The Omniscient Mussel » Other Quizzes

Quiz #21 Clue Two

Miss Mussel — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:44:49 +0000

You know how sometimes you think you did something and then hours later you realize you only just imagined it?

Let’s just pretend these clues were posted at 9:30 to avoid a disconnect between reality and Miss Mussel’s imagination.

The final track has been added to the player. One person has written in with the answer so far. Send in yours to give him a run for his money.

The clues:
1) The piece was written in 1985 (that’s a freebie as penance for late posting)
2) The composer was commissioned by Kryzsztof Penderecki to write Luslawice Variations for solo violin, which was released by Tasmin Little recently as a free download
3) Trombone is the composer’s primary instrument, or at least the one he entered the RAM on.

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Pub Quiz For Classical Music Nerds: Answers

Miss Mussel — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:54:53 +0000

Take the original quiz.

String Theory
(fill in the blanks and name that string player)

1. Jascha Heifetz (violin)
2. Martin Beaver (violin, Tokyo String Quartet)
3. Lionel Tertis (violist)
4. Mischa Maisky (cello)
5. Eliot Fisk (do guitarist’s count as string players?)

Order Up
Arrange the following in ascending order of composition date.
Quartert For The End of Time , Four Last Songs, The Four Seasons, Fur Elise, Quartet in F major (Ravel)

Answer: 1723 The Four Seasons, 1810 Fur Elise, 1903 Quartet in F major (Ravel), 1940 Quartet for the End of Time, 1948 Four Last Songs

Arrange the following composers in order of death, earliest to latest. Remember Googlers are sad sacks in the corner with no friends.
Britten, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Messiaen, Stravinsky
Answer: Prokofiev (1953), Stravinsky (1971), Shostakovich (1975), Britten (1976), Messiaen (1992)

Answer: Franck/St Clotilde Basilica; Messiaen/La Trinité; Guillou/L’Église Saint-Eustache; Vierne/Notre Dame; Widor/St Suplice (The cathedral links go to samples of that church’s organ from our window on the world: YouTube)

Bonus Question (5 points) Which organist held his post for the longest? Widor
For another five points, how many years exactly? 64 Miss Mussel cannot even begin to comprehend how many sermons he heard during that time.

What A Way To Go
Here is a list of ways composers have died. Who died of each complication…or at least is rumoured to have?
1) an insect bite
2) a lip boil
3) riding a bike into a wall
4) smoking a cigar
5) getting whacked in the head while riding in a taxi

Answer: Berg, Scriabin, Ernest Chausson, Webern, Ravel (technically he died from the surgery required to fix the problem cause by the bump, but let’s not get bogged down in detail)

So, how did you do?

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Pub Quiz For Classical Music Nerds

Miss Mussel — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 05:01:59 +0000

Soho The Dog sadly hasn’t had a quiz up since the autumn and starting a meme just seemed like too much work. Brilliant single ideas are always more difficult than multiple passable ones. The solution seemed to be a wee quiz of Miss Mussel’s own creation.

Answers will be posted at the end of the day. Likely around 5pm EST. Remember, the thing about pub quizzes is that they usually take place at a pub where the intertubes are not an option. Unless you are cheating with your phone and then you are just the sad sack cheating on the pub quiz. It’s up to you.

String Theory
(fill in the blanks and name that string player)

1. J _ _ _ _ _ H _ _ _ _ _ _
2. M _ _ _ _ _ B _ _ _ _ _
3. L _ _ _ _ _ T _ _ _ _ _
4. M _ _ _ _ _ M _ _ _ _ _
5. E _ _ _ _ F _ _ _

Order Up
Arrange the following in ascending order of composition date.
1. Quartert For The End of Time
2. Four Last Songs
3. Four Seasons
4. Fur Elise
5. Quartet in F major (Ravel)

Arrange the following composers in order of death, earliest to latest. Remember Googlers are sad sacks in the corner with no friends.
1. Britten
2. Shostakovich
3. Prokofiev
4. Messaien
5. Stravinsky

It’s a Job
Match the organist with his main church gig
1. Franck a) St Suplice, Paris
2. Messiaen b) La Trinité, Paris
3. Guillou c) L’Église Saint-Eustache
4. Vierne d) Notre Dame, Paris
5. Widor e) St Clotilde Basilica, Paris
Bonus Question(5 points) Which organist held his post for the longest? For another five points, how many years exactly?

