FA Auditory - Regs IV
Company
"Another Hundred People," a song from this 1970 Stephen Sondheim musical about marriage, was mashed up with "Take The A Train" on an excellent vocal album by Brian Stokes Mitchell.
Rule, Britannia!
"Arose from out the azure main" is sung during this G-major maestoso section that ends the Fantasia. This patriotic navy song exhorts the title personification of Great Britain to control "the waves."
Charlie Parker
"Birdland" was written in tribute of a New York jazz club which was, in turn, named for this bebop saxophonist whose works include "Ornithology" and "Yardbird Suite."
Claude Debussy
"Clair de lune" is among the works of this French composer, whose other works include Estampes, La Mer, and Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.
Claude Debussy
"Claire de Lune" is probably the single most famous piano piece by this French composer, whose expansive use of chromatic harmony in Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun foreshadowed 20th century music.
Franz (Peter) Schubert
"Der Erlkönig" is one of many lieder by this Austrian composer, who set Wilhelm Müller's poetry in the cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Die Winterreise.
Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst
"Erlkönig" was transcribed for solo violin by this Moravian virtuoso who self-consciously modeled himself on Paganini, and whose own compositions include Six Polyphonic Studies. After settling in London, he performed string quartets with Joachim, Wieniawski, and Piatti.
Charles Mingus Jr.
"Fables of Faubus" was written by this jazz musician who included tracks "Love Chant" and George Gershwin's "A Foggy Day" on his album Pithecanthropus Erectus.
1812 Overture
"God Save the Tsar" and the "Marseillaise" are duelling anthems in this Tchaikovsky composition that uses cannon fire to depict a victory over Napoleon.
Edvard Hagerup Grieg
"In the Hall of the Mountain King" and "Morning Mood" are both from this Norwegian composer's incidental music to Peer Gynt.
Edvard Grieg
"In the Hall of the Mountain King" is the last movement of the first Peer Gynt Suite by this Norwegian composer of the Holberg Suite.
Gustav Holst
"Mars, the Bringer of War" is the first movement from The Planets, which was written by this British composer of the St. Paul's Suite.
Gustav Holst
"Mercury" is from this composer's The Planets.
Gustav Holst
"Neptune" is the last movement of this composer's The Planets.
Carmina Burana
"O Fortuna" is one of the medieval songs set to music in this Carl Orff cantata, whose other movements include "In the Tavern" and "The Court of Love."
Miroirs
"Oiseaux tristes" and the Spanish-inflected "Alborada del gracioso" are two of the pieces in this solo piano collection by Ravel. Among those dedicated are Leon-Paul Fargue and Paul Sordes.
Stephen Collins Foster
"Old Folks at Home" was composed by this American who also wrote "My Old Kentucky Home," "Camptown Races," and "Oh! Susanna."
The BBC Proms
"Rule, Britannia!" and Fantasia on British Sea Songs are often played on the Last Night of this largest classical music festival in the world. It is hosted in the summer by the BBC and has cheap standing tickets.
Thelonious Sphere Monk
"Straight, No Chaser" was written by this pianist who also wrote "'Round Midnight."
George Gershwin
"Summertime" is the first aria in Porgy and Bess, an opera with music by this American composer.
Porgy and Bess
"Summertime" opens this George Gershwin opera, which ends with one of the title characters going to New York with Sportin' Life.
e this E-flat composition for chamber orchestra. In its final movement, a Con moto march with the cellos, horns, and basses gives way to a fugato climax.
10 points each:
String Quartet No. 62 in C Major, Opus 76 No. 3 "Emperor"
A Haydn hymn provided the basis for the German national anthem, "Deutschlandlied". Haydn wrote variations on that hymn as the second movement of this string quartet of his.
Symphony No. 40 in G minor (or the Great G minor Symphony; or KV. 550)
A Mannheim Rocket appears at the beginning of the fourth movement of this Mozart symphony, the only one to open with an accompaniment figure.
Arnold Schoenberg
A Richard Dehmel poem was the basis for this composer's string sextet, Transfigured Night. He was the founder of the Second Viennese School and the inventor of the twelve-tone technique.
Ralph ("RAIF") Vaughan Williams
A Sea Symphony was composed by this Englishman who also set a George Meredith poem to music in The Lark Ascending and composed the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
Leningrad Symphony
A Soviet city lends its name to this Shostakovich symphony, whose first movement introduces a repetitive "invasion" theme often interpreted as a depiction of the Nazi army.
guitars
A Spanish music-influenced "Fandango" ends a Boccherini chamber piece featuring this instrument. Joaquin de Rodrigo's Concierto de Rodriguez is a concerto for this instrument.
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
A certain composer's setting of "Why Fum'th in Fight" provides the basis of what piece that splits a string orchestra into three parts of differing size?
cadence
A chord progression from the dominant to the tonic characterizes the authentic type of this musical figure. Musical phrases end with these constructions, which also have plagal, half, and deceptive varieties.
gigues
A classical suite typically ends with one of these Baroque dances, which are often in 3/8 time and follow the allemande, courant, and sarabande.
France
A composer from this country employed serialism in many of his pieces, including The Hammer without a Master. Another composer from here used serialism in the "Modes of Durations and Intensities" movement of his Four Rhythm Studies
Franz Ritter von Liszt
A funeral march for the executed Emperor Maximilian of Mexico appears in the last volume of this composer's Years of Pilgrimage. This composer, who is credited with inventing the symphonic poem, transcribed all of Beethoven's symphonies for piano.
sul ponticello
A glassy sound is produced in this technique, in which a string player bows close to the bridge. It is the opposite of sul tasto.
Arturo Toscanini
A legendary 1942 recording of Rhapsody in Blue was made with pianist Earl Wild, clarinetist Benny Goodman, and this Italian conductor, the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra.
Beethoven's piano sonatas
A lot of piano students might know Bülow's name from his great annotated edition of these works, which is now published by Schirmer. These thirty-two pieces have nicknames like "Appassionata" and "Moonlight."
Masquerade Suite
A mazurka is the second movement of this five-movement suite of incidental music by Aram Khachaturian. It concludes with a galop and opens with Khachaturian's most popular waltz.
hands
A natural horn can be made to play notes outside of its harmonic series by inserting this human appendage into the bell, said technique being called "stopping". It's also used for modern horns, like the French horn.
Giovanni Gabrieli
A plagal cadence ends In Ecclesiis ("een ek-KLAY-see-eese") from this organist's 1615 Sacrae symphoniae. He composed in the polychoral style at St. Mark's Basilica in Venice and was one of the first composers to specify instrumentation and dynamics.
Cello Concerto in E minor
A recitative by the soloist opens the Adagio in the first movement, before the violas introduce the theme in Moderato. Jacqueline du Pré famously recorded this piece, and Felix Salmond premiered it
concerto grosso
A ripieno group alternates with virtuosic passages for a concertino group of soloists in this type of Baroque concerto popular before the advent of the solo concerto.
Träumerei
A rising C-F fourth followed by the eighth notes E-F-A-C open almost every phrase of this movement from Kinderszenen.
Steve Reich
A similar rhythm to that from Clapping Music appears in this minimalist composer's Desert Music, New York Counterpoint, and Music for 18 Musicians. He used the technique of phasing in It's Gonna Rain and Piano Phase.
"My Favorite Things"
A smash-hit jazz recording of this Rodgers and Hammerstein song begins with John Coltrane's saxophone playing an ascending perfect fifth above a 3/4 time drum accompaniment.
Surprise Symphony
A sudden loud chord in this Haydn symphony interrupts the quiet opening of its second movement.
Enigma Variations
A theme from the overture of Mendelssohn's Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage was quoted in this set of fourteen works, which depicts Augustus Jaeger in the "Nimrod" section.
piano concerto
A theme similar to the first theme of Symphony No. 40 makes an appearance in Mozart's 21st work of this type, which may be most famous for its use in the movie Elvira Madigan. Rachmaninoff wrote four of these pieces.
trumpet
A tight embouchure is required to play this instrument, whose modern form comes with 3 piston valves. Famous performers of this instrument include Louis Armstrong and Herb Alpert.
Symphony No. 5
A trumpet solo opens the C-sharp minor funeral march, or "Trauersmarch", at the beginning of this Mahler symphony, whose fourth movement contains a famous adagietto.
oboe
A wartime encounter with the American soldier John de Lancie inspired Strauss to write a concerto for this instrument. Tomaso Albinoni wrote over a dozen of the earliest known concerti for this instrument.
El Salón México
Aaron Copland wrote this one-movement composition depicting a dance hall, incorporating themes from the folk music of the title country.
Igor Stravinsky
According to scholar Pieter van der Toorn, this composer of Symphony of Psalms made heavy use of octatonic sonorities, including in the "Petrushka chord" and several sections of Rite of Spring.
clave
Afro-Brazilian jazz is contrasted with Afro-Cuban jazz, whose rhythms are partially based on those played by this percussion instrument, which is typically played either 3-2 or 2-3. This instrument consists of two cylindrical sticks which are struck together, producing a high-pitched noise
en pointe
After Bournonville's La Sylphide used this technique for a floating effect, other ballets began to feature it more. In this technique, a dancer supports her body on her toes and wears special shoes stuffed with a hard box at the tip.
Tcherepnin
Alexander with this surname composed ten Bagatelles and listed Georgian harmony and a namesake nine-note scale, equal to Messiaen's third mode, in Basic Elements of My Musical Language. His father Nikolai taught Haydn to Prokofiev, who "dreaded" his tough criticism.
Antonio Vivaldi
Alfredo Casella organized a weeklong 1939 festival reviving this composer's music. The anti-modernist critic Alceo ("al-CHAY-oh") Toni arranged this Baroque violinist's Four Seasons for piano four-hands.
Pacific 231
Alkan's Le chemin de fer supposedly influenced this orchestral piece by Arthur Honegger in which rapid snare drums and pizzicatos contribute to the sensation of the title locomotive chugging along.
canon
All of the movements in Josquin's Missa Sine nomine belong to this imitative contrapuntal genre, in which the same melody starts at different points in time in different voices. Pachelbel wrote a popular one of these pieces in D.
minimalism
Along with Gorecki, Part was a leading proponent of "holy" type of this genre of music, which is characterized by simple repetitive structure and non-narrative themes. Its other proponents include Philip Glass.
Carnival Overture
Along with In Nature's Realm and Othello, this work is part of a triptych which Dvorak called Nature, Life and Love. This generally spirited and joyful piece includes a more melancholic interlude led by English horn and flute.
formalism
Along with Shostakovich and Myaskovsky, Khachaturian was targeted in the 1948 Zhdanov decree, accusing the aforementioned composers of adhering to this non-Stalinist-approved musical philosophy, in which the structure of pieces determine their meaning.
La valse
Along with The Tomb of Couperin, this was the only piece that Ravel had planned during the war and actually completed. This symphonic poem featuring a danse macabre was originally commissioned by Diaghilev for use in a ballet that was never staged.
A German Requiem, To Words of the Holy Scripture
Although Brahms was most likely an atheist, he set excerpts from the Luther Bible in this seven-movement sacred work for chorus and orchestra.
String Quintets
Among Mozart's greatest achievements are his six essays in this genre of chamber music, including K. 614 in E-flat, which features a bagpipe-trio in the Minuet, as well as the somber K.516 in G minor.
cello
Among Part's Fratres is one written for eight of these instruments, as do the first and fifth of Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras. Famous concertos for which were written by Lalo, Dvorak, and two by Shostakovich.
John Adams
Among the minimalists is this composer, who wrote Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Shaker Loops, Harmonielehre, and On the Transmigration of Souls, which was commissioned following the September 11 attacks.
clarinet
Amour and Harlekin are two of Stockhausen's compositions for this solo instrument. This instrument also plays the opening glissando in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
Le tombeau de Couperin
An E minor toccata (toh-KAH-tuh) closes this six-movement piano suite by Ravel, whose movements are each dedicated to a friend who died fighting in World War I.
etudes
An F minor piece in this genre, marked Allegro agitato molto, is included in a collection alongside Feux follets and Wilde Jagd. For 10 points each:
Symphony No. 3
An alto solo sings Nietzsche's "Midnight Song" in a movement representing "What Man Tells Me" in this symphony, easily Mahler's longest even without its originally-envisioned seventh movement.
Dona nobis pacem
An anti-Crimean war speech and several poems by Whitman, such as "Beat! Beat! Drums!" are used in this cantata by Vaughan-Williams, which shares its name with the final movement from Bach's Mass in B-minor.
Cello Concerto No. 1
An extremely fast "tempo primo" third movement caps off this A minor Saint-Saens piece, which unusually begins with a short chord from the orchestra followed by the main theme stated by the soloist.
waltzes (The Dance in the Village Inn is the first Mephisto Waltz)
An imitation of a violin tuning up represents the ensuing fervor of a Liszt work of this type, called The Dance in the Village Inn. Liszt also composed a C minor étude that is a variation of one of these works by Anton Diabelli.
gongs
An large bronze one of these Asian percussion instruments is hit at the end of a gamelan music section. The tam-tam is a Western variant of this instrument which, unlike a cymbal, is hung from its edge to resound more.
Franz Xaver Sussmayr
An oft-repeated story suggests Mozart dictated passages of his famous Requiem to this pupil of his, who completed it. This man would die himself at a young age due to tuberculosis.
Kreutzer Sonata
Another A major violin sonata is this Ludwig van Beethoven piece, which was never performed by its namesake, who proclaimed it to be "outrageously unintelligible."
Antonio Vivaldi
Another Baroque composer was this Italian who composed L'Estro Armonico and La stravanganza, two collections of violin concertos. He is also known for being an ordained priest and for composing The Trial between Harmony and Invention.
pipe organ
Another Danish composer was Dietrich Buxtehude, who was a virtuoso of this instrument, for which Bach's Toccata and Fugue is written.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Another Spanish-themed piece is Capriccio Espagnol, written by this composer of the Russian Easter Festival Overture and "The Flight of the Bumblebee."
St. Luke's Passion
Another composer from Poland was Krzysztof Penderecki, who wrote this religious work in 1966. This atonal work pays homage to J.S. Bach by having the melody based on the B-A-C-H motif and it takes its spoken parts from a certain synoptic Gospel.
Arthur Honegger
Another composer who was inspired by trains was this member of Les Six who composed the King David oratorio as well as Pacific 231.
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Another conductor affected by the rise of the Nazis was Otto Klemperer, who fled Nazi Germany to become the music director of this American orchestra. This orchestra is currently directed by Gustavo Dudamel.
G major
Another construct of music theory is the mode. The C Lydian mode shares the same key signature as this major key.
Henryk Mikolaj Górecki
Another famous Polish composer is this composer of Beatus Vir, who was inspired by the Holocaust to Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.
Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael
Another of Armstrong's hits, "Stardust," was composed by this songwriter. He may be best known for composing "Georgia on My Mind" and "Heart and Soul."
Eduoard Lalo
Another piece written for Sarasate was the Symphonie Espagnole, which was composed by this man whose other works include an opera about The King of Ys.
Paul Abraham Dukas
Another treatment of the Bluebeard legend was this French composer's Ariane et Barbe-bleue. Iskender discovers the title Persian mythological creature in his ballet La Peri.
Missa solemnis in D major, op. 123
Another work that Beethoven dedicated to Rudolph was this enormous setting of the mass ordinary in D major. Its "Benedictus" features an extended violin solo in G major.
tango
Another work with four movements depicting the seasons is Estaciones Porteñas by Astor Piazzolla. Carlos Gardel was another famous composer of music for this dance, which was created in Argentina.
Johann Nepomuk Hummel
Anton Weidinger was the dedicatee of both Haydn's trumpet concerto and the one in E major by this composer, whose Piano Concerto No. 3 in B minor is among the first to call for four horns.
"(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue"
Armstrong also performed this song, composed by Fats Waller for the Broadway musical Hot Chocolates. It contains lyrics like "I'm white inside but that don't help my case" and "My only sin is in my skin."
Cotton Club
Armstrong played in both the Connie's Inn and this rival establishment, a famous jazz music night club that ran in Harlem from 1923-1940. The décor in this whites-only club was outrageously racist, as its name suggests.
Phrygian mode
As Scarlatti worked as court musician in Spain and Portugal, many of his sonatas feature this mode common in Iberian music. Playing all the white notes on a piano from E to E will produce this third of the eight church modes.
Republic of Poland
As previously mentioned, The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs was composed by Henryk Górecki, a composer from this country. Another composer from here, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, served as its second Prime Minister.
four
As this is the number of strings on a violin, it's also the maximum number of notes that can be played on different strings simultaneously, though it's ridiculously hard to do so. Common time has this many quarter-notes per measure.
Billie Holiday
At the Monterey Jazz Festival, Carter performed with this musician, who was nicknamed "Lady Day." She became known for her recording of the songs "Strange Fruit" and wrote the song "God Bless the Child."
