network that began in 1975 with a handful of young players in a garage.

Which theatre did Wagner build for his operas?

Bayreuth's Festspielhaus hides its musicians from the audience, a design that gives the house its distinctive sound.

Which London hall hosts most BBC Proms concerts?

Royal Albert Hall: 'Prommers' buy standing tickets for its arena and gallery on the day of the concert.

What was Persimfans, formed in the Soviet Union in 1922?

A conductorless ensemble: decisions went to committees, so every player had to know the whole score.

Which orchestra recorded most of the music for Disney's 1940 film Fantasia?

The Philadelphia Orchestra's music played through Fantasound, an early stereo system so costly to install that the film first ran in only a handful of theatres.

Stockhausen's Gruppen, for three orchestras placed around the audience, premiered in which city in 1958?

Cologne: Stockhausen, Bruno Maderna and Pierre Boulez each conducted one of the three orchestras at the premiere.

What becomes of the off-cuts when Austria's Vegetable Orchestra carves its instruments for a concert?

Soup for the audience is served once the show is over. The instruments, which have included carrot xylophones and leek violins, are built from raw vegetables before the performances.

Which film composer took over the Boston Pops Orchestra after Arthur Fiedler died in 1979?

John Williams took the podium fresh from scoring Star Wars and stayed until 1993, following a Fiedler tenure that had lasted fifty years.

Which Stravinsky score met derisive laughter and uproar at its Paris premiere in May 1913?

The Rite of Spring was mocked from its first bars, and a disgusted Stravinsky left the auditorium to watch the remainder of the ballet from the wings.

Which Wagner piece blares from helicopter loudspeakers during an air assault in Apocalypse Now?

Ride of the Valkyries opens the last act of Die Walküre, where warrior sisters gather on a mountain peak to carry fallen heroes off to Valhalla.

Which website held open auditions worldwide to assemble its own symphony orchestra in 2009?

YouTube asked hopefuls to upload themselves playing a new piece by Tan Dun, and the winners flew in to perform together under Michael Tilson Thomas.

Which Rossini opera's overture ends with the galloping finale used as the theme of The Lone Ranger?

William Tell was the last of Rossini's 39 operas, and the famous gallop that closes its overture is known in English as the March of the Swiss Soldiers.

Which heavy metal band recorded the 1999 live album S&M with the San Francisco Symphony?

Metallica titled the album as shorthand for 'Symphony and Metallica', and conductor Michael Kamen had first pitched the idea to the band seven years earlier.

Which office machine is the solo 'instrument' in a 1950 novelty piece by composer Leroy Anderson?

A typewriter supplies the clatter while a desk bell marks the end of each line, and the part usually goes to one of the percussionists.

Which Beatles song climaxes with a 40-piece orchestra sliding from its lowest notes to its highest?

A Day in the Life gave each player just a lowest and a highest note, with 24 bars to climb between them, in a session recorded at EMI Studios in February 1967.

Which actress played Lydia Tár, fictional chief conductor of a Berlin orchestra, in a 2022 film?

Cate Blanchett conducted the real Dresden Philharmonic on set, where the orchestra's playing was recorded live as the cameras rolled.

Which nickname is attached to Haydn's Symphony No. 94, the second of his twelve London symphonies?

Surprise comes from a sudden loud chord in the quiet slow movement. Haydn denied trying to wake a dozing audience: he wanted to outshine a rival London series featuring his pupil Pleyel.

Which composer wrote In the Hall of the Mountain King for Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt?

Edvard Grieg privately loathed the piece, writing that it reeked so strongly of cowpats and exaggerated Norwegianness that he could not bear to hear it.

Which 'Bringer of Jollity' in Holst's The Planets later supplied the tune of a patriotic British hymn?

Jupiter has a broad central melody that Holst himself reused in 1921 as the setting for the hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country.

Which composer left his Symphony No. 8 with only two complete movements, earning it the nickname 'Unfinished'?

