Care To Partake In This Classical Music Potpourri Quiz?

Okay, one or two of these may be fairly easy. Or maybe not. Too easy takes the fun out of playing along, don’t you think? Too difficult keeps the replies to a minimum. So here is a little of both.

1. Although Henry, Frank and Trapper John were not around to witness it, a segment of chamber music received the highest rated viewing (as background music) ever for a chamber piece as it was performed during the closing minutes of a television program’s final night. Can you name the composer and the work?

2. Listening to the later symphony by this Russian composer, one wonders if he was paying homage to Classical Music’s Greatest Hits? It doesn’t take much imagination to recognize the influences of Wagner, Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Stravinsky (and this is just in the first movement). He even seems to pay homage to his own past greatness, Can you name this composer and this symphony?

3. This 20th. century composer rated himself the ninth greatest composer ever, even ahead of Mozart and Tchaikovsky. Can you name him? Also, though worlds apart in the pure scope and complexities of their music, this ego-driven composer shared, besides an inflated ego, another infamous trait with Wagner. Can you name this infection?

4. Speaking of 9ths., the premier of Beethoven’s glorious 9th. Symphony pretty much forced classical contemporary composers, and the generations that followed, to take music into different directions because few believed they could ever match The 9th. So far-reaching was the shadow cast by this great symphony that it hounded some later composers. One later composer, after finishing his own 8th. Symphony, refused to label his next full work a ‘symphony’ in fear that it would be compared to Beethoven’s. Another composer, perhaps believing in the ‘Curse Of The Ninth’. literary worked himself to death composing his (unfinished) 9th. Can you name these two composers.

5. This world renowned concert pianist (an easy question for some of you) had the habit of humming the music his was playing. In live concerts this was not so noticeable but in recording sessions? Well, it proved to be a night mare in the studio. Can you name this pianist?

6. This composer (a fairly easy question) was a sixty years ahead of his time metaphorically. Before the New Age movement became fashionable in the 1970s he was composing New Age style music back in the early 1900s. Can you name this composer?