Roman Carnival Overture
Berlioz reworked themes from his failed opera Benevenuto Cellini into this overture, which depicts a celebration in the title city, and has a notable English horn solo.
requiem mass
Berlioz wrote a massive work of this type for chorus and orchestra which calls for four brass choirs at the four cardinal directions. Franz Sussmayr completed one work of this type by his teacher after the latter's death.
Rakoczy March
Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust includes a rendition of this traditional Hungarian tune, a march often performed as a separate extract.
Dmitri Shostakovich
Bernstein called this composer's ninth symphony "anti-ninth" for its light-heartedness, likening the violin solo to "Mickey Mouse." Musicologist Solomon Volkov called his ninth symphony an "act of creative insubordination."
clarinet
Big band leaders Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, and Benny Goodman all played this single-reed instrument. It opens Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with a trill and drawn-out glissando.
Wynton Marsalis
Blakey briefly hired this virtuoso trumpeter and his saxophonist brother Branford for The Jazz Messengers. This man's early recordings such as J Mood and Black Codes from the Underground propelled him to instant fame.
The Jazz Messengers
Blakey led this influential Jazz band that at one point included Freddie Hubbard and Wayne Shorter. This band infused gospel and hard bop in its influential 1955 recording of "The Preacher."
minuets
Boccherini is best known for one of these French dances in 3/4 time that he used as the A major third movement of his String Quintet in E major.
India
Bonnie C. Wade and James R. Kippen are known for their ethnomusicological work in this country. This country's classical music includes the genres of Dhrupad and Kriti, and uses instruments like the sitar and the tabla.
Brazil
Bossa nova is a genre of music from this South American country. Heitor Villa-Lobos is a famous composer from this country.
Mathis der Mahler
Both Celibidache and Borchard served as replacements for Wilhelm Furtwangler, who raised the ire of the Nazis after conducting this banned Hindemith opera about the creator of the Isenheim Altarpiece.
Concerto for Orchestra
Both Kodaly, the composer of Hary Janos, and Bartok composed a work of this paradoxical title. Bartok's work contains a "Game of Pairs" second movement and utilized his style of night music.
gavotte
Both Lully and Rameau are famous for their takes on this dance in simple meter, which like the menuet and the bouree was often placed in the fifth section of the baroque suite, between the sarabande and gigue. Bach's 5th and 6th cello suites both feature these dances.
Serge Koussevitzky
Both Ravel's Piano Concerto in G and his orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition were commissioned by this Russian conductor, who directed the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949.
Stabat Mater Dolorosa
Both Scarlatti's composed settings of this medieval text. Dvorak's setting of this text was inspired by the death of his daughter, while another famous setting of this text was composed by Giovanni Pergolesi.
La Sylphide OR Les Sylphides
Bournonville choreographed this oldest surviving ballet about a farmer and forest spirit. Glazunov orchestrated music by Chopin for a similarly titled ballet choreographed by Michel Fokine for the Ballets Russes. Name either.
Alto Rhapsody, Op. 53
Brahms may have channeled his romantic feelings for Julie Schumann into this choral piece, based on verses from Goethe's Harzreise im Winter.
3
Brahms' symphony of this number contains many permutations of the notes F-A-F, symbolizing "Frei, aber Froh." Camille Saint-Saens' symphony of this number calls for a pipe organ.
preludes
Chopin also wrote an Opus 28 collection of pieces of this type arranged in tonality by the circle of fifths, which earned comparisons to The Well-Tempered Clavier.
mazurka
Chopin repeated low G-flat D-flat fifths to imitate drones in his B-flat major Opus 7 No. 1 piece in this genre. His many stylized takes on this 3/4 Polish dance often use the Lydian or Phrygian mode and have a dotted first beat followed by two strong quarter notes.
polonaises
Chopin wrote a "Tragic" one of these pieces as his Opus 44 while he dedicated his two Opus 26 pieces of this type to Josef Dessauer. He wrote pieces of this type called the "Heroic" and "Military."
C-sharp minor
Chopin's most popular waltz besides the "Minute" Waltz is Op. 64, No. 2 which begins with G-sharp - E and F-double-sharp - D-sharp sixths in the right hand, and is in this key that Chopin also used for his Fantasie-Impromptu.
Carnaval
Clara is depicted in the C minor piece "Chiarina," which is part of this collection of twentyone solo piano pieces by her husband Robert, which uses musical cryptograms such as A-S-C-H in "Sphinxes" and other movements depicting revelers at the title festival.
piano sonata
Clifford Odets commissioned Copland's work in this genre, which was written at the end of his studies with Rudin Goldmark. Another American composer's second work in this genre has sections titled "Emerson" and "The Alcotts".
Krzysztof Penderecki (kuh-SHISH-toff pen-duh-RET-skee)
Clusters also dominate in this composer's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, which begins with all fifty-two strings playing fortissimo at the very top of their register.
A Love Supreme
Coltrane sings the title of this album, which begins with a gong strike. This album consists of the four parts: Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance, and Psalm.
Rosamunde Quartet
Composed around the same time as his Death and the Maiden, this Schubert quartet is based on the incidental music for a Helmina von Chezy work of the same name. A failed drama was the source of the melody of its second movement.
minimalism (accept equivalents)
Composer Steve Reich, who used a string quartet and melodies on tape to record Different Trains, is associated with this school of music, along with John Adams and Philip Glass.
basso continuo
Concerti grossi generally call for an ensemble consisting of a harpsichord and low string or wind instruments to carry out this role of improvising harmony using a pre-written bass line.
Bela Bartok
Conductor Paul Sacher commissioned this Hungarian to compose his Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta. He also wrote Concerto for Orchestra and the opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle.
"The Girl From Ipanema"
Cool jazz musician Stan Getz is probably best-known for massively popularizing Brazilian bossa nova with his version of this song.
Quiet City
Copland's incidental music for an Irwin Shaw play of the same name inspired this composition by him for trumpet, English horn, and string orchestra, which depicts a man haunted by the sound of the trumpet.
L'art de toucher le clavecin
Couperin's most famous work is this keyboard treatise, which includes eight preludes. It was used as an instructional work, teaching many techniques and including fingerings for the preludes.
Camille Saint-Saëns
Danse Macabre is by this French composer of The Carnival of the Animals.
Les Six
Darius Milhaud was a member of this French group, which also included the composer of The Sailors and Moulin Rouge, Georges Auric.
Gustave Mahler
Das Lied von der Erde, or The Song of the Earth, was written by this German composer, who also wrote Kindertotenlieder, or Songs on the Death of Children, based off of the poems of Friedrich Ruckert.
Richard Wagner
Das Rheingold is the first opera in this anti-Semitic composer's Ring Cycle.
piano
Dave Brubeck, the bandleader of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, played this instrument also played by Art Tatum, Herbie Hancock, and Count Basie.
Argentina
David Henry Hwang worked with Osvaldo Golijov [go-LEE-hov], a composer from this country, on an opera about Lorca's death titled Aidamar. This country's composers include Astor Piazzolla [pee-ah-"SOUL"-ah] and Alberto Ginastera [hee-nah-"STAIR"-ah].
Enrique Granados Campiña
De Falla was notably influenced by this fellow Spanish composer of 12 Spanish Dances who composed a set of pieces influenced by the paintings of Francisco Goya and for drowning in 1916 after his boat was torpedoed by Germans.
Images
Debussy also wrote three sets of piano works with this title: two numbered sets and an unpublished "forgotten" set. The first volume of these works includes "Reflets dans l'eau" and "Hommage à Rameau"; the second ends with the goldfish-inspired "Poissons d'or."
Emmanuel Chabrier
Debussy tried to avoid Wagnerian influence in Pelleas et Melisande, possibly because of his distaste for this other French composer's opera Gwendoline. This friend of Verlaine also composed the orchestral rhapsody España.
Romeo and Juliet
Delius is probably most famous for his opera about a "Village" version of these two characters, who die together at the end of a Gounod opera.
Spain
Domenico Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas were greatly influenced by his time in this modern-day country. Another composer from this modern-day country wrote the ballet The Brief Life and Love, The Magician.
pavane
Dowland's "Flow my tears," which Britten used in Lachrymae, is this type of stately Italian dance in AABBCC form often paired with a faster triple-time galliard. Ravel and Fauré wrote piano pieces that evoke this slow dance.
15th century
Dufay was arguably the most important composer of this century. Palestrina was the most famous composer of the century after this one, and Machaut probably the most important composer of the century before this one.
Bela Viktor Janos Bartok
Duke Bluebeard's Castle was written by this Hungarian composer who also wrote ballets titled The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin.
Slavonic Dances
Dvorak also wrote this set of sixteen pieces inspired by Brahms' Hungarian Dances. It includes two furiants and two dumky.
Thomas Tallis
Earlier settings of the Magnificat were composed by William Byrd, a student of this composer of the motet Spem in alium.
Louis Armstrong
Eldridge is often treated as a bridge between the styles of Gillespie and this earlier musician, a man who recorded "Heebie Jeebies" and went by the nicknames Satchmo and Pops.
Pomp and Circumstance Marches
Elgar also composed this set of six marches most often heard at graduation ceremonies.
string quartets
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge commissioned Webern's opus 28, a piece of this type using a tone row based on the BACH motif. Bela Bartok jam-packed his six pieces in this genre with extended techniques.
Williams
Ellington's main trumpeter from 1929 to 1940 was a man nicknamed "Cootie" who had this last name. A pianist with this last name wrote "Royal Garden Blues" and led namesake "Jazz Kings" and "Blues Five" bands.
Harriet Smithson
Even though Berlioz had originally written Lélio about Camille Moke, he pretended it was really about this Shakespearean actress, who inspired Symphonie Fantastique's program and who later became Berlioz's first wife
Edvard Grieg
Even though Niels Gade frequently dissed his works, this man dedicated his E minor piano sonata to him anyway. Other solo piano pieces by him include "Butterfly," "March of the Trolls," and "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen."
Gyorgy Ligeti
Excerpts from this composer's Lux Aeterna can be heard in the moonbus scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. This composer is best known for micropolyphonic music such as Atmospheres and Apparitions.
hemiola
Fantaisie-Impromptu launches into a 4-against-3 cross-rhythm, an example of the "vertical" type of this device. This syncopation-like device of juxtaposing duple and triple rhythm appears in many Baroque cadences, Schubert impromptus, and works by Brahms.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is by this English composer of Fantasia on Greensleves and The Lark Ascending
Louis Armstrong
Fats Waller composed the standard "(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue," which was popularized by this jazz trumpeter, who also performed hit versions of "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "What a Wonderful World."
mass
Fauré's other celebrated sacred work is his Messe Basse, a "low" example of these pieces. Generally, they're settings of the Latin liturgy and their first movement is a setting of the Kyrie eleison.
Los Angeles
Finnish composer Esa-Pekka Salonen was the music director of this city's symphony orchestra from 1992 to 2009, after which he was succeeded by Gustavo Dudamel
E-flat
Found a major third below G is this note, whose major key was used to write the Eroica Symphony and the Emperor Concerto.
syncopation
Fourth species counterpoint begins to include this kind of rhythm using suspensions. This type of rhythm emphasizes the off beats.
requiem mass
Franz Xaver Süssmayr completed Mozart's composition of this type, since Mozart died before he could get past the first few bars of the Lacrimosa.
Johann Joachim Quantz
Frederick the Great was taught by this prolific German flautist and composer, who is chiefly known for his Essay on Instruction for Playing the Transverse Flute and his over 300 concertos and 200 sonatas for the instrument.
preludes
Froberger also contributed to the development of the "unmeasured" form of this genre. Rachmaninoff included one of these in C-sharp minor in his Morceaux de fantaisie, and these short pieces open all six of Bach's Cello Suites.
harpsichord
Froberger imported the arpeggiated style brisé from the lute to this instrument, which he learned from Frescobaldi. A later player of this instrument wrote "Les Barricades Mystérieuses."
New York City
From 1928 to 1936, Toscanini was music director of the philharmonic of this city, a position also held by Pierre Boulez and Zubin Mehta. The orchestra plays in this city's Lincoln Center.
five
Fux divided counterpoint into this many "species" of increasing complexity and fluidity. In common-practice music, dominant chords build on this number's scale degree, which is represented by "sol" in solfege.
Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina
Fux's book taught counterpoint in the style of this man, who composed the six-voice motet "O Magnum Mysterium." According to later legends, which are untrue, he saved polyphony with his Pope Marcellus Mass.
"Sabre Dance"
Gayane is best known for containing this playful piece, consisting of a xylophone solo against a string backdrop and occasional trombone slides, that is based on an Armenian folk song.
An American in Paris
Gershwin disapproved of Walter Damrosch's interpretation of this symphonic poem at its 1928 premiere. Gershwin scored it for an unusual ensemble including celesta, saxophones, and taxi horns.
The Republic of Cuba
Gershwin used maracas and guiros placed directly before the conductor's stand to invoke music from this Latin American country in an overture named after it. That overture was originally titled Rumba.
Of Thee I Sing
Gershwin wrote Porgy and Bess four years after writing this political satire about John P. Wintergreen's run for President of the United States on a platform of love. It was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
Benny Carter
Gillespie collaborated with this man on the album New Jazz Sounds. This man is best known for winning a Grammy for his cover of Duke Ellington's "Prelude to a Kiss." His songs include "When Lights are Low" and "Blues in my Heart."
string quartet
Ginastera also wrote three works of this type, the last of which includes an additional part for soprano. A work of this type by Schubert is called Death and the Maiden.
Couperin
Give last name of composers like Francois "Le Grand" who wrote The Art of Playing the Harpsichord, "The Superb" Quartet Sonata, and The Nations.
"The Harmonious Blacksmith"
Give the common nickname of this keyboard piece by Handel, which consists of a theme and five variations and serves as the final movement of the composer's Suite No.5 in E major.
Etudes Op. 25
Give the opus number of Chopin's other etude collection, dedicated to Marie d'Agoult, which includes pieces nicknamed "Ocean," "Butterfly," and "Wrong Note."
Scarlatti
Give the surname of the Italian Baroque composers Alessandro and Domenico, the latter of whom made numerous advances in keyboard music with his 555 keyboard sonatas.
plagal
Give this term for a cadence in which a 4 chord resolves to a 1 chord. It is often also called an "Amen cadence."
"Troika"
Give this title of a movement that depicts a horse-drawn sleigh ride with saxophones, bells, and pizzicato strings. That piece with this title follows the imaginary officer's wedding in a five-movement suite.
frottola
Give this umbrella term for several Italian secular genres at the beginning of the 16th century. This kind of work developed from Italian practices of improvising a song and its lute accompaniment.
the "Portrait Trilogy"
Glass wrote three operas in a trilogy by this name. This trilogy includes Akhnaten and Einstein on the Beach.
The Five
Glinka was one of the forebears to this circle of Russian composers, which included Balakirev, Mussorgsky, and Borodin.
piano
Goyescas by Granados is a set of pieces for this instrument. Philip Glass's Metamorphosis consists of five slightly modified themes for this instrument, and a concerto for this instrument by Tchaikovsky was blasted by Rubinstein for being clumsily written.
Dante Alighieri
Granados composed a 1908 symphonic poem on this figure, whose journey through Hell and Purgatory inspired a companion piece to Liszt's Faust Symphony.
The "Maiden"
Granados titled the best known movement from Goyescas after this figure "and the Nightingale." This figure appears along with "Death" in the title of a Franz Schubert lied later expanded into a famous D minor string quartet.
monophonic
Gregorian chant has this musical texture, which means it consists of only a single unaccompanied melodic idea. Music with this texture can use any number of voices, as long as they are all playing the same line.
Peer Gynt
Grieg is perhaps better known for two suites derived from his incidental music to this Ibsen play. The first suite opens with "Morning Mood" and concludes with "In the Hall of the Mountain King".
Cleveland, Ohio
Grieg's Piano Concerto was one of many that pianist Leon Fleisher recorded together with George Szell and this city's orchestra, which Szell made famous during his tenure as music director from 1946 to 1970.
Miserere, mei Deus
Grigorio Allegri is most famous for this composition, a setting of Psalm 51 that is commonly performed during the Tenebrae service during holy week. Two alternating choirs generally sing this piece in falso bordone style.
Rhapsody in Blue
Grofé first gained fame in 1924 after arranging this piece for Paul Whiteman's orchestra. This piece features a notable clarinet glissando in the beginning and was written by George Gershwin.
hocket
Guillaume de Machaut composed one of the last standalone pieces of this type, partially titled for David; it has arrangements by Birtwistle and Davies. In this effect, a fast melody's notes are alternately distributed among voices.
Hungary
Hary Janos is a work by Zoltan Kodaly who hailed from this country, and collected folk songs from this nation, alongside fellow countryman Bela Bartok.
string quartets
Haydn also composed this type of work in groups like the the "Prussian" ones and the "Russian" ones. His "Erdody" ones include individual pieces of this type called "Sunrise" and "Emperor."
the "Sun" quartets
Haydn most dramatically innovated the form with this set of six quartets from 1772, which derive their nickname from their original cover art. They are numbered 31-36 in the Hoboken catalogue.
orchestra
In late Romantic lieder, this ensemble replaced the piano as the voice's accompaniment. Mahler's song cycles Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Songs of a Wayfarer, and Kindertotenlieder are for voices plus this large ensemble used in The Song of the Earth and nine other major Mahler works.
oboe
In modern symphony orchestras, this double-reed woodwind instrument usually sounds the "concert A" for all the other instruments to tune to.
