Mozart Trivia
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This Mozart trivia quiz has 49 free questions with answers and covers the boy who composed at five and wrote a symphony at eight, the young man kicked out of the Salzburg archbishop's service, the Vienna freelancer who kept a starling and a billiard table, and the composer of Figaro, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute and the Requiem he never finished. It also takes in the myths: the Miserere copied from memory, the Salieri poisoning rumour, the pauper's grave that was not one, and the "Mozart effect". It suits music students, concertgoers, pub quiz hosts and anyone who loved the film Amadeus and wants to know how much of it was true. Easy questions cover the famous names and tunes; the hard ones ask about librettists, catalogue numbers and the people around him. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedic and scholarly sources, so you can hum along with confidence.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which present-day country was Mozart born?
Austria
Austria claims him, but when he was born his home city was a separate church-ruled state within the Holy Roman Empire.
Q 02Mozart's Requiem was sung at which composer's 1849 Paris funeral?
Chopin
Frédéric Chopin's funeral at the Madeleine needed special church permission for women to sing the Requiem, since female singers weren't normally allowed there.
Q 03Which Benjamin Franklin invention did Mozart write a quintet for in 1791?
Glass harmonica
The glass harmonica won Mozart over when the blind virtuoso Marianne Kirchgessner played it in Vienna, so he wrote her the Adagio and Rondo, K. 617.
Q 04Emperor Joseph II staged a 1781 piano contest in Vienna between Mozart and which Italian virtuoso?
Muzio Clementi
Muzio Clementi played his own music at the contest, and Mozart seems to have reused one of its themes a decade later in The Magic Flute's overture.
Q 05The name Amadeus is the Latin form of the Greek baptismal name Theophilus, meaning what?
Loved by God
Loved by God is one rendering of Theophilus (others say friend or lover of God), yet as an adult Mozart generally signed himself Wolfgang Amadè.
Q 06In Così fan tutte, Despina disguises herself as a doctor to parody which magnet-wielding physician?
Mesmer
Mesmer's 'animal magnetism' is the joke: the fake doctor revives the suitors, who are pretending to have taken poison, with a magnet.
Q 07What was the nickname of Mozart's elder sister Maria Anna, a child prodigy who toured with him?
Nannerl
Nannerl performed beside her brother on the early tours, but by her late teens her touring days were over, and Wolfgang toured Italy without her.
Q 08Leopold Mozart published a famous 1756 textbook on which instrument?
Violin
The violin was Leopold's own instrument, yet young Wolfgang took it up without lessons and astonished him by sitting in on second violin during a run-through of six trios.
Q 09Where did Mozart write his first symphony while his ailing father needed silence?
London
London: with the harpsichord off-limits while his father recovered, he wrote for orchestra, and his sister recalled him asking her to remind him to give the horn something good.
Q 10Which Sistine Chapel choral work is the teenage Mozart said to have transcribed from memory?
Allegri's Miserere
Allegri's Miserere was, Leopold wrote home, so closely guarded that the choir was forbidden to copy it, yet Wolfgang had written it down.
Q 11Which prince-archbishop dismissed Mozart in 1781, reportedly with a kick from a steward's boot?
Colloredo
Colloredo had treated Mozart as a servant, making him dine with the valets and cooks, and after the break Mozart settled in Vienna as a freelancer.
Q 12Whom did Mozart marry in Vienna on 4 August 1782?
Constanze Weber
Constanze Weber later married the Danish diplomat Georg Nissen, and together they produced one of the early biographies of her first husband.
Q 13Which Mozart opera celebrated Leopold II's coronation?
La clemenza di Tito
La clemenza di Tito was commissioned so late that Mozart had only a few weeks to compose it before the coronation festivities.
Q 21What is the full Italian title of Don Giovanni translated into English?
The Rake Punished
The Rake Punished lives up to its name: the Commendatore's statue gives Giovanni a last chance to repent, and when he refuses, demons drag him down to hell.
Q 22Who wrote the German libretto for The Magic Flute and staged it at his own Vienna theatre?
Emanuel Schikaneder
Emanuel Schikaneder later built the Theater an der Wien, yet a court theatre restaged the opera without crediting him as its author.
Q 23In The Magic Flute, whom does the Queen of the Night ask Prince Tamino to rescue?
Her daughter Pamina
Q 14What was the name of Mozart's youngest son, born four months before his father died?
Franz Xaver Wolfgang
Franz Xaver Wolfgang, always called Wolfgang at home, became a pianist and composer, but his father's great name overshadowed his own career.
Q 15Mozart joined which organisation in December 1784, later writing music for its ceremonies?
The Freemasons
The Freemasons are widely seen in The Magic Flute's temple trials and rituals, though some scholars think that Masonic influence is exaggerated.
Q 16Which pet did Mozart buy in 1784 and later bury in his garden under a gravestone with a verse epitaph?
A starling
A starling: beside its purchase in his expense book, Mozart jotted down its slightly garbled version of a theme from his new concerto and wrote 'That was beautiful!'
Q 17At which game did the tenor Michael Kelly say he always lost to Mozart?
Billiards
Billiards was a passion: Mozart bought his own table as part of a lavish lifestyle in which he saved little of his income.
Q 18Which librettist collaborated with Mozart on The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte?
Lorenzo Da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte later settled in the United States, where his memoirs were published in 1823.
Q 19The Marriage of Figaro is based on a comedy by which French playwright, banned at first in Vienna?
Beaumarchais
Beaumarchais's comedy was barred from Vienna's stage for its freedom of tone, yet the opera went ahead after the librettist won the Emperor's approval himself.
Q 20In which city did Don Giovanni premiere in October 1787?
Prague
Prague had welcomed Figaro so warmly that its opera company commissioned the new opera from Mozart, who travelled there to prepare the premiere.
Her daughter Pamina is held in Sarastro's castle, yet instead of defeating him, Tamino ends up seeking entry to Sarastro's temple and undergoing its trials.
Q 24What is the name of the bird-catcher who accompanies Tamino in The Magic Flute?
Papageno
Papageno claims he killed the serpent that attacked Tamino, so the Queen's veiled ladies padlock his mouth to punish him for lying.
Q 25The Magic Flute, which mixes arias with spoken dialogue, is an example of which genre?
Singspiel
Singspiel got an imperial boost when Joseph II founded a German-language opera company, which staged Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio.
Q 26Who anonymously commissioned Mozart's Requiem, apparently intending to pass it off as his own?
Count Franz von Walsegg
Count Franz von Walsegg liked passing off commissioned music as his own, and in December 1793 he conducted the Requiem himself under his own name.
Q 27Which of Mozart's pupils completed the Requiem after his death?
Franz Xaver Süssmayr
Franz Xaver Süssmayr took on the task only after Joseph Eybler, one of the first composers the widow asked, had started filling in the score and then given up.
Q 28Friends singing the Requiem at Mozart's bedside on his last afternoon reportedly stopped at which movement?
Lacrimosa
Lacrimosa: Mozart began to weep and laid the score aside, and he died about eleven hours later, leaving the movement unfinished.
Q 29What nickname is given to Mozart's last symphony, No. 41 in C major?
Jupiter
Jupiter was never Mozart's own title: the nickname was added by others, and even who coined it is uncertain.
Q 30Mozart's 'Prussian' string quartets were written for which cello-playing king?
Frederick William II
Frederick William II played the cello well, so Mozart gave the cello unusually prominent, singing parts in these quartets.