Total up your score out of 25 plus bonuses and boast about it all weekend. Speaking of which, have a good one. If you really fancy boasting, leave your score in the comments, where it will be recorded for all of eternity.

Go read the answers

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Soho The Dog: Autumn Quiz

Miss Mussel — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 23:37:23 +0000

1. What’s the best quotation of a piece of music within another piece of music?
Without a doubt, Miss Mussel has to nominate In A Vernacular Way (1990) for solo harpsichord by Canadian composer Peter Hatch. Where else can Super Mario Brothers theme music happily rub shoulders with Jimi Hendrix and 18th century dance forms?

2. Name the best classical crossover album ever made.
Crossing the border the other way, the answer has to be any one of Uri Caine’s projects. If you are new to these, the Mahler and Goldberg Variation discs are good places to start.

3. Great piece with a terrible title.
Andante from Brahms Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano. The third movement contains such exquisiteness that it is doubtful that any combination of words could accurately describe it. Of course, this argument is a bit of Pandora’s box in that, if followed to its logical conclusion, a good portion of the pre-1950 repertoire falls into this category.

4. If you had to choose: Benjamin Britten or Michael Tippett?
Is this a continuation of the discussion going on at Dial M about torture? If it was a choice between either of these two or toenails, Miss Mussel would grudgingly choose Britten. Sandals are just too much fun to wear.

5. Who’s your favorite spouse of a composer/performer?
The answer has to be that perennial favourite of undergraduate music students trying to wade through early music history–Mrs Gesualdo. By indulging in a few, shall we say, extra-curricular activities, she ensured that her husband would one of the most well-remembered minor characters in music history. Sure, his chromatic madrigals are somewhat interesting but it is so much more satisfying to think of him as the guy that killed his wife and her lover in a fit of cuckolded rage.

6. Terrible piece with a great title.
Britten: Still Falls The Rain (Canticle III)
Despite her rather large horn bias, this piece creeps Miss Mussel out big time.

7. What’s the best use of a classical warhorse in a Hollywood movie?
Everything John Williams ever wrote is just a rearrangement of Mars from The Planets or the finale of Tchaik 6. Oh no! It’s the Apocalypse. Again. Yawn.

8. Name the worst classical crossover album ever made.
Mozart in Egypt — Perfectly good Arab music with poorly played Mozart squashed together for no apparent reason. Trying to mesh even-tempered Western music with the mircotonal Eastern music just does not work. No matter how much they love each other or how committed they are to making making a go of it, the truth is that the piano and oud were just not meant to be together. The sooner both parties acknowledge that, the better.

9. If you had to choose: Sam Cooke or Marvin Gaye?
Miss Mussel is showing her age a bit here and had to do a quick bit of research to answer this one. Coming in first is Mr Soul himself, Sam Cooke.

10. Name a creative type in a non-musical medium who would have been a great composer.
Frank Gehry–a Brahms for the 20th century?

EXTRA CREDIT:
For opera nerds: If you had to choose:
a) Lawrence Tibbett or Robert Merrill?
b) Amelita Galli-Curci or Lily Pons?

Sorry, Miss Mussel is an opera infant and cannot comment here.

For early-music nerds: Name a completely and hopelessly historically uninformed recording that you nevertheless love.

Yehudi Menuhin - Bach Sonatas and Partitas. There are points where one cannot help but laugh out loud, such is the resemblance to a teenage boy showing off his mad metal guitar skillz. It’s confident, brash, deathly fast and, at times, desperately out of tune. What’s not to love?