"Ave, formosissima"
In this other song from Carmina Burana, the male singer elevates his mistress to the level of the medieval beauty Blancheflor, then Helen of Troy, and finally Venus herself.
falsetto
In this technique, singers attempt to artificially reach notes higher than their normal vocal range.
Moonlight Sonata
Indicative of a transition between Beethoven's early and middle periods is this piano sonata said to evoke the image of the title object shimmering over a lake at night.
melismas
Innovative composers would decorate plainchant by having singers use this technique, in which a single syllable is expressed using multiple notes.
Carl Maria von Weber
Invitation to the Dance is a piece by this German composer better known for his two clarinet concertos, one in F minor and one in E-flat major, and the opera Der Freischütz.
Mily (Alexeyevich) Balakirev
Islamey is a composition for piano written by this Russian composer, who founded the Mighty Five. His other works include the symphonic poem Tamara.
George Frederic Handel
Israel in Egypt was composed by this German-English composer, who included a famous "Hallelujah" chorus in his other oratorio Messiah.
"The Moldau"
Israel's national anthem, "Hatikvah", is based on the 15th century song "La Mantovana", also the basis for the main melody of this Smetana tone poem depicting the title river. It is the second movement in Má Vlast.
D minor
J.S. Bach used this key to write both a concerto for two solo violinists and a menacing Toccata and Fugue for the organ.
"Salt Peanuts"
Jazz at Massey Hall includes a recording of this jazz standard, co-written by "Dizzy" Gillespie and Kenny Clarke, whose title phrase is a three-note figure going up an octave from F to F, and then down an octave again.
harmony
Jean-Philippe Rameau wrote an influential treatise on this technique of sounding multiple notes at once. It is sometimes referred to as the "vertical" aspect of music, contrasted with the "horizontal" melody.
New Orleans
Jelly Roll Morton performed in this southern city for the majority of his early career. This city's Creole speakers incorporated blues elements into its zydeco music.
England
John Dunstable, who was influential on Dufay, came from this country. Later composers from here include Henry Purcell.
piano
Johnson played this instrument, which was also played by Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington. Johnson's compositions for this instrument were influenced by ragtime tracks such as the "Maple Leaf Rag."
Mexico
Joplin's piece "Solace" is a serenade inspired by the music of this country, the place of origin of ranchera and banda music and of guitar-like instruments called jaranas.
Theodore Roosevelt
Joplin's rag "The Strenuous Life" was named for a speech by this man. The actions of this white man inspired Joplin's lost opera A Guest of Honor
On the Beautiful Blue Danube
Joseph Weyl added words to this waltz, the traditional encore piece at the Vienna New Year's Concert.
motet
Josquin's "Ave Maria ... virgo serena" is one of these sacred choral pieces that set multiple related texts over a cantus firmus in the tenor.
paraphrase mass
Josquin's Missa Pange lingua is this type of cyclic mass, in which the cantus firmus is an elaborated version of a pre-existing melody. Unlike a parody mass, only the melody of the earlier music is used, and not the whole polyphonic complex.
George Frideric Handel
Judas Maccabaeus was written by this German-British composer of Messiah and Israel in Egypt. ANSWER: George Frideric Handel
Miles Davis
Kind of Blue was performed by this jazz trumpeter also known for Bitches Brew and Sketches of Spain.
Robert Schumann
Kinderszenen and Dichterliebe are both works by this German composer of two Liederkreis whose wife Clara premiered many of his works.
Te Deum
Kodaly composed a setting of this hymn in honor of the 250th anniversary of the liberation of Budapest from the Turks. Handel produced three settings of this hymn, which was apocryphally composed by St. Ambrose for the baptism of St. Augustine.
Bela Viktor Janos Bartok
Kodaly deemed the first string quartet by this countryman of his "a return to life." This composer of The Miraculous Mandarin produced Duke Bluebeard's Castle and a Concerto for Orchestra
minimalism
La Monte Young was a pioneer of this highly repetitive musical style that characterizes John Adams's opera Nixon in China and Terry Riley's In C.
G
Lalo's other surviving symphony is in this note's minor key, which is the same key used in Debussy's only String Quartet and Mozart's two symphonies in minor keys. It is the fifth note of the solfege, coming before A.
Joseph-Maurice Ravel
Le Tombeau de Couperin is by this composer of Pavane for a Dead Princess and Boléro.
harpsichord
Le Tombeau de Couperin is named after François Couperin, a Baroque composer who also wrote a treatise on how to play this instrument.
violin concertos
Leopold Auer declined to premiere Tchaikovsky's D major foray into this genre, similar to how Pablo de Sarasate declined to premiere the one by Johannes Brahms for its second-movement oboe solo.
Fate motif
Like everyone who has ever heard Beethoven's fifth, Hoffmann expresses his surprise at the striking simplicity of the symphony's principal motif, which is often described as this knocking at the door.
perfect authentic cadence
Like most tonal music of the classical era, the Jupiter Symphony ends with one of these cadences, in which a dominant chord resolves to a tonic chord, with both of them in root position. In some definitions of this cadence, the tonic note must also be in the soprano voice.
Aaron Copland
Lincoln Portrait is a work of this American composer, who wrote Fanfare for the Common Man and El Salon Mexico.
"Camp Town Races" or
Lincoln Portrait quotes both "Springfield Mountain" and this Stephen Foster minstrel song before the speaker finally enters.
Hungarian Fantasy
Liszt also composed this piece featuring an alla zingarese section in A minor for piano and orchestra based on his Hungarian Rhapsody No. 14 for solo piano.
Carl Czerny
Liszt was a student of this Austrian composer and pianist who wrote several collections of etudes, such as 160 Eight-Measure Studies and The School of Velocity.
"The Ballad of Mack the Knife"
Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin both popularized this song as a jazz standard. Marc Blitzstein's rendition of this moritat from The Threepenny Opera begins "Oh the shark has pretty teeth dear, and he shows them pearly white."
Bessie Smith
Louis Armstrong recorded "Saint Louis Blues" with this female blues singer. Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues," she saved Columbia Records with her recordings of "Gulf Coast Blues" and "Downhearted Blues."
Masses
Machaut composed the first complete setting of this Roman Catholic liturgy traditionally divided into the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. Its Requiem variety is frequently performed for the dead.
chansons
Machaut helped develop the three formes fixes -- the rondeau, the ballade, and the virelai -- used in these lyrical French songs. The Song of Roland is an example of one de geste for which the music has not survived.
motets
Machaut wrote many of these sacred pieces featuring multiple texts sung over a cantus firmus. More modern examples include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Ave verum corpus.
Notre Dame de Paris
Machaut's mass is dedicated to this two word concept in Christianity. A school of polyphonic composers led by Leonin and Perotin worked at an institution named for this Christian concept.
Das Lied von Der Erde
Mahler was so obsessed with beating the "curse of the ninth" that he disguised this ninth symphonic work as a song cycle. This work sets various Tang dynasty poems to music and ends with "The Farewell."
: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Mahler's first true song cycle, its four sections are called "When My Sweetheart is Married," "I Went This Morning over the Field," "I Have a Gleaming Knife," and "The Two Blue Eyes of my Beloved," wherein the titular vagabond gets progressively more depressed.
Spain
Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albeniz were composers from this nation, which inspired the themes from a certain "symphonie" by Edouard Lalo.
multiple stops
Many notes in Sonatas and Partitas call for this technique, leading Emil Temanyi to create his controversial 1954 recording using a Vega bow.
galant style
Many of Telemann's vocal works exemplify this style in their simplicity and lack of virtuosic ornamentation. This style was a response to the complexity of late Baroque and was pioneered by Luigi Boccherini and C.P.E Bach.
csárdás
Many of the Hungarian Rhapsodies, including the second, take the form of this Hungarian folk dance, which begins with a slow lassan section, followed by a faster friska.
Arnold Schoenberg
Many of the Princeton composers practiced total serialism, an extension of the twelve-tone technique invented by this founder of the Second Viennese School and composer of Pierrot Lunaire.
Pytor Iyich Tchaikovsky
Marche Slave is by this Russian composer whose final symphony contains a "limping" waltz in 5/4 and is subtitled Pathétique.
1812 Overture
Marche Slave is frequently combined in performance with this other patriotic Tchaikovsky piece, which also uses "God Save the Tsar," alternating it with cannon shots.
guitar
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote 24 preludes and fugues for two of these Well-Tempered instruments after studying Sor's Mozart Variations. Ginastera imitated this instrument at the end of his first Argentine Dance and used folk music in his sonata for it.
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major
Maurice Ravel wrote this piece in D major for Paul Wittgenstein. There is debate as to whether this piece is actually in one, two, or three movements.
John Coltrane
McCoy Tyner, who was a neighbor and a student of Bud Powell, was the pianist for this man's quartet, recording albums such as Crescent and A Love Supreme with him.
Songs without Words
Mendelssohn wrote eight books worth of these short piano miniatures, which include his "Spring Song" and "Spinning Song."
St. Matthew Passion
Mendelssohn's greatest contribution to choral music may be the revival of Bach he ushered in with his truncated performance of this piece, which depicts the weeping of Peter and the suicide of Judas that take place in Chapters 26 and 27 of the namesake Gospel.
pipe organ
Messiaen was additionally a skilled performer of this instrument, which produces sound by using keyboards and foot pedals to direct pressurized air through pipes.
birds
Messiaen's first piano prelude and the clarinet trills in the Quartet's first movement imitate the song of these animals. A solo violin depicts one of these animals in Ralph Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending.
hard bop
Miles Davis' album Walkin' was composed in this style, an outgrowth of bebop with additional influences from soul and gospel music. Its rhythms were pioneered by the Jazz Messengers.
violoncello
Mischa Maisky plays this instrument, which was also played by Gregor Piatigorsky. This instrument and the piano appear in all of Chopin's chamber works.
equal temperament
Modern pianos and fixed pitch orchestral instruments are tuned to this system, in which the octave is evenly divided into twelve semitones.
madrigals
Monteverdi frequently wrote these secular vocal works which are unrelated to a similarly named "Trecento" form. Monteverdi wrote nine books of these works that frequently set poetry to music.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Monteverdi helped develop music past the Renaissance style to the Baroque style of composers like this man who wrote the Brandenburg Concertos and a Mass in B minor.
"King Porter Stomp"
Morton composed this standard and later recorded it alongside "Tom Cat Blues" as a duet with cornetist Joe "King" Oliver. Benny Goodman recorded a hit version of this composition arranged by Fletcher Henderson.
harpsichord
Most of Scarlatti's sonatas were composed for this keyboard instrument, which was gradually eclipsed in popularity by the piano.
natural horn
Mozart also composed four concertos for this instrument, for his friend Joseph Leutgeb. Weber wrote a concertino for this instrument, which is the solo instrument in Ligeti's Hamburg Concerto.
bassoons
Mozart also wrote a B-flat major concerto for this double-reed woodwind instrument, whose "contra" variety is the lowest-pitched woodwind instrument in the standard orchestra.
string quartets
Mozart wrote sixteen of these pieces. A number of them were written by Joseph Haydn, including sets of them nicknamed "Sun" and "Erdödy."
Johannes Brahms's Horn Trio in E-flat major, Op. 40
Mozart's Horn Concertos are scored for natural horn, like this Brahms's work purposefully written for natural horn. There are precious few other examples of works with similar instrumentation, György Ligeti's definitely being the second-most popular and an homage to Brahms.
slow introduction
Mozart's Prague, Linz, and thirty-ninth symphonies are the only three of his forty-one to have this musical feature, though he also incorporated it into a symphony by Michael Haydn. Eleven of the twelve London symphonies by Joseph Haydn have this feature.
Ave verum corpus
Mozart's final and most celebrated motet is a setting of this Latin text praising the true body of the Virgin Mary. Liszt combined this motet with Allegri's Miserere in his À la Chapelle Sixtine.
Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major
Mozart's original first movement cadenza for this piano concerto is thought to be lost; the Andante second movement of this piece opens with muted strings playing softly and was used in the Swedish film Elvira Madigan.
Alcindoro
Musetta performs "Quando M'en Vo" while at Cafe Momus with this man, her sugar daddy. The characters eventually run out of the cafe, leaving this man to pay their bill.
Federico Garcia Lorca
Name his author, in whose memory Silvestre Revueltas wrote an "homage" for chamber orchestra. The Intermezzo of a sonata by Francis Poulenc was directly inspired by this author's death.
Edvard Hagerup Grieg
Name the Norwegian composer who included an "Arabian Dance" and "In the Hall of the Mountain King" in his Peer Gynt Suite.
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky
Name the composer of Petrushka who also wrote The Firebird as well as the scandalous, The Rite of Spring.
Notebooks for Anna Magdalena Bach
Name these collections of works which include aria "Bist du Bei Mir" and the first five of the composer's "French" suites.
Songs Without Words
Name these eight collections of six piano pieces, which include two "Venetian Gondolier's Song"s and "Spring Song", which is sometimes nicknamed "Camberwell Green"
Mozart's Piano Sonatas
Name these eighteen works for a solo instrument, a group including the aforementioned K310, as well as K309 written for Rosa Cannabich.
cadences
Name these endings to a musical phrase that usually give a sense of closure to the section of the overall composition.
string quartets by Franz Schubert
Name these fifteen chamber works. The thirteenth draws on the composer's incidental music to Rosamunde and the fourteenth draws on his lied "Death and the Maiden".
Beethoven's piano concertos
Name these five compositions for soloist and orchestra by the composer of the "Kreutzer" Sonata. A.B. Marx suggested that the second movement of the fourth of these depicts Orpheus taming the furies.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's violin concertos
Name these five orchestral pieces, the third of which incorporates a folk melody called "The Strassburger," and the last of which is called the "Turkish."
Frederic Chopin's ballades
Name these four difficult solo piano pieces, inspired by poems by Adam Mickiewicz, the first of which opens with a Neapolitan sixth chord.
maqām ("muh-COM")
Name these melodic modes of Arabic, Turkish, or Persian music usually made of two tetrachords, like Rāst or Bayātī, that may use quarter tones. Mizrahi Jews use different ones based on the mood of a week's Torah reading.
Hungarian Rhapsodies
Name these nineteen pieces based on gypsy themes. The second, in C-sharp minor, is by far the most popular.
symphonies by Camille Saint-Saëns
Name these orchestral works that include an unnumbered one in F major subtitled "Urbs Roma". The third of them is a two-movement work featuring a pipe organ.
piano preludes by Sergei Rachmaninoff
Name these pieces by this composer, the most famous of which begins with the left hand playing A, G-sharp, C-sharp in octaves, and is part of the collection Morceaux de fantaisie.
motet
Name these polyphonic compositions that often have isorhythm, no accompaniment, and a sacred Latin text, unlike madrigals. Dufay's piece of this type, Nuper rosarum flores, was for the newly-domed Florence Cathedral.
minor scales
Name these scales that come in melodic and harmonic types.
cadenzas
Name these short musical phrases designed to show off the soloist's skills. Benjamin Britten wrote one for Sviatoslav Richter to play for Mozart's 22nd Piano Concerto.
ligatures
Name these symbols used in musical notation of the Middle Ages and Renaissance that represent at least two notes performed on the same syllable. Ones with two notes are called binaria.
etudes
Name these technical studies of which Franz Liszt wrote "Transcendental" ones.
Trois Gymnopédies
Name these three slow dances in 3/4, inspired by the dances of naked Spartan youths.
preludes by Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (accept equivalents; prompt on partial answer)
Name these twenty-four pieces for solo piano by a certain Russian composer, one in each of the twenty-four keys. That one of these pieces in C-sharp minor opens with three fortissimo octave chords: A, G-sharp, C-sharp.
cellos and double basses
Name these two instruments which, near the start of the fourth movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, play recitatives between statements of themes from the previous three movements.
Symphonies by Charles Ives
Name these works by a certain composer that include the first one in D minor as well as an unfinished one that had planned sections titled "Past," "Present," and "Future" and is called the "Universe" one of these works.
Pomp and Circumstance (Military) Marches
Name these works whose first contains a trio that was reworked and fitted with the lyrics "Land of Hope and Glory" for the Coronation Ode of Edward VII.
John Phillip Sousa
Name this "March King", the American composer of "The Thunderer", "The Liberty Bell", and "Stars and Stripes Forever".
"Straight, No Chaser"
Name this 12 bar blues standard in B flat that was originally recorded with a team of five including Art Blakey on drums and the composer on piano.
Guillaume de Machaut
Name this 14th-century Ars Nova composer whose Messe de Nostre Dame is the first complete polyphonic setting of the Mass Ordinary by a single composer.
Josquin des Prez
Name this 15th-century Franco-Flemish composer known for his masses, which include De beata virgine and Pange lingua.
