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Classical Music: S Musicians
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Quiz on composers and musicians whose names begin with the letter 'S'.

Classical Music: S Musicians
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10 Questions

1. This composer was a Finn by birth, and the Finn brothers who developed the leading brand of music-writing software therefore named this program in his honour. His best-known works are probably the atmospheric Karelia Suite and the tone-poem Finlandia, though there are also several symphonies.
Who was he?
2. Another former choirboy, this composer grew up in Vienna around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. In a short life (he died before reaching his 32nd birthday, leaving a famous Unfinished Symphony) he composed nine splendid symphonies in all and a great deal of lovely, inventive, melodic and thoughtful chamber music, including over 600 art-songs (Lieder) for which he is perhaps best remembered as a masterly pioneer of the form. The very best social musical evenings of his day were known by a term derived from his surname. Yet he died poor, and was buried next to Beethoven whom he had deeply admired.
Who was he?
3. The son of a bandmaster, he became a leading chorister at the Chapel Royal and went on to write sacred and chamber music including many beautiful songs such as The Lost Chord (a setting he was moved to compose on attending the deathbed of his singer brother Fred). The one part of his output that he is probably most widely known for, we have carefully not mentioned yet. Who was he?
4. He had already had success with Petrouchka and The Firebird before his Rite of Spring burst upon a Paris audience in May 1913; there were disturbances in the audience at the raw and deliberately dissonant nature of this then-ultramodern music, which critics described as 'barbaric'. Somewhat alongside Holst's Planets suite, with which the work is more or less contemporary, this colourful work has become and remained one of the most performed and recorded orchestral classics of the 20th century, outside the symphonic repertoire as such.
Who was the composer?
5. This composer was a Finn by birth, and the Finn brothers who developed the leading brand of music-writing software therefore named this program in his honour. His best-known works are probably the atmospheric Karelia Suite and the tone-poem Finlandia, though there are also several symphonies.
Who was he?
6. If Strauss was the waltz king of Vienna, who was the march king of the United States?
7. This Dutch keyboard musician, composer and teacher, broadly contemporary with Shakespeare, is credited with creating and writing down the first fugues, which also included fully independent contrapuntal writing for the pedals ~ all of which were features that Bach would perfect around a century later, in the high Baroque period. His own output includes charming variations on folk-tunes such as Under a Green Lime-Tree and My Young LIfe hath its Ending.
Who was he?
8. If Strauss was the waltz king of Vienna, who was the march king of the United States?
9. What surname is, somewhat unhelpfully, shared not only by the father and son who were the 'Waltz Kings of Vienna', but also by another unrelated but significant composer forenamed Richard? The word itself is also a pun in German, since according to its gender it can mean either an ostrich, or a bunch of flowers!
10. Who was the disappointed rival composer who, so some people believe, may have tried to poison the young and infuriatingly talented Mozart?