Friday Quiz with Mark Pennell is a whimsical contest held each friday during classic music featuring trivia pulled from the annals of classical music.
Tickle your funnybone as Mark quizzes your intellect!
Friday, May 9th, 2008
Q: At 11:28 we will hear a flute concerto from the most famous of Johan Sebastian Bach’s sons to go into music. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach composed this piece in 1847. It was only recently that is was found arranged for flute. For a good two-hundred years, it was known as a harpsichord concerto. Why would he compose yet another piece for flute (especially when he didn’t play it) ? If you know, you could win the Friday Quiz.
A: For many years, C. P. E. Bach was employed under one of the best bosses in Classical Music history. He was later to known as ‘Old Fritz’, but also Frederick the Great. A lover of the arts, he had an orchestra that included Johann Joachim Quantz (who was a great flutist), and Franz Benda. The leader of the orchestra was Bach. Frederick the Great was actually a very good flutist himself and had both Quantz and Bach composed a lot of music for the Emperor.
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
Q: Felix Mendelssohn is often mentioned as the greatest child prodigy after Mozart. But there was a huge difference in the two boys. While Wolfgang was pushed so very heard by his father as they spent more than two-thirds of his young life on the road, showing off for just about anybody who would be willing to listen, Mendelssohn’s father would have nothing to do with that kind of treatment. By nearly all accounts, he had a wonderful upbringing. Though Felix learned most of his knowledge on music from his loving mother, he didn’t have his premiere until he was 9…and then did not tour until he was much older (when he could decide on his own). His father not only had the means to not force his son to help pay the bills, he had the means to offer anything his son would want. But knew not to. What did his dad do?
A: He was a banker.
Friday, April 25th, 2008
Q: What is a courante?
A: A courante is a dance of triple meter that came mostly from the Renaissance and the Baroque era. Actually, to give you an idea of how fast the dance (and corresponding music) should be, the word ‘Courante’ literally means ‘running’.
Friday, April 18th, 2008
Q: What is the nickname of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 83 in g minor?
A: Haydn composed so many symphonies that there ended up many nicknames to separate them. Among them, The Philosopher, The Hornsignal, The Echo, The Mercury, The Farewell, The Schoolmaster, La Roxelane, The Bear, The Queen, The Surprise, The Miracle, The Clock, The Drumroll, The Military, and The Hen…Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No.83 in g minor.
Friday, April 11th, 2008
Q: It was named The Tragic Overture, simply because the other was a happy one (Academic Festival Overture) Brahms composed for a school that had given his an honorary doctorate in 1880. From then on, he carried that moniker with pride (he had not had a chance to much formal education due to his having to support his poor family by doing…what…as early as twelve years old?
A: He had to play the piano in bars and brothels.
Friday, April 4th, 2008
Q: Benjamin Louis Paul Godard was a French composer who maybe today does not have a higher recognition factor because he passed away too early. He was 45 when he died. Interestingly, despite his short time on earth, he composed a lot of music…enough to fill the dreams of many other composer’s lives. His musical style was to follow the line that came from, say, Mendelssohn and then Schumann. For whatever reason, Godard was an extremely anti-…what?
A: Perhaps in part because of his Jewish roots, Godard was strongly anti-Wagnerist (Wagner was an extreme anti-Semite…to the point that Hitler would later worship the man partly for that very reason).
Friday, March 28th, 2008
Q: There was a famous choreographer named Salvatore Viganò, who usually did a decent job of composing his own music, but when the empress Maria Theresia asked him to do one, he didn’t have enough confidence to pull it off without Beethoven’s help. Interesting, when all said and done, almost nothing is known about the final product other than the playbill for the first performance. For the project, Beethoven composed an overture, an introduction, fifteen dance numbers, and a finale. It premiered on this date in…what year?
A: 1801.
Friday, March 21st, 2008
Q: If you listen to the program at approximately 12:27 on Friday, I will play a little bit of Pictures at an Exhibition, by Modest Mussorgsky, and then, just a little bit of Symphony No. 9 in C, D. 944, (a.k.a “Great C Major”) by Franz Schubert. Then I will ask what they have in common.
A: The ‘debuted’ on this date in 1839. Robert Schumann, had discovered the manuscript in the possession of one of the late Schubert’s friends, and had his good friend Felix Mendelssohn premiere it with his world-renouned Gewandhausorchester Leipzig (Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra). Also on that very date further east in Russia, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was born.
Friday, February 29th, 2008
Q: If he had chosen to, Tomaso Albinoni would not have had to work a day in his life. His father had made a lot of money as a paper merchant. But he chose to be a musician (but I’ll bet music paper was cheap). His piece simply known as Adagio (heard Friday at aproximatley 11:14 a.m.) turned out to be one of the most famous of the Baroque era was composed by him…or was it? If you know the whole story behind it, you cold win the Friday Quiz.
A: Remo Giazotto was an Italian musicologist in the early part of the 20th century, and was especially knowledgeable about Tomaso Albinoni. In 1958, towards the end of his life, he found fragments of a previously undiscovered piece he claimed were by Albinoni…and he created the Adagio (since the fragments were never seen in public, some wonder if they ever existed and that they ended up as an ‘Albinoni’ piece).
Friday, February 22nd, 2008
Q: Heino Eller was born and raised in Estonia, in 1887, which means that he lived a fair amount of his life under Soviet oppression. He was the teacher of maybe the most famous Estonian composer of all time…Who was he?
A: Arvo Pärt