Israel in Egypt
Name this 1739 oratorio with a libretto consisting of passages from Exodus and Psalms that was probably compiled by Charles Jennens. It includes the double chorus "The Lord shall reign for ever and ever."
Symphony No. 41 or "Jupiter" Symphony
Name this 1788 C-major symphony, it's composer's last, whose final movement weaves together five themes contrapuntally in its intricate fugato conclusion.
Giuseppe Tartini
Name this 17th century Italian composer, who wrote a letter to J.G. de Lalande describing a dream in which he saw Satan playing his most famous composition.
Revolutionary Etude
Name this 1831 solo piano work written during the Russian attack on Warsaw during the November Uprising.
"Symphony of a Thousand"
Name this 1906 symphony, a setting of both the hymn "Veni Creator Spiritus" and the closing words of Goethe's Faust, that is scored for an extremely large orchestra.
Johannes Brahms
Name this 19th-century German composer of the Academic Festival Overture, who wrote a famous "Wiegenlied" or "lullaby."
Frédéric (François) Chopin
Name this 19th-century Polish composer, known for his large output of piano music, including polonaises nicknamed "Military" and "Heroic".
Paul Hindemith
Name this 20th-century German composer of Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber and a symphony based on themes from his opera Mathis der Maler.
Béla
Name this 20th-century Hungarian composer of a Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta and a popular Concerto for Orchestra.
Ottorino Respighi
Name this 20th-century Italian composer who orchestrated his 3 Preludes on Gregorian Melodies for Church Windows. He also composed Trittico botticelliano and a trilogy of symphonic poems.
Igor Stravinsky
Name this 20th-century Russian composer whose ballets include Petrushka and The Rite of Spring.
Winterreise
Name this 24-song cycle that begins with one in which the narrator writes "Gute Nacht" on the gate of a lover whose heart has strayed.
Für Elise
Name this A minor bagatelle written for solo piano by Beethoven. It is endlessly performed by beginner-intermediate piano students.
John (Milton) Cage Jr.
Name this American avant-garde composer of the silent piece 4' 33''.
La Monte Young
Name this American composer of The Well-Tuned Piano, an improvisatory piece for a solo piano pitched using just intonation, rather than traditional equal temperament.
Aaron Copland
Name this American composer of the ballet Appalachian Spring and the Fanfare for the Common Man.
Ferde Grofé
Name this American composer who evoked a man riding on a donkey in the "On the Trail" movement of his Grand Canyon Suite.
Steve Reich
Name this American composer who explored phasing in pieces like Piano Phase and Drumming and also composed Music for 18 Musicians.
Ferde Grofé
Name this American composer who is best known for including such movements as "On the Trail" and "Cloudburst" in a suite depicting a Southwestern attraction.
George Percy Aldridge Grainger
Name this Australian composer of an arrangement of the folk song "Country Gardens."
Franz Joseph Haydn
Name this Austrian composer of the Classical period known as the "Father of the String Quartet."
Franz Lehar
Name this Austrian composer who wrote the song "You'll Find Me at Maxim's," as well as an operetta about Paganini's fictional affair with the Duchess of Lucha entitled Paganini.
(Franz) Joseph Haydn
Name this Austrian composer, whose twelve "London" Symphonies include symphonies nicknamed "Clock" and "Surprise".
Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1
Name this B-flat minor piece whose first movement features a theme based on the songs of blind Ukrainian beggars. Its initial version was harshly criticized by the composer's friend Nikolai Rubinstein.
Georg Philipp Telemann
Name this Baroque composer and godfather of C.P.E. Bach. He may be best known for composing three sets of chamber pieces designed to accompany a meal called Tafelmusik.
Domenico Scarlatti
Name this Baroque composer of a staggering 555 keyboard sonatas. His father Alessandro founded the Neapolitan school of opera.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Name this Baroque composer who included his "musical cryptogram," made of the notes B-flat A C B-natural, in The Art of the Fugue.
Georg Philipp Telemann
Name this Baroque composer who is better known for his Don Quixote Overture, as well as three sets of six-part productions that open with dances, collectively called Tafelmusik.
Francois Couperin
Name this Baroque composer who may be best remembered for a book containing instructions for fingering when playing some of his pieces, The Art of Playing the Harpsichord.
Benjamin Britten
Name this British composer of such operas as The Turn of The Screw and Peter Grimes. His non-operatic works include his War Requiem.
Olivier Messiaen ("mess-YAWN")
Name this Catholic French composer whose wife, Yvonne Loriod, played the ondes Martenot ("ond mart-NO") in his Turangalîla-Symphonie. He wrote Quartet for the End of Time in a German POW camp.
Jean Sibelius's Symphony No. 5 in E-Flat Major
Name this E-flat composition whose third movement opens with a brisk melody in string tremolos followed by a passage in the horns known as the "swan hymn" or "swan-call motif."
William Byrd
Name this Elizabethan English composer who included keyboard music in his My Ladye Nevells Booke.
Gustav Holst
Name this Englishman who adapted the finale of his Second Suite in F for Military Band, "Fantasia on the Dargason", for his later St. Paul's Suite.
Arvo Part
Name this Estonian composer of in Fratres I and Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten. He is best known for developing tintinnabulation, a technique that he used to compose Spiegel im Spiegel for piano and violin.
Farewell Symphony
Name this F-sharp minor symphony written to inform Prince Esterházy that his court orchestra wished to return home from his summer palace.
François Couperin
Name this French Baroque composer of keyboard music, who introduced the trio sonata to France with Parnassus and authored the treatise The Art of Harpsichord Playing.
Achille-Claude Debussy
Name this French Impressionist composer of La Mer.
Hector Berlioz
Name this French Romantic composer of Symphonie Fantastique and its bizarre sequel, the monodrama Lélio (LAY-leo).
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Name this French composer from the time of Louis XV, who wrote the operas Hippolyte et Aricie and Castor et Pollux.
Claude Debussy
Name this French composer of L'isle joyeuse and two books of twelve Préludes for piano.
Charles-Valentin Alkan
Name this French composer of the aforementioned étude Le chemin de fer, as well as études in all the major and minor keys. Each movement of his sonata The Four Ages represents a man growing ten years older.
Erik Satie
Name this French composer, cabaret pianist, dadaist, and minimalist who composed the Gymnopédies.
Robert Alexander Schumann
Name this German Romantic composer of Papillons and Carnaval. He married Clara Wieck.
Max Bruch
Name this German Romantic composer of three violin concerti, the first of which is in G minor. This composer drew from Lord Byron's Hebrew Melodies and used a cello to represent the singing of the title prayer in Kol Nidrei.
Johannes Brahms
Name this German Romantic composer who expressed his thanks for an honorary doctorate by writing the Academic Festival Overture. His opus 59 contains a famous "Wiegenlied," or "Lullaby."
Robert Schumann
Name this German composer who wrote the song cycle Dichterliebe during his "Year of Song". He wrote his only piano concerto for his wife, Clara Wieck.
Richard Strauss
Name this German composer whose tone poems include Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks and the Nietzsche-inspired Also Sprach Zarathustra.
Fantasia on British Sea Songs
Name this Henry Wood medley commemorating Trafalgar's centenary. Its audience mock-cries into handkerchiefs in "Tom Bowling" and hums "Home, Sweet Home", which follows a clarinet cadenza.
Béla Bartók
Name this Hungarian 20th century composer of Concerto for Orchestra; Mikrokosmos; and Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta.
Zoltan Kodaly (ko-DAI)
Name this Hungarian ethnomusicologist who composed a famous Cello Sonata and used a cimbalom throughout the suite he extracted from his opera about a braggart soldier, Hary Janos.
Antonio Vivaldi
Name this Italian Baroque composer who composed violin concertos for each time period of his Four Seasons.
Antonio Vivaldi
Name this Italian baroque composer of The Four Seasons.
Arcangelo Corelli
Name this Italian baroque writer of twelve concerti grossi, the eighth of which is nicknamed the "Christmas" Concerto.
Frédéric Chopin
Name this Polish Romantic-era composer, whose etudes include the "Revolutionary."
Frederic Francois Chopin
Name this Polish composer of Fantaisie-Impromptu and a Piano Sonata No. 2, known as the "Funeral March." He also wrote some mazurkas.
Krzysztof Penderecki
Name this Polish composer of Polymorphia and the Polish Requiem. His best known work, Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, was written for 52 string instruments using symbolic notation.
Frederic (Francois) Chopin
Name this Polish composer of the "Heroic" and "Military" Polonaises and many mazurkas.
Frederic (François) Chopin
Name this Polish composer of the "Military" and "Heroic" Polonaises and the "Minute" Waltz.
A London Symphony
Name this Ralph Vaughan Williams symphony in which the harp plays Westminster chimes and other instruments evoke Bloomsbury Square and The Strand to conjure up images of the title city.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Name this Renaissance composer, whose Pope Marcellus Mass apocryphally convinced the Council of Trent not to ban polyphony.
Thomas Tallis
Name this Renaissance-era composer of the 40-part motet Spem in Alium. One of his themes was used for a fantasia centuries later by a countryman.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich
Name this Russian composer who evoked the resistance to a Nazi invasion in his rousing seventh symphony, nicknamed the Leningrad.
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff
Name this Russian-born composer of Six moments musicaux.
Marche Slave in B-flat minor
Name this Tchaikovsky composition written for wounded Serbian and Russian soldiers fighting the Ottoman Empire. It uses folk songs and anthems from both countries, including "God Save the Tsar."
William Byrd
Name this Virginalist composer who collected 42 keyboard works in My Ladye Nevell's Booke.
ethnomusicology
Name this academic sub-discipline whose name was coined by Jaap Kunst. Mantle Hood created its first American university department, at UCLA. Its method of "cantometrics" was developed by Alan Lomax.
Carreras Domingo Pavarotti in Concert
Name this album conducted in 1990 by Zubin Mehta with the orchestras of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Teatro dell'Opera di Roma on the eve of the World Cup final. It became the best-selling classical album of all time.
A Love Supreme
Name this album recorded in one day of December, 1964 which is comprised of four parts, "Acknowledgement," "Resolution," "Pursuance," and "Psalm." Its creator called it his "humble offering to God."
Time Out
Name this album that included Joe Morello on drums, Eugene Wright on bass, and Paul Desmond on alto saxophone.
"Summertime"
Name this aria, with lyrics by DuBose Heyward, that is sung Clara in Catfish Row at the beginning of a 1935 opera.
Fur Elise
Name this bagatelle in A minor by Ludwig van Beethoven. This piano piece begins with E-D sharp-E-D sharp, which has been suggested by some to be a cryptogram of its title dedicatee, a woman whom Beethoven loved.
Petrushka
Name this ballet about a puppet that comes to life when the Charlatan plays a flute.
Les Biches
Name this ballet in which three male athletes, two lesbians, and a blue velvet-clad girl named La Garconne attend a house party hosted by a woman carrying a cigarette holder. Its composer, Francis Poulenc, titled it for a slang term for coquettish women.
(Charles) "Charlie" Parker, Jr.
Name this bebop saxophonist, who wrote songs like "Blues for Alice" and "Ornithology" and was nicknamed "Bird."
Clapping Music
Name this canon for two performers of the title action who repeat an unaccented African bell pattern 156 times. That asymmetric rhythm is made of groups of 3, 2, 1, and 2 eighth notes separated by eighth rests.
string quartets
Name this chamber genre performed by two violins, a viola, and a cello, whose "father" is traditionally considered to be Haydn himself.
Nadia Boulanger
Name this champion of Igor Stravinsky, whose younger sister Lili was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome. She taught many, many twentieth century composers.
Madame Butterfly
Name this character who begins a love duet with the words "Love me, please" and cannot be persuaded by the marriage broker Goro to give up her first love.
Vespers of 1610
Name this choral piece often referred to by its year of composition. It ends with two Magnificats - one for seven voices and orchestra, and then a smaller, rarely-performed one for six voices and continuo.
Los Angeles
Name this city, whose Museum of Contemporary Art commissioned the oratorio Light Over Water. The stage piece I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky is set in the aftermath of an earthquake in this city.
Sinfonia Concertante
Name this classical genre that succeeded the concerto grosso, featuring soloists that are more integrated in the orchestra than a concerto. Mozart composed the most famous example of this piece in E-flat major for Violin and Viola.
Hallelujah Chorus
Name this closing piece of the second section of a larger work. In it, the chorus repeats the verse "And He shall reign forever and ever."
Symphonic Etudes
Name this collection of 12 short pieces for piano, its composer's opus 13. The ninth piece is notably difficult due to its "Presto possible" marking.
Carnaval, Op. 9
Name this collection of 22 short pieces, subtitled "Little Scenes on Four Notes," which make up the A-S-C-H cryptogram. It depicts masked people celebrating the title festival.
Album for the Young
Name this collection of 43 piano pieces, which includes the aforementioned "Happy Farmer." It is divided into two sections, titled "Für Kleinere" and "Für Erwachsenere."
Sequenza
Name this collection of eighteen works by Luciano Berio. Its eighth piece calls for a B note to be sustained throughout the entire piece, and its tenth piece calls for a piano to serve as a resonator for trumpet sounds.
Karelia Suite, Op. 11
Name this collection of orchestral pieces that concludes with an Alla Marcia call to battle.
Carnaval
Name this collection of solo piano pieces which evokes the Commedia dell'arte characters Pierrot and Harlequin, and also contains an unnumbered "Sphinxes" section as well as an overarching cryptogram motif.
Water Music
Name this collection scored for a large, open-air orchestra, which contains three suites, including the "Air" and "Alla Hornpipe" movements.
Holberg Suite
Name this collection that includes sections named for dances like "Sarabande," "Gavotte," and "Rigaudon," and was written for the 200th anniversary of a playwright's death.
Christmas Oratorio
Name this compilation of six cantatas which include "Herr, wenn die stolzen Feinde schnauben." The second piece in this compilation is the only one of the six to begin with a sinfonietta, rather than a part with a chorus.
Johann Pachelbel
Name this composer and organist whose other works include the suites for chamber ensembles called Musical Delight and the keyboard Musical Thoughts of Dying.
Nadia Boulanger
Name this composer and student of Fauré whose own students included Elliott Carter and Virgil Thomson
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Name this composer from Salzburg who was a child prodigy.
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Name this composer of 19 of the planned 21 Klavierstucke as well as the Helicopter String Quartet.
Johannes Brahms
Name this composer of A German Requiem, whose First Symphony contains quotations of Beethoven and is sometimes nicknamed "Beethoven's Tenth".
Steve Reich
Name this composer of Electric Counterpoint and Come Out, the latter of which exemplifies a technique where the same phrase is played by two machines or instruments at different tempos. That technique is called "phasing."
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Name this composer of Kontakte, the percussion solo Zyklus, and Kontra-Punkte. He instructed two tam-tam players to sit alongside two people holding microphones in his appropriately named Mikrophonie.
Krzysztof Penderecki
Name this composer of The Dream of Jacob. He wrote some very strange bar-less notation for a piece once titled 8'37", in which a 52-member string ensemble produces many shrieking noises to mourn civilian deaths.
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi
Name this composer of Vespers for the Blessed Virgin who also wrote a ballet "of the Ungrateful Ladies."
Edward Elgar
Name this composer of a B minor violin concerto and a choral piece that ends with the Angel singing "Softly and gently, dearly-ransomed soul" after a man journeys into Purgatory.
Toru Takemitsu
Name this composer of a Requiem for strings and Rain Tree Sketch, the latter of which uses his E-flat - E - A motive, representing the sea.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Name this composer of a set of six suites for solo cello popularized by Pablo Casals.
Antonin Leopold Dvorak
Name this composer of an "American" string quartet and the Symphony From the New World.
Bela Viktor Janos Bartok
Name this composer of other piano works like Mikrokosmos as well as operas like Duke Bluebeard's Castle.
Franz Schubert
Name this composer of over 600 lieder, or songs, 8 full symphonies, and an "Unfinished" one.
Johannes Brahms
Name this composer of the Academic Festival Overture and a "Lullaby," whose first symphony has been referred to as "Beethoven's Tenth" by smart-aleck musicologists.
Sergei Prokofiev
Name this composer of the Scythian Suite.
Robert Schumann
Name this composer of the Spring and Rhenish, who composed Traumerei for his collection Scenes from Childhood. He went insane and died in his mid-40s, survived by his brilliant pianist wife Clara.
Alberto Evaristo Ginastera
Name this composer of the ballet Estancia as well as the operas Bomarzo and Don Rodrigo.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (prompt on "Bach")
Name this composer of the empfindsamer style who wrote a short and easy Solfeggietto in C minor as well as the Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments.
Feruccio Busoni
Name this composer of the opera Doktor Faustus and the solo piano piece Fantasia Contrappuntistica.
Aram Khachaturian
Name this composer of the symphonic suite Masquerade as well as the ballets Spartacus and Gayane.
César Franck
Name this composer of the three-movement Symphony in D minor, which, like his A major violin sonata, exhibits cyclic form.