Franz Schubert set the score aside in 1822 although he lived for six more years, and its two movements were not performed until 1865.

Which French composer wrote The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the piece Mickey Mouse brings to life in Fantasia?

Paul Dukas completed the score in 1897, basing it on a Goethe poem written exactly a century earlier; it remains by far the most performed of his works.

Which animal is portrayed by a solo cello in The Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns?

The swan was the one movement Saint-Saëns allowed into print in his lifetime, fearing the comic suite would dent his image as a serious composer.

Which famously frantic orchestral interlude did Rimsky-Korsakov write for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan?

Flight of the Bumblebee closes a scene in which a prince is changed into an insect so that he can fly off to visit his father, the tsar.

Which Johann Strauss II waltz accompanies the space station docking scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

The Blue Danube began in 1867 as a song for a men's choir with satirical words, written just after Austria had lost a war with Prussia.

Which English composer wrote the Pomp and Circumstance march played at most American graduation ceremonies?

Edward Elgar heard it at an American graduation himself: Yale played the march in 1905 as he collected an honorary doctorate, and the custom spread from there.

Which composer, nicknamed the Red Priest for his hair colour, wrote The Four Seasons?

Antonio Vivaldi published the four concertos in 1725 alongside sonnets, possibly his own, that describe the scenes each one paints.

Which Chicago Symphony conductor held the record for most Grammy wins until Beyoncé passed him in 2023?

Georg Solti won 31 Grammy Awards between 1963 and 1998, and served as the Chicago Symphony's music director for 22 years.

Which outdoor amphitheatre, opened in 1922, serves as the summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic?

Hollywood Bowl concerts began on a stage of little more than wooden platforms and canvas; the shell of concentric arches that became its emblem stood from 1929 until 2003.

Which Midwestern city's orchestra entered America's 'Big Five' after George Szell took charge in 1946?

Cleveland had the youngest of the five ensembles, founded only in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, and Szell led it until his death in 1970.

Which country's royal orchestra, with a claim to be the world's oldest, grew from a court trumpet corps of 1448?

Denmark's Royal Danish Orchestra began as the trumpeters of King Christian I, and later left the court to play for opera and ballet in Copenhagen.

Which city is home to the Concertgebouw, a hall whose name simply means 'concert building'?

Amsterdam prizes the hall's sound so highly that a layer of dust in parts of the Main Hall is left alone, in case removing it changed the acoustics.

Which estate in the Berkshire Hills has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home since 1937?

Tanglewood was a donated estate, and a thunderstorm broke up a Wagner concert in the first summer there; the fan-shaped Shed, with some 5,100 seats, opened a year later.

Which American broadcaster created its own symphony orchestra in 1937 for the conductor Arturo Toscanini?

NBC gave its first broadcast with the ensemble in November 1937 and disbanded it in 1954, straight after the maestro's final concert and retirement.

Which English city is home to the Hallé, the orchestra founded by pianist Charles Hallé in 1858?

Manchester first heard the players a year earlier, when Hallé assembled them for the city's Art Treasures Exhibition and then decided to keep them together.

Which South American country's Recycled Orchestra of Cateura plays instruments built from landfill scrap?

Paraguay's young players come from Asunción, where one violin was pieced together from an old pan, a fork and other objects recovered from the Cateura dump.

Which German city opened the Elbphilharmonie, a glass concert hall set on an old brick warehouse, in 2017?

Hamburg knows the hall as Elphi; its glassy upper part, with a wavy roof line and about a thousand curved windows, rests on a former harbour warehouse.

On which river did about 50 players on a barge first play Handel's Water Music for King George I?

The Thames was so busy that evening that a newspaper reported the whole river covered with boats, while a rising tide carried the royal barge upstream without rowing.

Which American composer wrote Fanfare for the Common Man for the Cincinnati Symphony in 1942?

Aaron Copland took the title from a wartime speech by Vice President Henry Wallace; of the fanfares commissioned that season, his alone stayed in the repertoire.

