Beethoven Trivia
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57 free Beethoven trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
60 free Beethoven trivia questions with answers. Beethoven is the composer everyone can hum but few really know. This quiz covers the whole story: the Bonn childhood and the father who lied about his age, the move to Vienna and lessons with Haydn, the hearing loss that began in his twenties, the conversation books and ear trumpets, the custody fight over his nephew, and the funeral that stopped the city. The music gets equal weight. Expect questions on all nine symphonies, the piano sonatas and concertos, Fidelio, Für Elise, the Missa solemnis and the late quartets, plus the afterlife of the man in statues, paintings, Peanuts and a St. Bernard movie. About a third of the questions are easy enough for anyone who has heard the Fifth; the rest climb to the level of a music student. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, mostly Wikipedia's Beethoven articles, and each question shows its citation.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which rock 'n' roll pioneer wrote and first recorded 'Roll Over Beethoven'?
Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry: he wrote it as a dig at his sister Lucy, who kept the family piano busy with classical music when he wanted to play.
Q 02In which country do rubbish trucks play Beethoven's 'Für Elise' to call residents out with their trash?
Taiwan
Taiwan: the tune tells people to bring their rubbish out to the truck, part of the clean-up of a place once nicknamed 'Garbage Island'.
Q 03When Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Ninth to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, which word replaced 'Joy'?
Freedom
Freedom: Bernstein leaned on an old, unproven theory that the poem's 'joy' was really code for freedom.
Q 04Which composer met the young Beethoven in Bonn, then took him on as a pupil in Vienna?
Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn: when Haydn set off for England again in 1794, Beethoven chose to stay in Vienna and never returned to Bonn.
Q 05In which Stanley Kubrick film is the violent young Alex devoted to 'Ludwig van'?
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange: the aversion therapy meant to cure Alex's violence also leaves him sickened by the Beethoven he loves.
Q 06Beethoven's father billed him as younger than he really was; why?
To look like a child prodigy
To look like a child prodigy: his father hoped to copy the fame Leopold Mozart had won by touring young Wolfgang.
Q 07Which teacher, Beethoven's most important in Bonn, helped get his first work published?
Christian Gottlob Neefe
Christian Gottlob Neefe: by 11 the boy was playing Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, which Neefe had put into his hands.
Q 08Beethoven's grandfather, also named Ludwig, rose to which post at the Bonn court in 1761?
Kapellmeister
Kapellmeister: he had first been passed over for Touchemoulin, a much younger violinist, before winning the post.
Q 09Which pupil of Beethoven joined two princes in promising him a yearly pension to keep him in Vienna?
Archduke Rudolf
Archduke Rudolf: he kept paying his share after Prince Kinsky died in a riding accident and Prince Lobkowitz went bankrupt.
Q 10From about 1818, how did visitors communicate with the almost totally deaf Beethoven?
Writing in notebooks
Writing in notebooks: about 140 of these 'conversation books' survive, and his secretary Anton Schindler later slipped fake entries into some of them.
Q 11Which inventor built ear trumpets for Beethoven, then quarrelled with him over who owned a piece of music?
Johann Nepomuk Maelzel
Johann Nepomuk Maelzel: the piece was 'Wellington's Victory', which Beethoven had first written for Maelzel's mechanical orchestra.
Q 12After his brother Kaspar died in 1815, Beethoven fought sister-in-law Johanna over custody of whom?
His nephew Karl
His nephew Karl: Beethoven won custody, but after years of bitter quarrels Karl tried to shoot himself in 1826.
Q 13Beethoven's Fifth is on the golden records carried beyond the planets by which spacecraft?
Voyager 1 and 2
Q 21At Beethoven's marathon 1808 concert, which new work fell apart so badly that he stopped and restarted it?
The Choral Fantasy
The Choral Fantasy: it was barely finished in time to rehearse, and some players miscounted their rests.
Q 22In which key is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony written?
C minor
C minor: the 'Fate knocking at the door' idea is a story from his secretary Anton Schindler, whom experts often doubt.
Q 23Beethoven's five-movement Sixth Symphony backs centaurs and mythological gods in which Disney film?
Fantasia
Fantasia: Disney's myths are far from the scenes Beethoven himself spelled out in his movement titles.
Voyager 1 and 2: Carl Sagan's team built the records for any spacefaring civilisation that finds them, with greetings in 55 languages beside the music.
Q 14Which English piano maker presented Beethoven with one of its instruments in 1818?
Broadwood
Broadwood: Beethoven kept it for the rest of his life and seems to have preferred it to the Érard he had been given in 1803.
Q 15What startled the room as Beethoven died, by Hüttenbrenner's account?
Thunder
Thunder: Beethoven opened his eyes, raised his right hand with his fist clenched, and then died.
Q 16Which Peanuts character lives at a house number that matches Beethoven's birth year?
Schroeder
Schroeder: Charles Schulz's own favourite composer was Brahms, but he gave Schroeder Beethoven because the name sounded funnier.
Q 17The dying Beethoven murmured 'Pity, pity, too late!' when a gift from Schott of Mainz arrived; what was it?
A case of wine
A case of wine: that remark, not the famous 'Applaud, friends, the comedy is over', was his last recorded line.
Q 18To whom did Beethoven originally dedicate his Third Symphony before scratching the name off?
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte: told Napoleon had made himself France's monarch, Beethoven reportedly called him a would-be tyrant and tore the title page in two.
Q 19What is the Italian nickname of Beethoven's Third Symphony?
Eroica
Eroica: that title came only after Beethoven, in a rage, tore up the original title page and had it copied out again, his pupil Ferdinand Ries recalled.
Q 20The four-note opening of Beethoven's Fifth resembles the Morse code for which letter?
V
V: dot-dot-dot-dash is Morse V, for Victory, so in 1941 the motif became the BBC's wartime interval signal.
Q 24What is the nickname of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, which he called 'more the expression of feeling than painting'?
Pastoral
Pastoral: the programme at its 1808 premiere billed it as Symphony No. 5, with today's Fifth listed as No. 6.
Q 25Which movement of Beethoven's Seventh drew an immediate encore at its 1813 premiere?
The Allegretto
The Allegretto: the concert raised money for soldiers wounded at the Battle of Hanau.
Q 26Which of Beethoven's symphonies did he fondly call 'my little Symphony in F'?
The Eighth
The Eighth: asked why it was less popular than the Seventh, Beethoven reportedly said it was because the Eighth is so much better.
Q 27The finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony sets a poem by which German writer?
Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller: yet the first words sung, 'O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!' ('not these sounds!'), are Beethoven's own, not Schiller's.
Q 28Who turned the deaf Beethoven around to see the applause at the 1824 premiere of the Ninth Symphony?
Contralto Caroline Unger
Contralto Caroline Unger: the players had been told to follow Michael Umlauf and ignore Beethoven's beat, and he was unaware of the ovation.
Q 29The 'Ode to Joy' melody from the Ninth Symphony was adopted in 1972 as the official anthem of which body?
Council of Europe
Council of Europe: EU leaders adopted the same melody in 1985, and the official anthem has no words, only music.
Q 30German prisoners of war gave which country its first performance of Beethoven's Ninth, now a year-end favourite there?
Japan
Japan: the 1918 concert came from the Bandō camp, where the Japanese staff allowed a lively cultural life, and exchanges with local people outlasted the camp.