Philip Morris Glass
Name this composer who commemorated Leonard Slatkin with his three movement Symphony No. 7, also known as A Toltec Symphony.
Robert Schumann
Name this composer who composed his "Spring Symphony" shortly after marrying Clara Wieck.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Name this composer who included a canzonetta in his D major violin concerto, which its dedicatee Leopold Auer declined to premiere.
Anton Webern
Name this composer who included twenty-three variations on a theme in his opus 1 Passacaglia, but is better known for his Five Pieces for Orchestra and Variations for Piano.
John Cage, Jr.
Name this composer who is more famous for instructing the performer to sit around for 4'33".
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka
Name this composer who orchestrated a folk dance with his Kamarinskaya and was inspired by trips to Spain to produce Jota Aragonesa and A Night in Madrid.
Iannis Xenakis
Name this composer who pioneered the application of stochastic processes to music, exemplified by his Pithoprakta. He also wrote the Metastasis for 61 orchestral musicians.
Frederick Delius
Name this composer who set Whitman's poetry to music in "Sea Drift."
Franz Liszt
Name this composer who used a Paganini theme as the basis for La Campanella and wrote 12 Transcendental Etudes.
John Philip Sousa
Name this composer who wrote an elaborate piccolo solo for The Stars and Stripes Forever. He was nicknamed "March King" in a nod to Johann Strauss.
Germaine Tailleferre
Name this composer whose Cantate de Narcisse set poems of Paul Valéry. This composer of Sonate champètre also wrote an intermezzo for two pianos.
Josquin des Prez
Name this composer whose Missa pange lingua (MIS-uh PAN-jay LEEN-gwah) incorporates the title hymn into all four voices, rather than just in the tenor.
Gustav Holst
Name this composer whose Planets includes "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" and "Mars, the Bringer of War."
Jean Sibelius
Name this composer whose Symphony No. 2 in D major calls for the third and fourth movements to be played without a pause in between.
Dmitri Shostakovich
Name this composer whose Violin Concerto No. 1 comprises a nocturne, a scherzo, a passacaglia (PASS-uh-KAG-lee-uh), and a burlesque.
Camille Saint-Saëns
Name this composer whose other compositions include an A minor cello concerto written for Auguste Tolbecque and five piano concerti.
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Name this composer whose tone cluster-heavy Kontakte (kohn-TAHK-tuh) exists as both an entirely electronic version and as one for electronic sounds plus piano and percussion.
Muzio Clementi
Name this composer, who is not Carl Czerny, who wrote instructional piano pieces in Gradus ad Parnassum.
Krzysztof Penderecki
Name this composer. His choral works include one whose first part concludes with "Et surgens omnis" and whose second part begins with "Et in pulverem," interspersing Gospel texts with passages from Psalms and Lamentations.
flute concerto
Name this composition for orchestra and a certain woodwind instrument whose devotion by Frederick the Great helped inspire Bach's Musical Offering.
Symphony of Sorrowful Songs
Name this composition which also set to music a prayer written on the walls of Gestapo jail cell in the town of Zakopane. It was composed by Henryk Górecki.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Name this composition whose initial "Sunrise" section features a rising C-G-C brass fanfare. It concludes with the "Song of the Night Wanderer."
Jeremiah Symphony
Name this composition with that "Profanation" second movement as well as a "Lamentation" third movement, referring to its basis in the Bible.
A Sea Symphony
Name this composition, the first symphony by its composer. Its final movement is entitled "The Explorers." Â
The Pines of Rome
Name this composition, whose third section features the recording of a nightingale's birdsong. Its last movement slowly crescendos and depicts a march along the Appian Way.
The Hebrides
Name this concert overture in which the opening bassoons, violas, and cellos represent the composer's visit to a natural feature on the island of Staffa.
Gustav Mahler
Name this conductor of that Symphony No. 2 as well as the "Symphony of a Thousand" and "The Song of the Earth."
On the Transmigration of Souls
Name this contemporary piece for chorus, orchestra, and pre-recorded tape, in which the names of several victims of the September 11th attacks are spoken aloud.
Denmark
Name this country home to one of the oldest ballet schools in the world, after Paris and St. Petersburg. Its Royal Ballet has been directed by August Bournonville, Vincenzo Galeotti, and Kaj Smith.
Kingdom of Spain
Name this country of origin of the flamenco dance, the influence of which can be felt in many of de Falla's works.
Hungary
Name this country whose popular folk dances include the verbunkos and the czardas.
sarabande
Name this dance in triple meter of Spanish or Central American origin that usually made up the third movement in Baroque suites. The most famous one is the fourth movement of a certain composer's Keyboard Suite in D minor.
the Charleston
Name this dance that became the "theme song of the Roaring Twenties" after it featured in the Broadway show Runnin' Wild. It involves kicking the legs up from behind and tapping the soles with the hands while spinning.
"Devil's Trill" Sonata
Name this difficult solo piece which uses tons of double stops. It became the basis for an 1849 ballet by Cesare Pugni [CHEH-zah-ray POO-nyee].
Wynton Marsalis
Name this director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, whose oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz piece to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Totentanz
Name this dissonant piece for solo piano and orchestra subtitled "Paraphrase on Dies Irae."
Art Blakey
Name this drummer who, along with Horace Silver, founded the Hard Bop movement and was the first to record notable pieces in the movement such as "Moanin."
neoclassicism
Name this early 20th century musical style of works like the Dumbarton Oaks concerto, the ballet Pulcinella, and the Symphony of Psalms.
Quartet for the End of Time
Name this eight-movement chamber piece, composed in a prisoner-of-war camp for the unusual combination of piano, violin, cello, and clarinet.
Jews
Name this ethnicity whose music was labelled "degenerate" by the Nazis. It included Felix Mendelssohn.
Scarlatti
Name this family of composers. During his time in the Spanish royal court, another member of this family published a collection of thirty pieces titled Essercizi.
The Harmonious Blacksmith
Name this final movement of its composer's Suite No. 5 in E Major, possibly named after its composer's inspiration from hearing a hammer on an anvil.
"In the Hall of the Mountain King"
Name this final piece in the first section of a suite made up of incidental music to a play. This short piece gradually gets louder and faster until its dramatic end.
Arturo Toscanini
Name this first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, an Italian conductor known for his photographic memory, his brisk and direct conducting style, and his fidelity to the written score.
the Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition
Name this first section of a suite. Its theme, which depicts the composer walking around, appears in several subsequent interludes.
Capriccio Espagnol
Name this five-movement orchestral work which features two "Alborado" movements, the first of which features a recurring trilled eighth, sixteenth, sixteenth, eighth, eighth motif in the solo clarinet part.
slendro
Name this five-note scale and tuning system. Its notes are roughly equally-spaced within the octave, contrasting with a related seven-note system.
Iberia
Name this four book suite for piano which is comprised of twelve pieces depicting different locations like "The gate," and "Triana" from its composer's home.
Scheherazade
Name this four-movement suite that ends with a movement depicting a "Festival in Baghdad" and a shipwreck.
suites
Name this genre of Baroque music that traditionally included an allemande, a courante, a sarabande, and a gigue as its four standard movements.
bossa nova
Name this genre of jazz whose most famous example is the Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto recording of "The Girl from Ipanema"
lieder
Name this genre of music in which Hugo Wolf and Max Reger composed hundreds of examples each.
madrigals
Name this genre of secular polyphonic vocal compositions, which were popular during the Renaissance. They originated in Italy.
song cycles
Name this genre of works like Frauenliebe und -leben, and Faure's L'horizon chimerique.
clarinet concertos
Name this genre. Carl Maria von Weber wrote two pieces, in F minor and E-flat major, for clarinet in this genre. The most famous work for clarinet in this genre was written for Anton Stadler.
cello concertos
Name this genre. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations is sometimes considered to be in it.
The Four Seasons
Name this group of works originally written for the solo instrument with a string quartet and basso continuo and published in a set with eight other concerti of the same type.
Republic of Brazil
Name this home of Heitor Villa-Lobos, who titled his Bach-style Bachianas for this country.
Sergiu Celibidache
Name this idiosyncratic Romanian conductor who became the conductor of Berlin Phil after Leo Borchard was killed at a traffic stop. This spiritual conductor is probably best known for his distaste for recording performances and rebuilding the Berlin Philharmonic after WWII.
Guillaume Dufay
Name this inaugurator of the "Franco-Flemish" School, who took innovations like the parallel thirds in fauxbourdon from John Dunstable. He was the oldest composer to write a surviving Missa L'homme armé.
flute
Name this instrument for which J.S. Bach wrote an A minor partita. It was later mastered by the twentieth-century virtuoso Jean-Pierre Rampal.
pipe organ
Name this instrument that dominates the "Poco adagio" and "Maestoso" sections of an 1886 two-movement symphony, the third by its composer.
violoncello
Name this instrument that represents the title character in Richard Strauss's Don Quixote. It was the primary instrument of composers Victor Herbert and Luigi Boccherini.
French horn
Name this instrument which also plays a solo at the very start of the "Venus" movement. At the start of "Mars," the opening theme is presented by two of these instruments, plus two bassoons and a contrabassoon.
pipe organ
Name this instrument whose other famous players include E. Power Biggs, the French composer Louis Vierne and Marcel Dupré, and the blind German master Helmut Walcha.
major third
Name this interval found between the notes G and B. When inverted, it forms a minor sixth.
Hans von Bülow
Name this irascible piano student of Liszt who premiered Liszt's B minor piano sonata, a Wagner fan who conducted the premieres of Tristan and Meistersinger. Later, he "switched sides" and became a Brahms fanboy.
Thelonious Sphere Monk
Name this jazz composer who later released the album Straight, No Chaser after writing songs like "Epistrophy" and "Round Midnight."
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie
Name this jazz musician, known for his trumpet bent at a 45-degree angle and for puffing out his cheeks while playing. His songs include "Salt Peanuts" and "Manteca."
Fats Waller
Name this jazz pianist, a master of stride piano, who composed the standards "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Ain't Misbehavin.'"
Jelly Roll Morton
Name this jazz pianist, who composed the Black Bottom Stomp and died from injuries he sustained in a stabbing outside a nightclub where played with the Red Hot Peppers.
"Birdland"
Name this jazz piece written by Joe Zawinul, the opening track of Weather Report's 1977 album Heavy Weather.
(Randolph Denard) Ornette Coleman
Name this jazz saxophonist who died in June 2015. He popularized the term "free jazz" in a 1961 album of the same name, and also recorded the album The Shape of Jazz to Come.
"Blue Rondo à la Turk"
Name this jazz standard that includes an opening section in 9/8 and interior sections in 4/4 time. It is the opening track of the 1959 album Time Out.
"Birdland"
Name this jazz standard written by Joe Zawinul, which is a tribute to a New York jazz club. ANSWER: "Birdland"
Louis Armstrong
Name this jazz trumpeter from New Orleans who recorded "What a Wonderful World" and was nicknamed "Satchmo".
Louis Armstrong
Name this jazz trumpeter from New Orleans, nicknamed "Satchmo."
Miles Dewey Davis III
Name this jazz trumpeter whose sextet, including Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane, recorded the album Kind of Blue.
B minor
Name this key used to write a one-movement piano piece whose four interconnected sections exhibit double-function form by behaving simultaneously as the movements of a symphony and as the sections of sonata form.
harpsichord
Name this keyboard instrument, a predecessor of the piano, whose individual keys pluck a string upon being depressed.
cool jazz
Name this laid-back jazz style, exemplified by a Miles Davis album titled for the Birth of it.
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff
Name this late Romantic Russian composer who created a Prelude in C sharp minor for piano, a choral symphony based on Poe's The Bells, and The Isle of the Dead.
Jelly Roll Morton
Name this leader of the Red Hot Peppers, an early jazz pianist from New Orleans who wrote "Black Bottom Stomp" and "Wolverine Blues."
Arnold Schoenberg
Name this leader of the Second Viennese School, who was one of the first atonal composers and developed the twelve-tone technique. His compositions include Pierrot Lunaire and Transfigured Night.
Gunta Stoltz
Name this leading Bauhaus textile artist, the school's only female master, who was responsible for many of the distinctive motifs that characterize Bauhaus furniture.
St Matthew Passion
Name this lengthy choral piece which revived its composer's reputation after a 1829 concert by Felix Mendelssohn.
"Der Erlkönig"
Name this lied in which a singer portrays the narrator, the father, his sick child, and the title supernatural creature that tries to entice the child to join him.
Carnegie Hall
Name this location of a famous 1938 concert that "legitimized" jazz. Walter Damrosch conducted the premieres of Gershwin's An American in Paris and Concerto in F at this concert venue.
"Summertime"
Name this lullaby with lyrics by DuBose Heyward, in which Clara describes a part of the year when: "Fish are jumpin' / An' the cotton is high" to her baby.
C major
Name this major key that has no sharps or flats.
Leopold Stokowski
Name this man who may be better known for combining his version of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain with Schubert's Ave Maria for the 1940 Disney film Fantasia.
War Requiem
Name this mass created for a festival celebrating the consecration of the Coventry Cathedral, which was rebuilt after being destroyed in World War II. It borrows lines from several poems by Wilfred Owen.
Guillaume de Machaut
Name this medieval French ars nova composer best known for being the earliest single composer to set the Ordinary of the Mass.
counterpoint
Name this method of combining two or more melodies, each having melodic and rhythmic independence, but harmonic dependence.
Suzuki method or movement
Name this method of music pedagogy rooted in language acquisition theory that involves immersing young children in a "right environment" and encouraging them to learn by ear before they can read sheet music.
Arvo Part
Name this modern composer of works like Spiegel im Spiegel and Tabula Rasa, in which he achieved "tintinnabulation."
the idee fixe from Symphonie fantastique
Name this motif from an 1830 programmatic symphony that represents the artist's love for his beloved.
"Neptune, the Mystic"
Name this movement, the only in its larger composition to be originally be scored for solo organ, that includes two wordless three-part women's choruses.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Name this music critic who notably praised Beethoven as "a purely romantic composer" compared to the likes of Haydn or Mozart, part of his Kreisleriana papers.
Concerto for Orchestra
Name this musical composition which features such movements as "Elegia," "Game of Pairs," and "Interrupted Intermezzo," which includes a satiric treatment of the march theme from Shostakovich's "Leningrad" Symphony.
dissonance
Name this musical concept in which a clashing combination of tones creates an impression of harshness or tension. The tritone and semitone are "unstable" intervals with this property, the opposite of consonance.
counterpoint
Name this musical construct, which has first through fifth species types, higher species of which can further embellish tones. Steve Reich also wrote a work titled for an "electric" type of this.
minimalism
Name this musical genre that emphasized simplicity in harmonic progressions and melodic lines, along with the emphasis on use of limited notes and instrumentation.
West Side Story
Name this musical in which two lovers find themselves free from their troubles during the singing of "Somewhere," which is again sung by the female lead near its end after she finds her lover dead.
ragtime
Name this musical style whose "classic" "Big Three" includes Joseph Lamb and James Scott. Its "novelty" form was popularized by "Zez" Confrey.
Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24
Name this musical work originally for soprano and orchestra whose text was taken from a James Agee piece about his Tennessee hometown.
Clara Schumann
Name this nineteenth-century musician of a Mendelssohn-inspired piano concerto, three Romances, and a G-minor piano trio, who stopped composing new pieces at the age of thirty-six to focus on a fruitful career as concert pianist.
Boléro
Name this one-movement piece by Maurice Ravel (ruh-VELL) in which a single theme is repeated again and again, growing louder each time.
Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Name this opera in which Judith's title husband owns an estate with seven locked doors.
The Turn of the Screw
Name this opera in which Miss Jessel and Peter Quint sing "The ceremony of innocence is drowned" before haunting The Governess, and the children Miles and Flora.
Das Rheingold
Name this opera in which the bass instruments sustain an E-flat major chord drone for the whole prelude. In it, Alberich curses a ring such that whoever possesses it will be killed by its next owner.
Pelleas et Melisande
Name this opera, based on a Maurice Maeterlinck play, in which the two title lovers, who are in a love triangle with the jealous Golaud, meet at the Blind Man's Well.
Elijah
Name this oratorio that ends with the full-bodied chorus "And then shall your light break forth." Its initial audience at the Birmingham Festival demanded a repetition of the episode in which the title character prays for rain, which happens at the end of Part I.
St Matthew's Passion
Name this oratorio that relates the story of Jesus's crucifixion with a libretto by Picander.
Capriccio Italien
Name this orchestral fantasy inspired by a trip to Rome to see the Carnival. It might also have been intended to one-up Glinka's Spanish Pieces.
Hebrides Overture
Name this orchestral piece, also known as Fingal's Cave, which was written after the same trip that inspired the composer's Scottish Symphony.
Hary Janos Suite
Name this orchestral suite whose "Intermezzo" includes a prominent part for the cimbalom, and whose first movement opens with an "orchestral sneeze."
Scheherazade
Name this orchestral work by Rimsky-Korsakov. In the first movement of the piece, the titular Sultana is depicted in an intricate violin solo accompanied by a harp.
