Q 01/05

In which present-day country was Mozart born?

A) Germany

B) Austria

C) Switzerland

D) Czech Republic

Answer · why

B) Austria

Austria claims him, but when he was born his home city was a separate church-ruled state within the Holy Roman Empire.

Q 02/05

Mozart's Requiem was sung at which composer's 1849 Paris funeral?

A) Mendelssohn

B) Chopin

C) Schumann

D) Liszt

Answer · why

B) Chopin

Frédéric Chopin's funeral at the Madeleine needed special church permission for women to sing the Requiem, since female singers weren't normally allow...

Q 03/05

Which Benjamin Franklin invention did Mozart write a quintet for in 1791?

A) Basset horn

B) Glass harmonica

C) Fortepiano

D) Hurdy-gurdy

Answer · why

B) 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 04/05

Emperor Joseph II staged a 1781 piano contest in Vienna between Mozart and which Italian virtuoso?

A) Luigi Boccherini

B) Muzio Clementi

C) Domenico Cimarosa

D) Giovanni Paisiello

Answer · why

B) 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 05/05

The name Amadeus is the Latin form of the Greek baptismal name Theophilus, meaning what?

A) Gift of God

B) Wolf of God

C) Golden mouth

D) Loved by God

Answer · why

D) 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.