20th Century European Composers

Question 1

This composer is, after Franz Liszt, the most important composer from Hungary.

Answer 1

Bela Bartok

Question 2

Bartok wrote six of these, which were arguably the most influential works in that genre after Beethoven’s.

Answer 2

string quartets

Question 3

Bartók was among the first to use a phonograph to record folk music as performed by rural peoples. Bartok was a pioneer in what field often referred to as the study of folk music?

Answer 3

ethnomusicology

Question 4

Unlike what its title might suggest, the work does not feature a single soloist; rather, Bartók chose the name because of his virtuosic treatment of every orchestral family. Notable sections of the piece include its second movement, a “Game of Pairs.“

Answer 4

Concerto for Orchestra (1944)

Question 5

Bartók’s quartets contain many examples of his (what?) kind of music that is intended to evoke quiet, moonlit natural scenes.

Answer 5

night music

Question 6

Which opera, by a Hungarian composer, based on a folk tale, follows a new bride as she opens a series of doors?

Answer 6

Bluebeard’s Castle

Question 7

He was often described as an Impressionist composer, though he despised being labeled as such. Which composer from France developed a modernist style of composition as a reaction against the work of Richard Wagner?

Answer 7

Claude Debussy

Question 8

This composer’s work often used non-traditional scales and harmonic progression. His two books of Preludes for solo piano include “Voiles” (“Sails”), which utilizes the whole-tone scale. Which composer wrote “The Engulfed Cathedral,” a musical depiction of the legend of Ys that features chords moving up and down in parallel planing, as opposed to traditional progression?

Answer 8

Claude Debussy

Question 9

This composer completed nine symphonies. Many of his earlier symphonies included his poems from his book “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” set to music. His Fifth Symphony (1902) includes an oft-excerpted Adagietto for strings and harp generally considered a love song for his wife, Alma.

Answer 9

Gustav Mahler

Question 10

Which opera did Paul Hindemith write, based on the life of the 16th-century artist Matthias Grunewald, who created the Isenheim Altarpiece?

Answer 10

Mathis der Maler (Matthias the Painter)

Question 11

What ballet based on a scenario conceived by Jean Cocteau about a preview of a circus performance also included a backdrop and cubist costumes designed by Pablo Picasso?

Answer 11

Parade by Erik Satie

Question 12

Much of Hindemith’s music fit into this ideal—works written for a specific purpose, time, or ensemble.

Answer 12

Gebrauchsmusik

Question 13

Claude Debussy wrote an orchestral work that begins with a solo flute playing a descending and ascending partial chromatic scale. For 10 points, what piece did Debussy write that was was later choreographed as a solo ballet by Vaslav Nijinsky?

Answer 13

Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun

Question 14

Who wrote Der Schwanendreher?

Answer 14

Paul Hindemith

Question 15

This German composer who moved to the United States to escape Nazi persecution. His music is often cited as an early example of new tonality—music that has a clear tonic pitch, but which does not follow traditional rules of harmony.

Answer 15

Paul Hindemith

Question 16

Debussy’s only opera was this 1902 opera based on the play of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck. Which opera did Debussy write, setting the text of the play as Maeterlinck originally wrote it?

Answer 16

Pelleas et Melisande

Question 17

Which 1917 piano suite by Maurice Ravel modernizes the form of a Baroque dance suite, and contains six movements that each memorialize a friend who died in the war?

Answer 17

Le Tombeau de Couperin

Question 18

This composer was French composer who, along with Debussy, was commonly described as Impressionist; like Debussy, he hated being labeled as such. His best-known work is Bolero (1928), an orchestral work based on a single repeating melody over a snare drum ostinato (a constantly-repeated rhythm), to which is gradually added more and more of the orchestra; he conceived the work as an attempt to write “one very long, gradual crescendo.“

Answer 18

Maurice Ravel

Question 19

This composer is often cited as the most important symphonist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was renowned conductor, leading at various times the Vienna State Opera, as well as the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera.

Answer 19

Gustav Mahler

Question 20

This composer’s life was marked by tragedy, including the death of his daughter Maria and his discovery he had a heart defect that would eventually kill him; his Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), a vocal symphony that sets translated Chinese poetry, was a major expression of his despair.

Answer 20

Gustav Mahler

Question 21

This composer was an Austrian composer instrumental in many of the most important developments in post-tonal music. He wrote music that was atonal, meaning that it had no traditional tonic pitch. His 1912 work Pierrot Lunaire utilized the technique of sprechstimme, a type of half-sung, half-spoken recitation on approximate pitch. He also developed the twelve-tone method of composition, a technique in which each of the twelve chromatic pitches is ordered in a twelve-tone row, and each pitch is used before one is repeated; his first fully twelve-tone work was his Suite for Piano, opus 25, which he finished in 1923.

Answer 21

Arnold Schoenberg

Question 22

This modernist French composer’s work is often cited as an early type of minimalism. His Gymnopédies, for solo piano, employ alternating chords that rarely change underneath a melody that floats above the repetitive harmony.

Answer 22

Erik Satie

Question 23

This composer moved to the United States following the Russian Revolution. In addition to being a composer, he was a virtuoso pianist, renowned for his massive hands that allowed him to play extremely wide chords. He suffered a major setback early in his career when his First Symphony was criticized by Russian composer Cesar Cui as being a product of a “conservatory in Hell;“ He subsequently fell into a deep depression and did not write for nearly three years, until intense hypnotherapy helped him overcome his demons and write his Second Piano Concerto.

Answer 23

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Question 24

How many piano concertos did Sergei Rachmaninoff write?

Answer 24

four

Question 25

This composer wrote Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, which is a concerto-like work for piano and orchestra, and consists of a set of 24 variations on the 24th and final of composer Niccolò Paganini’s caprices for solo violin.

Answer 25

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Question 26

Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, whose enormous performing forces led it to being given (what nickname?) sets both the hymn “Veni, Creator Spiritus“ and the concluding section of Goethe’s Faust.

Answer 26

Symphony of a Thousand

Question 27

This composer was Russian composer and one of the most towering figures in 20th-century music. His output is generally divided into three main periods: his Russian period, his neoclassical period, and his serial period.

Answer 27

Igor Stravinsky

Question 29

Some of this composer’s works include: Gnossiennes— for solo piano—were written without bar lines, implying a freedom from any regular sense of meter and “Vexations”, where, because of a note he left on the piece, the common modern performance practice is to repeat the fragment 840 times.

Answer 29

Erik Satie

Question 30

This composer wrote several ballets for the Ballets Russe: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and (which ballet?), the latter of which caused a riot at its premiere due to the shocking modernistic aspects of the production.

Answer 30

Rite of Spring by Igor Stavinsky

Question 31

This composer was a Finnish composer who often drew upon his homeland for inspiration. His best-known work is Finlandia, an intensely patriotic work written during Finland’s occupation by Russia, and which had to be presented under alternate titles due to censorship; the work’s final section, “Finland Awakes,“ is a hymn-like tune that has been adapted into many songs.

Answer 31

Jean Sibelius

Question 32

Sibelius further drew on his homeland for his (which) Suite, which is based on the Finnish folk epic the Kalevala; the suite’s movement “The Swan of Tuonela” is often performed as an excerpt.

Answer 32

Lemminkäinen Suite

Question 33

Sibelius was a prolific symphonist, writing many works in the genre; his last symphony is innovatively in only a single movement. Sibelius stopped composing during the last three decades of his life; he reportedly burned many of his works. Which was his last symphony?

Answer 33

Seventh Symphony in C Major