Marche Slave
Name this orchestral work that commemorates Serbian soldiers killed by the Ottoman Empire. It is sometimes paired with its composer's 1812 Overture.
Music for the Royal Fireworks
Name this orchestral work that was commissioned for a celebration of the end of the War of the Austrian Succession. Its third movement is a Largo alla siciliana that, suitably for the occasion, is titled "La Paix".
William Byrd
Name this organist at the Chapel Royal who composed the English collection Psalms, Songs, and Sonnets and the Latin motets of Gradualia, also known for studying under the composer of Spem in Alium.
carillon
Name this percussion instrument that consists of 23 bronze bells played with a keyboard.
Ars Nova
Name this period of French medieval music that saw the abandonment of the rhythmic modes used by the Notre Dame school in favor of the isorhythm championed by Vitry and Guillaume de Machaut.
(Edward Kennedy) "Duke" Ellington
Name this pianist and bandleader who wrote "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)." Billy Strayhorn wrote "Take the A Train" for his band.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Name this pianist and composer of Isle of the Dea and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
Invitation to the Dance or Aufforderung zum Tanz
Name this piano piece later orchestrated by Hector Berlioz.
Piano Sonata in B-flat major by Franz Schubert
Name this piano sonata written months before Schubert's early death in 1828. A mysterious G-flat trill in the bass intrudes eight measures into this sonata, and its C-sharp minor slow movement unusually ends in major.
Suite Bergamesque
Name this piano suite whose dreamy third movement, "Claire de Lune," was inspired by a Paul Verlaine poem.
Suite bergamasque
Name this piano suite. Its third movement takes inspiration from Paul Verlaine's poetry and is titled "Clair de lune".
"Clair de lune"
Name this piano work in D-flat major which is the third movement in the Suite Bergamasque and is followed by "Passepied".
Rhapsody in Blue
Name this piece by George Gershwin, which premiered at a concert called An Experiment in Modern Music, and which opens with a famous clarinet glissando.
Emperor Concerto
Name this piece in E-flat major for solo piano and orchestra that was composed in 1811 as the last such piece by its composer.
Russian Easter Festival Overture: Overture on Liturgical Themes
Name this piece that begins with a Lento mystico liturgical melody of quarters and halves in the winds, followed by pizzicato syncopated rhythms in the low strings before a dolce a piacere violin cadenza.
"In the Hall of the Mountain King"
Name this piece that begins with the cellos, double basses, and bassoons playing tiptoeing notes, and gradually increases in tempo until all the instruments crash together and play very loud notes.
"In the Hall of the Mountain King"
Name this piece that opens with a soft alternation of a B minor melody, alternating between celli plus basses and bassoons plus contrabassoons, before building to a wild frenzy. It follows "Anitra's Dance" in a certain suite.
Pope Marcellus Mass or Missa Papae Marcelli
Name this piece that some claim kept the Council of Trent from banning polyphony.
Zadok the Priest
Name this piece that takes its text from the Biblical account of the anointing of Solomon.
Transfigured Night
Name this piece that, though originally a string sextet, is more commonly performed in its arrangement for string orchestra. It is named after a Richard Dehmel poem about a man and a woman walking through a dark forest.
Quartet for the End of Time
Name this piece which contains such movements as "Dance of Fury, for the Seven Trumpets," "Liturgy of Crystal," and "Abyss of Birds."
Verdi's Requiem
Name this piece with a famous "Ingemisco" in its Dies irae second section.
Les Adieux Sonata
Name this piece, above whose first three chords the composer wrote the syllables "Le-be-wohl." This piece's three movements are entitled "The Farewell," "The Absence," and "The Return."
Revolutionary Étude (or Étude on the Bombardment of Warsaw; or Étude Op. 10, No. 12 in C minor)
Name this piece, in which a dominant seventh chord builds up to the main theme. This piece requires the left hand to constantly play sixteenth notes, as well as numerous difficult harmonic minor scales.
Pavane for a Dead Princess
Name this piece, originally for solo piano, that evokes a member of the Spanish court dancing in olden times.
lute
Name this plucked, pear-shaped instrument that often has an angled neck, which is related to the mandolin, oud, and theorbo. Composers for this instrument include John Dowland, Denis Gaultier, and Silvius Leopold Weiss.
Central Park in the Dark
Name this polytonal piece depicting a summer evening, which its composer described as a "contemplation of nothing serious."
Mannheim Court
Name this pre-classical court of musicians famous for their precision and technique. It is now best remembered for its virtuosic orchestral techniques, such as its namesake "roll" and "rocket."
Carnegie Hall
Name this prestigious classical music venue in Manhattan that was established by a steel mogul.
Symphonie Fantastique
Name this programmatic symphony that contains movements such as "March to the Scaffold" and "Dreams of a Witches' Sabbath."
Franz Schubert
Name this prolific Austrian composer, whose lieder include a song cycle based on poems by Wilhelm Muller, as well as Die Erlkonig, a setting of a Goethe poem about a man whose child dies in his arms.
Carl Czerny
Name this prolific Viennese composer of hundreds of études, contained in collections such as The School of Velocity.
John Kenneth Tavener
Name this recently-deceased British composer who tasked the cello and orchestra with depicting eight icons of the Virgin Mary in his piece The Protecting Veil.
Stabat Mater
Name this sacred work by Pergolesi, a series of twelve solos and duets for voice with accompaniment by strings and organ.
Gabriel Fauré's Requiem in D minor
Name this sacred work by a French composer that notably omitted violins and woodwinds in its original formulation, before its composer rescored it for full orchestra, for some reason.
the "Mad Scene"
Name this scene which centers on the aria Il dolce suono in which the protagonist declares, "I surrender to you, oh my Edgardo! I have escaped from your enemies."
"Mercury, the Winged Messenger"
Name this scherzo, the third and shortest movement of a seven-movement suite.
The Swan of Tuonela
Name this second and most famous part of the Lemminkainen Suite by Jean Sibelius.
recapitulation
Name this section of a larger form, which may follow a retransition and usually involves the return of both the primary and secondary theme group in the tonic.
Lyric Pieces
Name this set of 66 short piano works published in ten volumes over the course of its composer's lifetime.
Lyric Pieces
Name this set of 66 works for solo piano, including the opening "Arietta" and the later "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen."
The Musical Offering
Name this set of canons and fugues on a theme given to Johann Sebastian Bach on a visit to Potsdam. It contains ten canons, two Ricercars, and one trio sonata.
The Four Seasons
Name this set of four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi.
Hungarian Rhapsodies
Name this set of nineteen virtuoso piano pieces, the ninth of which is subtitled "Carnival in Pest". The most famous is the second one in C-sharp minor.
J.S. Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin
Name this set of six works for solo violin by J.S. Bach.
Gymnopedies
Name this set of three short pieces for solo piano, the third of which features flowing A minor lines designed to conjure images of Ancient Greece. They are probably their composer's best known works along with the Gnossienes.
Ancient Airs and Dances for lute
Name this set of three suites, orchestral arrangements of lute music from Renaissance Italian composers.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Horn Concertos 1-4
Name this set of works written for Joseph Leutgeb. The three complete ones all have a "galloping" 6/8 time final movement, recalling the "hunt".
Magnificat
Name this setting of a twelve-movement composition whose sixth and seventh movements are "Et misericordia" and "Fecit potentiam," and which was written for Christmas in 1723.
Louis Thomas Jordan
Name this singer-saxophonist and bandleader who led the Tympany Five. He is perhaps best known for "Caldonia" and "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie."
Marche Slave, Op. 31
Name this single-movement patriotic piece written after the onset of the Serbo-Turkish War, which quotes "God Save the Tsar" and no other national anthems.
Le Tombeau de Couperin
Name this six-movement piano suite dedicated to the memory of various military personnel who died in World War I.
adagio
Name this slow tempo marking, that is standardly understood to be in between larghetto and andante in speed.
Winterreise
Name this song cycle consisting of twenty-four settings of poems by Wilhelm Müller, whose poems were also set to music by the same composer later on in Die schöne Müllerin.
Winterreise
Name this song cycle for voice and piano based on the poetry of Wilhelm Muller. It is sung from the point of view of a lovelorn wanderer who bids farewell to his beloved in the opening song "Gute Nacht."
"Fables of Faubus"
Name this song whose lyrics are partially sung by drummer Dannie Richmond. It appeared without lyrics along with "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" on an album partially titled Ah Um.
"Rule Britannia"
Name this song with lyrics on how the title location "arose from out the azure main" has inhabitants that "never, never, never shall be slaves." The title action's object is "the waves."
Emperor string quartet
Name this string quartet whose second movement "Poco adagio; cantabile" in G major cut time is a set of variations on the hymn "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser," which later became the melody of the Deutschlandlied.
Mimi
Name this subject of the aria "Che Gelida Manina," which is sung by her lover Rodolfo upon noticing her cold hands. This seamstress dies of consumption at the end of the opera in which she appears.
Dorian mode
Name this symmetric musical mode, a major scale played from the pitch a whole tone above the tonic. It was notably used in "Milestones" and "Oye Como Va."
Pines of Rome
Name this symphonic poem by Ottorino Respighi. The last of its four movements depicts a military march and calls for ancient trumpets, or buccine, while its third movement uses a recording of a nightingale.
Danse Macabre, Op. 40
Name this symphonic poem that depicts Death calling forth the dead from their graves by playing the fiddle. It is based on a poem by Henri Cazalis.
The Isle of the Dead
Name this symphonic poem that quotes the Dies irae as the oarsman approaches the subject of an Arnold Bocklin painting.
Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, WAB 104 "Romantic"
Name this symphony by Bruckner, which features a third movement "Hunting Scherzo".
Farewell Symphony
Name this symphony from Joseph Haydn's Sturm und Drang period. The musicians at its premiere snuffed out their candles and left the stage one at a time to give the hint that they wanted to leave Esterháza.
Scottish Symphony
Name this symphony in A minor dedicated to Queen Victoria. This piece's inspiration came from a trip that also influenced the composer's Hebrides Overture.
Symphony No. 40 in G minor
Name this symphony in G minor that opens only with the lower strings, with the melody of E flat D, D, E flat D, D from the first violins coming nearly a measure later.
Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5
Name this symphony whose fourth movement "Adagietto" played by harp and strings may be a love song to the composer's wife Alma. This symphony has no nickname.
Resurrection Symphony
Name this symphony, based on a Friedrich Klopstock poem, whose extremely long fifth movement finale is partly choral and calls for the use of church bells.
Symphony No. 2 by Gustav Mahler
Name this symphony, which contains a folk dance in A-flat major in its andante moderato movement, followed by a scherzo in C minor. The composer referred to the climax of its third movement as a "death-shriek."
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92
Name this symphony, which was composed in the spa town of Teplice and was premiered at a charity concert for wounded soldiers.
Sinfonia antartica
Name this symphony, whose first movement quotes Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and whose epilogue quotes the final journal of Robert Scott.
Inextinguishable Symphony, Op. 26, FS 76
Name this symphony, whose nickname is an English translation of the word Uudslukkelige, which, in a fuller connotation, describes the human will to live.
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550 "Great G minor"
Name this symphony, written one before the "Jupiter", whose first movement's main theme repeats the figure E-flat - D - D in the rhythm of eighth-eighth-quarter.
"Maple Leaf Rag"
Name this syncopated piece in A-flat major, which may or may not be named after a club in Sedalia, Missouri
Lester Young
Name this tenor saxophonist nicknamed "the Prez" who rose to fame as a member of Count Basie's orchestra. He composed D.B. Blues after his time in the detention barracks during WWII.
organum
Name this term also applied to the earliest form of medieval polyphonic music, in which voices sang in parallel fourths and fifths. Musica Enchiriadis is often considered the earliest treatise to define it.
Magnificat
Name this text, whose most famous setting is a twelve-movement choral piece that exists as either a 1723 version in E-flat major, or as the more popular 1733 version in D major omitting four Christmas hymns. This text is Mary's response in the Gospel of Luke to Elizabeth praising her faith.
La Folia
Name this theme, variations on which became popular during the Baroque era. Possibly the most famous such music to use this theme was a violin sonata by Arcangelo Corelli.
Piano Sonata no. 26 in E-flat major, op. 81a, "Les adieux"
Name this three-movement piano sonata in E-flat major whose second and third movements are entitled "The Absence" and "The Return." It was written on the departure of its composer's patron from Vienna.
Karelia Suite
Name this three-movement suite originally written to accompany a historical tableau. It includes a Ballade in which a cor anglais represents a troubadour, and ends with a movement marked Alla marcia.
Ein Heldenleben (or A Hero's Life)
Name this tone poem that uses cellos and horns playing ascending E-flat major triads to depict the "works of peace" and "adversaries" of the title figure, a rather favorable representation of the composer.
Neapolitan chord
Name this type of chord, a major triad built on the flattened second scale degree of a given key.
divertimenti
Name this type of composition exemplified by one of the earliest pieces to experiment with polytonality, A Musical Joke.
motets
Name this type of composition, notable examples of which include Guillaume Dufay's Nuperrosarumflores. In the Renaissance period, they were basically the sacred equivalent of madrigals.
requiem mass
Name this type of mass. Verdi's was first performed on the one-year anniversary of the death of Alessandro Manzoni.
regular octatonic scale
Name this type of non-diatonic, symmetric musical scale, in which there is an exact alternation between half steps and whole steps.
gamelan
Name this type of percussion ensemble from Java and Bali, which ethnomusicologists everywhere utterly adore. It often accompanies traditional puppet theater.
motet
Name this type of polyphonic vocal work, the sacred counterpart of the madrigal, examples of which include Tallis's Spem in alium and Byrd's Cantiones sacrae.
violin sonatas
Name this type of work, the ninth of which Beethoven rededicated to Kreutzer after he had a fight with George Bridgetower. Bach paired these works with Partitas in a well-known set of six works.
Princeton University
Name this university that was the center of the American academic avant-garde music movement in the mid-20th century. Milton Babbitt taught here for over forty years, and Paul Lansky currently teaches here
Turkish Concerto
Name this violin concerto, the last to be composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Symphonie espagnole
Name this violin concerto, written in 1874 for Pablo de Sarasate.
Niccolo Paganini
Name this violin virtuoso whose 24 caprices for violin inspired many variations.
Goldberg Variations
Name this work consisting of an aria da capo and 30 short movements which use the same bass-line. Every third movement in this work is a canon.
Felix Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3 in A minor, "Scottish"
Name this work in A minor, which was intended to be played without pauses. Its second-movement scherzo in F major makes prominent use of snap rhythms.
War Requiem
Name this work in which the chorus sings "requiescant in pace" to commemorate the destruction of the Coventry Cathedral.
Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16
Name this work that opens with a timpani roll, before the piano soloist crashes in, playing the notes "A - A - G-sharp E". It shares a key with a work by Robert Schumann in the same genre.
Das Lied von der Erde
Name this work, its composer's ninth symphony, which contains poems by Li-Po.
harp
Nicanor Zabaleta was the soloist when Ginastera's concerto for this instrument premiered in Philadelphia. Reinhold Gliere wrote an E flat major concerto for this 47-stringed instrument.
Album for the Young
Not to be confused with Kinderszenen is this collection of easy pieces Schumann composed for his daughters. It includes The Happy Farmer and Knecht Ruprecht.
pianos
Of Mozart's twenty-seven concertos for this instrument, the best-known individual movement is the F major Andante second movement of the Elvira Madigan.
John Coolidge Adams
On the Transmigration of Souls is by this American minimalist composer of Nixon in China and Short Ride in a Fast Machine.
Charles Mingus
On the album Jazz at Massey Hall, Parker played with Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Max Roach, and this bassist, who released the albums Tijuana Moods and The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady.
Jerome Robbins
On the other hand, the choreography for West Side Story was executed by this man, who also worked on On the Town and Fiddler on the Roof.
whole tone scale
Hearing gamelans play in slendro tuning inspired Debussy and Messiaen ("mess-YANN") to use this Western scale, which consists of six equally-spaced notes. It is usually named for the interval between each note.
Philadelphia Orchestra
Leopold Stokowski was a long-time conductor of this American orchestra, where he created a trademark lush string "sound" and was succeeded by Eugene Ormandy.
Billie Holiday
Lester Young frequently collaborated with this Jazz singer and gave her the nickname "Lady Day." This singer of "God Bless the Child" and "Strange Fruit" was heartbroken after Young's death.
double bass
Light, airy melodies by Mendelssohn and Berlioz are played in lumbering fashion on this instrument, accompanied by piano, in the movement "The Elephant" from The Carnival of the Animals.
Guido of Arezzo
One of the earliest descriptions of organum via oblique motion is in this Italian music theorist's Micrologus. He is credited with the invention of staff notation, solmization syllables, and a namesake mnemonic hand system.
Messiah
One of the most notable oratorios in the history of classical music is this one, which contains the famous Hallelujah chorus. It was composed by Georg Friedrich Handel.
Symphony No. 25 and Symphony No. 40
Only two of Mozart's symphonies were written in a minor key, and they are both in G minor. Give the numbers of both.