Which note does a symphony orchestra tune to on stage just before a concert begins?

A is the note, fixed at 440 hertz by an international conference in 1939, although plenty of orchestras have preferred 441, 442 or even 443.

Which Shakespeare play did Mendelssohn write stage music for, including the famous Wedding March?

A Midsummer Night's Dream first inspired an overture he wrote at 17; the Wedding March followed 16 years later, when the King of Prussia commissioned music for a staging of the play.

Which German composer wrote Carmina Burana, the cantata that opens and closes with 'O Fortuna'?

Carl Orff set 24 poems from a medieval manuscript and built the piece around the turning wheel of fortune, with joy tipping into bitterness and hope into grief.

Which Sibelius tone poem was performed under false titles to dodge the censors of the Russian Empire?

Finlandia was written for an 1899 press pageant that doubled as a covert protest, closing a series of staged scenes from Finnish history.

Which Russian composer wrote Pictures at an Exhibition for piano, decades before Ravel's famous orchestration?

Modest Mussorgsky wrote the suite in 1874 as a stroll through a memorial show of drawings and watercolours by the artist Viktor Hartmann, who had died suddenly.

Which quick, playful movement gradually replaced the stately minuet as the third movement of symphonies?

Scherzo is Italian for joke or jest, and the movement keeps the minuet's three beats to the bar while moving considerably faster.

In which besieged Soviet city did a starving orchestra perform Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony in August 1942?

Leningrad heard it from an ensemble that had only 15 players left when rehearsals began, and loudspeakers carried the concert out to the German lines.

Which Berlioz symphony follows an artist's opium visions from a ball to a march to the scaffold?

Symphonie fantastique grew from his obsession with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, who missed the 1830 premiere yet married him three years later.

Which river does Smetana follow from two small sources to Prague in the best-known part of Má vlast?

The Vltava, also known by its German name the Moldau, flows past a farmer's wedding and mermaids dancing in the moonlight before it reaches the city.

Which Hungarian composer coined the term 'symphonic poem' for a series of orchestral works begun in 1848?

Franz Liszt applied the label to 13 works and is credited with inventing the form, which Smetana, Sibelius and Richard Strauss later took up.

Which unusual percussion 'instrument' delivers the blows of fate in the finale of Mahler's Sixth Symphony?

A huge hammer strikes twice in the final version; Mahler first wrote five blows, then three, and wanted each to land with a dull thud like the stroke of an axe.

Which bird's song, played from a gramophone record, did Respighi write into the score of Pines of Rome?

A nightingale sings as one movement fades away, a touch regarded as innovative at the time and as the first use of a recording in a piece of concert music.

Which composer listed around 41 instruments in the published score of his 1607 opera L'Orfeo?

Claudio Monteverdi wrote it for carnival season at the court of Mantua, and matched groups of instruments to characters, giving trombones to the gods of the Underworld.

Which conductor, heir to a laxative-pill fortune, founded both the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic?

Thomas Beecham was born next door to his grandfather's pill factory in St Helens, and launched the two orchestras in 1932 and 1946.

Which conductor co-founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra with Edward Said for young Arab and Israeli players?

Daniel Barenboim and Said named it in 1999 after a collection of poems by Goethe, and the ensemble later found a permanent base in the Spanish region of Andalusia.

Who chooses the chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, as happened with Simon Rattle in 1999?

Its own musicians vote for each new chief: a first attempt in May 2015 broke up without a result, and Kirill Petrenko was elected the following month.

Which household appliances join the orchestra as soloists in Malcolm Arnold's comic A Grand, Grand Overture?

Vacuum cleaners, three of them, share the spotlight with a floor polisher until a mock firing squad finishes them all off; Arnold wrote the piece for a Hoffnung Festival.

Which architect designed the stainless-steel Walt Disney Concert Hall, home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic?

Frank Gehry first planned a stone exterior; the gleaming metal skin was a cost-saving change, and the hall finally opened in 2003.