Classical Music Flashcards
The Inextinguishable is the nickname for Symphony No. 4 by which Danish composer?
Carl Nielsen
Which of Wagner’s operas begins with a journey from Ireland to Cornwall, during which two of the principal characters fall in love?
Tristan und Isolde
Which Czech composer wrote the popular work Sinfonietta, sometimes referred to as the Military Sinfonietta?
Leos Janacek
Which English composer wrote the first ever concerto for the tuba?
Ralph Vaughn Williams
Against her family’s wishes, the renowned concert pianist Clara Wieck married which composer in 1840?
Robert Schumann
In The Tales of Hoffman by Jacques Offenbach, the hero is tricked into falling in love with a mechanical doll with what name?
Olympia
Which musical instrument takes its name from the Latin for trumpet?
Tuba
In the early 1860s, which Russian composer spent several years working as a clerk in the Ministry of Justice in St Petersburg?
Tchaikovsky
Night on Bald Mountain is a famous work by which other Russian composer?
Mussorgsky
Which Austrian composer left his Symphony No. 9 unfinished upon his death in 1896? Confusingly he wrote a total of eleven symphonies.
Anton Bruckner
Theobald Boehm played a major part in the development of which orchestral instrument?
Flute (the Boehm system is the layout of the keys on a flute)
Which Austrian composed the Arpeggione Sonata - considered to be the only notable composition for the instrument? Disclaimer: an Arpeggione is sort of a weird cross between a guitar and a cello.
Schubert
In Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, what is the English name of the character that dresses as a prison guard in order to rescue her husband?
Leonora
Which Italian composer, born in Pesaro in 1792, moved to Paris in 1823 and became affectionately known as Monsieur Crescendo, after a characteristic in many of his compositions?
Rossini
Le Tombeau de Couperin is a work first performed in 1919 by which French composer, written to commemorate seven of his friends who died in World War I? He himself was in France’s Third Artillery Regiment during the war.
Maurice Ravel