France
Organum is particularly associated with Leonin and Perotin, two composers from this modern-day country, whose other medieval composers include Adam de la Halle and Guillaume de Machaut.
canons
Pachelbel's most popular composition is a D major three-voice piece in this genre, which he scored for three violins and basso continuo and paired with a gigue.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Palestrina's work seemed to have great effect on this Baroque composer, whose works include Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, the Goldberg Variations, and some Brandenburg Concertos.
Benjamin Britten
Part also composed a work titled Cantus in Memoriam of this English composer, whose own works include Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridges and A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh
Part wrote a short canon in A minor as an elegy to mourn the death of this composer, who himself composed a setting of the Requiem Mass interspersed with text from Wilfred Owen poems.
Double Violin Concerto
Part's Tabula Rasa is this type of composition. Bach composed a piece of this type in D minor that he later rearranged for two harpsichords.
minimalism
Part's sacred works use the "holy" form of this simple, repetitive musical style, exemplified by Terry Riley and Philip Glass.
Claude Debussy
Pelleas et Melisande was written by this composer, who also created an opera based on The Fall of the House of Usher. He is better known as the composer of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and La Mer.
requiems
Penderecki composed a "Polish" one of these large-scale works, to which he later added a chaconne in memory of John Paul II. Mozart died before completing the "Lacrimosa" and later sections of his in D minor.
Poland
Penderecki composed the Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima under this country's Communist regime, which also promoted Henryk Gorecki. The mazurka originates here.
Poland
Penderecki hails from this European nation home to Henryk Górecki (HEN-rick goo-RET-skee) and the mazurka dance.
St. Luke Passion
Penderecki incorporated his setting of the Stabat Mater into this religious work, with which he made his name. It makes plentiful use of the B-A-C-H motif, and of extended instrumental and vocal techniques
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Penderecki is well known for this composition, written in memory of a certain WWII event and which occasionally directs the musicians to slap the body of their instruments. It employs quarter-tones extensively, which Wikipedia inexplicably calls "hypertonality."
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Penderecki rose to international fame with this tone cluster-heavy piece for fifty-two strings, which he dedicated after its premiere to a historical tragedy.
Polish Requiem
Penderecki was asked by Solidarity to commemorate those killed at the Gdansk shipyards, so he composed Lacrimosa, which became the tenth of sixteen movements in this piece.
Brandenburg Concertos or Concerti, BWV 1046-1051
Perhaps the best-known works in concerto grosso form are these six concerti by J.S. Bach written for Christian Ludwig, margrave of the title federal state of Germany.
chaconne
Perhaps the most cherished section of Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin is this final movement of the second partita, which Yehudi Mehunin praised as "the greatest structure for solo violin that exists." Brahms wrote a left-hand only transcription of this movement for piano.
Jean Sibelius
Perhaps the most famous Finnish composer, this man wrote "The Swan of Tuonela" and Finlandia.
Philip Glass
Perhaps the most famous living American minimalist is this composer of the Portrait Trilogy of operas consisting of Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten.
Rubinstein
History has produced at least three acclaimed pianists with this surname. One of those was a 20th century master named Arthur and the other two were the brothers Anton and Nikolai, who founded the St. Petersburg and Moscow conservatories respectively.
"I Vow to Thee, My Country"
Holst later adapted the second theme from "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" as the tune for this patriotic hymn.
St. Paul's Suite
Holst reused a movement from this piece for "Fantasia on the Dargason" final movement of his Second Suite for Military Band. Holst originally wrote this piece solely for a string orchestra and dedicated it to a girls' school that he taught for.
Symphony No. 6 or Pathetique
Identify this B minor symphony, its composer's last, whose third movement is a spirited march which is often mistaken for the end of the piece, only to be followed by a haunting "Adagio lamentoso" fourth movement.
Organ Symphony (NOTE: accept Saint-Saens's Third but don't say that as an alternate answer)
Identify this C minor symphony, its composer's third, which, though in only two movements in the score, is clearly divided into four sections and calls for a rather large instrument in its second half.
String Quartet No. 8
Identify this C-minor chamber piece whose five movements are all played attaca. It was written over the course of three days while the composer was staying in Dresden to write the score for the film "Five Days - Five Nights."
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's violin concerto
Identify this D-major work for soloist and orchestra, which was written shortly after the composer completed his opera Eugene Onegin.
Maurice Ravel
Identify this French composer also known for an orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and a repetitive Boléro.
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Identify this French composer who, though perhaps better known for his operas, also composed much harpsichord music like "La Rappel des Oiseaux" and "La Poule," in addition to Pieces de clavecin en concerts.
Hector Berlioz
Identify this French guitarist and composer of The Damnation of Faust who used the idee fixe theme to represent his mad love for Harriet Smithson in the Symphonie Fantastique.
Krzysztof Penderecki
Identify this Polish composer of the St. Luke Passion, not to be confused with Gorecki.
Gregorio Allegri
Identify this Roman School composer who, at the commission of Urban VIII, set Psalm 51 in a piece titled Miserere mei, deus for use in the Sistine Chapel.
Enrique Granados y Campina
Identify this Spanish composer of pieces like The Straw Man and Love and Death, which appear in his challenging piano suite Goyescas, o Los Majos Enamorados
Gregorian chant(s)
Identify this basic form of western plainchant. This form's invention was credited by medieval churchmen to the "Great" 6th-century pope who lends his name to it.
Kinderszenen or Scenes from Childhood
Identify this collection of thirteen piano pieces, including "From Foreign Lands and Peoples," "The Poet Speaks," and "Traumerei."
Arvo Part
Identify this composer of "holy minimalism", undoubtedly the foremost Estonian of the quizbowl canon.He also wrote Tabula Rasa
Darius Milhaud
Identify this composer, who also wrote a piece in six continuous dance scenes each representing a different day in the title event, The Creation of the World.
Songs of a Wayfarer
Identify this cycle of lieder in which the title character sings such songs as "I Have a Gleaming Knife" and "The Two Blue Eyes of my Beloved".
the Mannheim Rocket
Identify this device, found at the beginning of Beethoven's first piano sonata, which consists of a crescendoing arpeggio rising through several octaves. Its name comes in part from the 18th-century school founded by Stamitz.
"Mars, the Bringer of War"
Identify this first movement from a larger work, whose other movements depict a "Winged Messenger" and a "Magician."
Symphony No. 1
Identify this genre and number shared by a Gustav Mahler piece whose third movement funeral march is interrupted by an unexpected section of klezmer music.
Music for Stings, Percussion, and Celesta
Identify this informal symphony in which many of the instruments are divided into two sections that answer each other back and forth. Its second section includes an extended pizzicato portion.
Artie Shaw
Identify this jazz clarinetist who played in combos he called the Gramercy Five. His big band recorded a popular version of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine."
A Lincoln Portrait
Identify this musical work for orchestra accompanied by a narrator, who proclaims "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history" and "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master."
Judas Maccabaeus
Identify this oratorio about some Jewish rebels, which includes the air "Pious orgies," and the chorus "See, the conquering hero comes."
The Tomb of Couperin or Couperin's Tomb or Le Tombeau de Couperin
Identify this piano suite, whose six sections are each dedicated to a fallen soldier that its composer knew during World War I.
The Isle of the Dead
Identify this piece inspired by a painting by Arnold Bocklin, whose opening bars are in 5/8 time and evoke the oars of Charon.
Coffee Cantata
Identify this piece that is mostly a dialogue between Schlendrian and Lieschen, the latter of whom is addicted to the title substance.
Couperins
Identify this prominent family central to the French Baroque musical scene.
"Naima"
Identify this slow ballad, featuring a piano solo despite its composer's proficiency with a different instrument, that was named for its composer's wife Juanita Grubbs.
"O Fortuna"
Identify this song in which light drums and a whispering choir develop into a crescendo of drums and string and horn notes, all of which occurs in less than three minutes.
Minuet in G major
Perhaps the most famous work in the notebooks for Anna Magdalena is this G major piece for piano that is usually attributed to Christian Petzold. The melody of the piece starts like (read slowly) D-G-A-B-C D-G-G.
Philip Glass
Persichetti taught this minimalist composer of Satyagraha and Einstein on the Beach.
Otto Klemperer
Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau are among the soloists on this German conductor's recording of the Matthew Passion. After fleeing Nazi Germany, he became music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
films
Philip Glass also composed music for several of these works like Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi. John Williams is one of the most famous composers of these works.
the Romantic Symphony (NOTE: accept Bruckner's Fourth but don't say that as an alternate answer)
Identify this symphony in E-flat, its composer's fourth, which the composer reluctantly described as depicting medieval knights and castles, though he mentioned nothing about love. Typical of its composer's symphonies, at least seven different versions are known to exist, leading to many headaches for scholars.
deserts
Identify this type of location depicted in a Steve Reich piece scored for 27 vocalists, two pianos played by four players, and 48 string players, who are divided into groups of 16 from left to right on the stage.
oratorio
Identify this type of orchestral work for voices, usually on a religious theme.
Goldberg Variations
Identify this work for harpsichord named for the man who first performed it, and which is based on an aria of uncertain origin. Glenn Gould made a blockbuster 1955 recording of this work with Columbia Records.
A, C, and E-flat
If a dominant seventh chord is rooted on F, it contains these other three notes.
two
If you consider scales with the same notes to be identical, how many different whole tone scales are there? The ordinal version of this number names an interval whose "major" variety is also called a whole tone or whole step.
Paul Hindemith
Immediately upon hearing of the passing of King George V, this man pulled an all-nighter to compose his Trauermusik. An orchestral work of his incorporates themes from an earlier composer's incidental music to Turandot.
Johann Joseph Fux
In 1725, this Austrian composer and music theorist published Gradus ad Parnassum, a highly influential treatise on counterpoint in the style of Palestrina's polyphony. In the five "species" of counterpoint this man systematized in Gradus, different numbers of notes are set against a cantus firmus made of whole notes.
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 55 "Emperor"
In 1812, Czerny gave the Vienna premiere of this piano concerto in E-flat major by his teacher, which begins with three cadenzas for the piano, punctuated by orchestral tutti chords.
The Washington Post
In 1889, this newspaper commissioned Sousa to write a march for the award ceremony for its essay contest. The resulting march became a dance craze as a two-step, and remains one of Sousa's most popular.
two pianos and percussion
In 1937, Bartók wrote an extremely difficult sonata for this unusual combination of instruments. He later orchestrated that work as a concerto for this ensemble.
Martha Argerich
In 1965, this Argentine pianist won the Chopin Competition at the age of 24. She is known for her collaborations with Gidon Kremer and Mischa Maisky, and her live 1982 recording of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto.
New York Philharmonic
Pines of Rome was premiered in America by Arturo Toscanini conducting this orchestra, which was then based in Carnegie Hall. Its former conductors include Pierre Boulez and Leonard Bernstein.
violin
Poulenc's sonata mourning Lorca's death was written for this instrument and piano. Silvestre Revueltas himself played this high string instrument also played by Sarah Chang and Hilary Hahn.
Chôros
Prepared piano was also employed by Heitor Villa-Lobos in the eighth of these pieces by him, inspired by Brazilian street songs. The seventh of them is a Septet and the third of them is titled "Pica-páo" or "woodpecker".
Peter and the Wolf
Prokofiev may be best known for this programmatic piece intended for children in which the strings and the horns represent the title characters.
perfect fifth
Pythagorean tuning generates the frequency relationships for all intervals from a 3:2 ratio for this interval, equal to seven semitones. The open strings on a violin, viola, or cello are tuned this interval apart.
Erdody Quartets
Quinten and Sunrise are two pieces in this set of six string quartets by Joseph Haydn that includes the Emperor, a piece which quotes the melody to "Deutschland uber alles."
Dumbarton Oaks Concerto was composed by this Russian, who is more famous for ballets such as Petrushka and Pulcinella.
R: Dumbarton Oaks Concerto
Niccolo Paganini
Rachmaninoff also wrote a Rhapsody for piano and orchestra based on the 24th Caprice of this 19th-century Italian violin virtuoso, who was rumored to have sold his soul to the Devil to acquire his prowess.
Niccolò Paganini
Rachmaninoff composed a rhapsody on a theme of this composer of 24 Caprices for solo violin. This Italian virtuoso was rumored to have sold his soul to the devil for his fiendish musical abilities.
Eugene Ormandy
Rachmaninoff himself conducted an early recording of The Isle of the Dead with the Philadelphia Orchestra, which was later led by this conductor from 1938 to 1980.
The Seasons
Rachmaninoff often played as an encore the November "Troika" movement from this Tchaikovsky piano suite whose June movement is a Barcarolle in G minor. Glazunov wrote a ballet with the same title for Petipa.
Symphonic Dances
Rachmaninoff worked briefly with Michael Fokine on this three-movement orchestral suite, which has a Non allegro first movement with a lengthy alto saxophone solo that is his only composition for the instrument.
Arcangelo Corelli
Rachmaninoff wrote Variations on a Theme of this man based on his Sonata for violin, violone, and harpsichord. This Italian composer also wrote a set of variations on the air La Follia.
death of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Rachmaninoff wrote his second Trio elegiaque as a response to this event, also the subject of Michael Finnissy's opera A Shameful Vice. Conspiracy theorists question that this event followed a contraction of cholera, suggesting instead the involvement of Alexander III.
Arcangelo Corelli
Rachmaninoff's other works for solo piano include his Variations on a Theme of this Italian Baroque composer, whose set of 12 concerti grossi includes his Christmas Concerto.
Aleksandr Glazunov
Rachmaninoff's troubles started when this composer drunkenly conducted Rachmaninoff's 1st Symphony. His works include the symphonic poem Stenka Razin and Concerto for Saxophone, Flute, and Strings.
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Rameau is sometimes considered the successor to this Italian-born French composer credited with bringing opera to France. You probably know him better for dying of gangrene after he stabbed his foot with a conducting staff.
harpsichord
Rameau was also a prolific composer for this keyboard instrument, which works by plucking a string when a key is depressed. François Couperin wrote for this instrument, which was played by Wanda Landowska.
Querelle des Bouffons
Rameau's "lyric tragedies" were supported by one side of this aesthetic conflict between French and Italian opera fans of the 1750's. It was started by a performance of Pergolesi's La serva padrona.
Valses nobles et sentimentales
Ravel also orchestrated this suite of eight pieces in ¾ time into the ballet Adelaide: The Language of Flowers. Its title is an homage to two separate collections by Schubert.
Gaspard de la nuit: Trois poèmes pour piano d'après Aloysius Bertrand (or Gaspard of the Night)
Ravel composed this difficult work for piano, the three movements of which are based after Aloysius Bertrand poems. Double note scales in major seconds depict the nighttime mischief of a goblin in the movement "Scarbo."
violin sonata
Ravel's second piece in this genre follows up a second-movement Blues with a Perpetuum mobile (MOH-bee-lay) finale. An A major piece in this genre is based on a cyclic theme found in all four movements.
minimalism
Reich is often associated with this compositional style often characterized by repetition and gradual transformation. Other composers usually given this label include La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass.
trains
Reich may be best known for a composition titled Different (these). In that work, spoken parts by a retired porter and Holocaust survivors are interspersed with the sounds rattling wheels and whistles from these objects.
In C
Reich performed in the premiere of this seminal minimalist composition by Terry Riley. It consists of 53 melodic cells, each played and repeated an arbitrary number of times by each musician.
Rome, Italy
Respighi composed a "Triptych" named for this Italian city, three compositions named for this city's "Pines," "Fountains," and "Festivals."
orchestration
Rimsky-Korsakov's most long-lived music educational work is a treatise on this subject. Richard Strauss edited a popular edition of Berlioz's treatise on this same subject.
La Boheme
Rodolfo and Mimi are characters in this opera about the artistic poor by Giacomo Puccini.
Sergei Prokofiev
Russia recently sent troops into the Palmyrene desert to protect an orchestra playing the music of J. S. Bach and this native Russian composer, who composed five awesome piano concerti and Peter and the Wolf.
The Carnival of the Animals
Saint-Saëns also composed this programmatic suite with movements including "Hens and Roosters," "Kangaroos," and "Tortoises."
The Carnival of the Animals
Saint-Saëns is best remembered today for this suite of musical jokes, which includes the "Royal March of the Lion", "Aquarium", and "The Swan".
fantasias
Sarasate's own works include several of this type, which he wrote on works such as Carmen or The Magic Flute. Ferruccio Busoni wrote one of these works called "contrappuntistica."
Les Six
Satie attempted to form a group called Les ,ouveaux Jeunes, which was a forerunner to this group of French composers that included Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger.
sarabande
Satie composed three examples of this Baroque dance, the second oddly subtitled "à Maurice Ravel". Baroque-era suites most often included this slow, triple-meter dance with the allemande, courante, and gigue.
Glenn Gould
Schafer won the inaugural award named after this pianist, who hummed while playing and insisting on sitting on a chair to play. His debut album was a legendary recording of the Goldberg Variations.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Scheherazade is by this member of the Mighty Handful, whose opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan includes his "Flight of the Bumblebee".
eleven
Schoenberg "broke with tonality" with a set of three piano pieces with this opus number, his first published collection of piano pieces.
suites
Schoenberg's Opus 25 is a semi neo-Baroque work in this genre. Baroque works in this genre often include an allemande and a courante.
Trout Quintet
Schubert also wrote this five movement piano quintet in A Major, nicknamed after an aquatic creature because it quotes Schubert's eponymous lied "Die Forelle." It features a violin, viola, cello, double bass, and piano.
Death and the Maiden
Schubert also wrote this string quartet that draws its subject matter from a poem by Matthias Claudius. Its second movement consists of variations on an earlier work about the title figures.
Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 "Unfinished"
Schubert may be better known for this symphony in B minor, which gets its nickname from the fact that it has only two movements, instead of the usual four.
impromptus
Schubert wrote 8 pieces in this free-form genre invented by Jan Voříšek; the first one opens with held G octaves in both hands. A Chopin piece in this genre, prefixed "Fantaisie," opens with a long G-sharp octave in the left hand.
string quintet
Schubert's last chamber work was a composition of this type in C major, his D. 956, which used an unusual instrumentation for its time.
Schwanengesang, D. 957
Schubert's so-called "third" song cycle is this posthumous collection of poetry by Ludwig Rellstab, Heinrich Heine, and Johann Gabriel Seidl. It contains his "Serenade" and "Der Doppelgänger".
piano sonatas
Schumann also wrote one of these works in G minor that is marked "as fast as possible" and is later marked "faster still." Schumann also wrote two "Grand" ones of these as well as three "for the Young."
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
Schumann expanded his Phantasie into his only completed work of this kind. This work in A minor was premiered with his wife as the soloist.
Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120
Schumann's most popular symphony in the repertoire is this minor-key work, which exists in 1841 and 1851 versions. All four movements of this symphony are meant to be played through without pause.
Rhine River
Schumann's third symphony is named after this river, upon which the cities of Cologne, Basel, and Rotterdam lie. Schumann threw himself into this river during a suicide attempt.
solfege
Several of Byrd's pieces referred to the notes of a hexachord as "Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la," in a precursor to this note-labeling system in which "Ut" was replaced by "Do."
trumpet
Shaw's Gramercy Five included Roy Eldridge, who was famed for his use of high registers and general virtuosity on this instrument. This instrument was also played by Wynton Marsalis and Miles Davis.
fifth symphony
Shostakovich regarded his symphony of this number as a "Soviet artist's creative response to just criticism." Mstislav Rostropovich claimed that Shostakovich would have been executed for writing it, had there not been a forty-minute ovation at its premiere.
DSCH motif
Shostakovich used this four note musical motif, expressed in German notation, as a signature in works like his first cello concerto and his fifteenth symphony.
Babi Yar
Shostakovich's 13th symphony is based on a poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko about a massacre of Jews at this ravine outside Kiev.
The Swan of Tuonela
Sibelius also used the cor anglais to represent the title creature of this tone poem about a bird from the Kalevala.
Finlandia
Sibelius also wrote this symphonic poem. Because of its nationalistic name, it had to be renamed in performance to avoid Russian censorship.
The Tempest
Sibelius arranged two of his piano suites to create incidental music to this play, which includes the pieces "Ariel Flies In" and "Caliban's Song."
Finland
Sibelius hailed from this country, whose myths inspired his tone poems Tapiola and Kullervo.
Finland
Sibelius was a composer from this country. A woman from this country, Kaija Saariaho (KYE-yah SAH-ree-ah-hoh), wrote the opera L'amour de loin (lah-MOOR duh LWANG) and scored her Petals for solo cello and live electronics.
Lemminkainen Suite
Sibelius's tone poem The Swan of Tuonela is the most well-known part of this suite composed of four programmatic pieces based on Finnish myth.
Steve Reich
Similar to On the Transmigration of Souls, this composer's string quartet Different Trains uses pre-recorded tape as part of its melody. He also wrote Music for 18 Musicians and Double Sextet.
Jan Pieterszoon Sweenlick
Some Italian madrigals were composed by this Dutch organist who served for forty years in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. His organ compositions include a notable Fantasia Cromatica, and he is often considered the founder of the North German school of organ composers.
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart
Some information about the violin concerti actually comes to us from correspondence with this writer of an influential violin textbook and composer of the Toy Symphony, who was Mozart's father.
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Some productions of Les Biches incorporate this tone poem by Debussy, which begins with a famous flute solo depicting the namesake mischievous mythical creature.
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Songs Without Words are by this German composer whose fourth symphony is nicknamed "Italian", and who wrote his Reformation Symphony for the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession.
break strain
Sousa ramped up the intensity by contrasting the gentler trio with these louder sections in which short, martial, chromatic phrases are often exchanged in a dialogue between high and low instruments.
"It Ain't Necessarily So"
Sportin' Life earlier casts aspersions on the stories of David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, and Moses's discovery by Pharoah's daughter in this song from Porgy and Bess.
Minuet
Stamitz was likely the first composer to consistently use the four-movement classical symphony form, which includes this 3/4 time dance suite and trio as its third movement.
phasing
Steve Reich often employs this technique, in which two instruments play the same music in slightly different tempi, and thus gradually become out of sync.
string quartet
Steve Reich's Different Trains, for tape and this chamber ensemble, was premiered by one of these ensembles named Kronos that specializes in contemporary music. This ensemble contains two violins, a viola, and a cello.
Music for 18 Musicians
Steve Reich's time studying gamelan in Seattle helped inspire this piece, whose title ensemble plays a cycle of 11 chords over and over, sometimes on instruments with gamelan analogues such as the metallophone and marimba.
pipe organ
Stockhausen studied with Olivier Messiaen, who played this instrument in the Church of the Holy Trinity for over 60 years. Messiaen's works for this keyboard instrument include The Celestial Banquet, which has a lengthy pedal solo.
three
Stockhausen's Gruppen is scored for this many orchestras, which is also the number used in a 1976 symphony by Elliott Carter. Henryk Górecki's symphony of this number is titled Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.
a baton
Stokowski was well known for conducting free-hand, without the use of this object.
Walter Gropius
Stoltz was heavily influenced by this man, the architect of the Fagus Factory, who founded the Bauhaus.
Josef Albers
Stoltz was herself the mentor of Anni Fleischmann, who ended up in Stoltz's class reluctantly after failing to qualify for glass-blowing with her future husband, this artist of Homage to the Square.
Tales from the Vienna Woods
Strauss also wrote this 1868 waltz, featuring a notable part for the zither that resembles a landler. Its theme evokes Austrian countryside establishments called Heurigen.
Aus Italien
Strauss composed this early symphonic poem after taking a trip recommended by Brahms. Its third movement is "On the Beach at Sorrento," and its last movement incorporates the popular song "Funiculì, funicula."
Ein Heldenleben
Strauss copiously quotes his earlier works in the "Works of Peace" movement of this massive tone poem, in which a solo violin depicts Strauss's wife and squawking woodwinds depict his critics.
violin concerto
Stravinsky also wrote a neoclassical D major work in this genre, comprising a "Toccata," two "Arias," and a "Capriccio." Berg's last completed work was one in this genre dedicated "To the Memory of an Angel."
Symphony of Psalms
Stravinsky composed this work for chorus and orchestra for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It sets excerpts from the Latin Vulgate bible.
serialism
Stravinsky met with jeers at the premiere of Threni, which was written in this style. This atonal style was pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg with his twelve-tone technique.
E-flat major
Stravinsky's Opus 1 is a Symphony in this key. He also composed a chamber concerto in this key which is known as the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto.
Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor or "Moonlight" Sonata
Subtitled "Quasi una fantasia," this Beethoven sonata was compared to a night on Lake Lucerne by poet Ludwig Rellstab. Unusually for classical-period sonatas, it has a slow first movement and holds off on fast motion until the closing "Presto agitato."
Claude(-Achille) Debussy
Suite bergamasque is by this French Impressionist composer of La Mer and the Children's Corner Suite.
Hector Berlioz
Symphonie Fantastique is by this French composer and conductor who also composed a hybrid concerto-symphony for viola and orchestra based on the poetry of Byron, Harold in Italy.
harp
Tailleferre made a significant contribution to the repertory of this 47-string instrument with her concertino for it, as well as 18 works for Caroline Tardieu. The Celtic variety of this instrument is called a clàrsach.
Giovanni Gabrielli
Taking advantage of the design of St. Marks, this man spatially separated the choir into groups to create polychoral texture in works like In Ecclesiis. He was also one of the first composers to experiment with instrumental dynamics in his Sonata pian'e forte or Soft and Loud Sonata.
lullaby
Tallis's contemporary William Byrd wrote one of these compositions, which are known in French as berceuses, meaning "cradle songs." The most famous one is probably Brahms' "Wiegenlied: Guten Abend, Gute Nacht."
drone
Taqsīm may be accompanied by this effect in which a bass note is continually sustained during a piece. A sitar, hurdy-gurdy, or bagpipes may have dedicated parts for this effect, and it is produced by a shruti box or didgeridoo.
Arcangelo Corelli
Tartini's L'Arte del Arco contains 38 variations on a gavotte written by this other composer, who composed a number of concerti grossi, including the Christmas Concerto. Rachmaninoff wrote a group of variations on a theme by this non-Chopin composer.
BBC
Tavener composed The Protecting Veil for the Proms, an annual summer concert series sponsored by this company, whose symphony orchestra performs at the Barbican Center and was long-directed by Adrian Boult.
Swan Lake
Tchaikovsky also composed this ballet in which Prince Siegfried falls in love with Odette, who is cursed by the wicked sorcerer Von Rothbart to transform into an animal during daylight.
Kingdom of Denmark
Tchaikovsky also used "God Save the Tsar" in a festival overture on the national anthem of this country, honoring the birthplace of Alexander III's wife. Organists born in this country include the composer of Music of the Spheres and the organizer of several popular late seventeenth century Abendmusik concerts.
Pathétique Symphony
Tchaikovsky also wrote this B minor symphony, his last, which ends with a despairing Adagio lamentoso. Its second movement is a waltz written in the unusual time signature of 5/4.
"Souvenir de Florence"
Tchaikovsky's only string sextet is given this epithet, because he wrote one of its main themes in the title city.
viola
Telemann is thought to be the first to compose a concerto for this stringed instrument that is pitched exactly one-fifth lower than a violin.
viola
Telemann likely composed the first concerto for this string instrument, which is tuned above the cello but below the violin. Unlike other instruments, it primarily uses the alto clef.
Camille Saint-Saens
That Organ Symphony is a work by this French composer who used a xylophone to depict rattling bones in his Carnival of the Animals.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
That clarinet concerto was written by this "Classical" composer just weeks before he died at the age of 35. The last of his forty-one symphonies is nicknamed "Jupiter."
Dmitri Shostakovich
That eighth string quartet was one of 15 written by this Soviet composer, who represented himself using the 'D-S-C-H' cryptogram. He also composed the Leningrad Symphony.
Domenico Scarlatti
That member of the Scarlatti family was this son of Alessandro and composer of 555 harpsichord sonatas.
Guitar
The "All-American Rhythm Section" of the Count Basie Orchestra included Freddie Green playing this instrument, also played by Django Reinhardt and B.B. King.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The "Great G minor" and "Jupiter" symphonies are by this Austrian classical master, the composer of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and twenty-seven piano concertos.
George Frideric Handel
The "Hallalujah Chorus" is from Messiah, an oratorio by this composer of such other oratorios as Judas Maccabaeus.
Lucia di Lammermoor
The "Mad Scene" is in Act III of this Donizetti opera set in Scotland, in which the title character stabs her bridegroom Arturo because of her love for Edgardo di Ravenswood.
Scott Joplin
The "Maple Leaf Rag" was composed by this African-American pioneer of ragtime, whose piece "The Entertainer" was used in the film The Sting
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The "Scottish" Symphony was composed by Felix Mendelssohn, who gained prominence for writing an overture for this Shakespeare play. That overture depicts the braying of Bottom and the scampering of fairies.
sonata-allegro form
The "ballade-form" that Chopin used was a variant of this form. Italian for "sounded," this word denotes pieces for a solo instrument, unlike concertos.
promenades
The 18th movement of Carnaval is a D-flat piece with this title. In another work, this is the name of several pieces that alternate between 5/4 and 6/4 time, found between movements like "Two Jews: Rich and Poor" and "The Market at Limoges."
sarabande
The 25th Goldberg Variation is often considered one of these slow dances in triple time, which generally appear after a courante in a Baroque suite. The fourth and most famous movement of Bach's Cello Suite No. 5 is one of these.
Pathétique Sonata
The Adagio cantabile second movement of this C minor Beethoven piano sonata was the inspiration for the "Nimrod" movement of Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations.
Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488
The Adagio second movement of this piano concerto by Mozart is his only use of F-sharp minor. Its melancholy 6/8 melody begins on the unaccompanied piano, and makes prominent use of the Neapolitan chord.
Robert Schumann
The Album for the Young is by this German Romantic composer, the husband of Clara Wieck, whose orchestral works include symphonies nicknamed Rhenish and Spring.
Ottorino Respighi
The Ancient Airs and Dances are the work of this composer, who transcribed more Renaissance pieces in Gli Uccelli. His most notable work incorporates the recorded song of a nightingale.
Anton Bruckner
The Romantic Symphony is a work of this Austrian composer also known for his massive Te Deum as well as a symphony of which he was so ashamed that he labeled it as number zero.
fugue
The Sanctus of Verdi's Requiem is a piece in this form for double chorus. Pieces of this type begin with a subject that is repeated by the different voices.
Wayne Shorter
The Second Great Quintet included this tenor saxophonist who was a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and co-founded Weather Report.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
The Sinfonia antartica is by this English composer of Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, whose first symphony was given the name "A Sea Symphony."
Johann Sebastian Bach
The St Matthew Passion was written by this Baroque composer of "Six Sonatas and Partitas" for solo violin. He also composed the Brandenburg concertos and The Well-Tempered Clavier.
Robert Schumann
The Symphonic Etudes were written by this German composer who included the piece "Of Foreign Lands and People" in his work Kinderszenen, or Scenes from Childhood. He is also known for marrying Clara Wieck.
Frederick II
The Thema Regium of the Musical Offering was given to Bach by this musical king of Prussia. A talented transverse flute player, this enlightened monarch wrote 121 sonatas and 4 concertos for the flute.
Naples
The Three Tenors often performed traditional songs from this city, such as "Torna a Surriento," "Funiculi, Funicula," and the aforementioned "O Sole Mio."
John Milton Cage Jr.
The Threnody was originally going to be titled 8'37'', possibly a reference to this minimalist composer's famous work of complete silence, 4'33''
Joseph-Maurice Ravel
The Tomb of Couperin was composed by this Frenchman whose other works include the ballet Daphnis and Chloe as well as a work that features a single theme overlaying an ostinato rhythm on snares, Bolero.
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73
The Tragic Overture quotes material from this symphony by Brahms. The pastoral D major opening movement of this symphony has a second subject that sounds very similar to Brahms' famous lullaby.
Benjamin Britten
The Turn of the Screw is an opera by this English composer of the opera Peter Grimes and the War Requiem.
(Edward) Benjamin Britten
The War Requiem was created by this British composer of The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
B-flat clarinet
The aforementioned "Abyss of Birds" movement from Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time is a solo for this instrument, which plays a famous glissando at the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue.
J.S. Bach
The aforementioned Magnificat, Mass in B minor, and St. Matthew's Passion are all popular choral compositions by this leading Baroque German composer, the first of the three B's.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The aforementioned divertimenti were written by this composer, whose serenades including Eine kleine Nachtmusik are frequently paired with them.
John Adams
The aforementioned pieces are all by this minimalist American composer of the operas The Death of Klinghoffer and Nixon in China.
"Chameleon"
The bass line to this jazz standard opens with the ascending half-steps G, A-flat, A, B-flat, then leaps up a seventh to play another A-flat and B-flat. It's the first track on the album Head Hunters.
preludes
The cello suites all begin with one of these movements, which Bach paired with fugues in The Well-Tempered Clavier. Debussy wrote several, including "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair" and one to the Afternoon of a Faun.
piccolo
The closing section of the trio of "Stars and Stripes Forever" contains a notable solo countermelody for this woodwind instrument, which was first added to the symphony orchestra in the finale of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
Dichterliebe or Poet's Love
The composer of Scenes from Childhood also wrote this extremely schmaltzy setting of Heinrich Heine poems, at the end of which the speaker decides to put all his old, painful songs into a coffin and throw it into the sea.
In the Hall of the Mountain King
The composer of the Holberg Suite also wrote this piece in B minor which begins with the theme being played in the basses, cellos, and bassoons. It belongs to the first suite of its composer's incidental music to Peer Gynt.
Mephisto Waltzes
The composer of those etudes also wrote this set of four pieces, which begins with a depiction of "The Dance in the Village Inn," and is sometimes grouped with the Bagatelle sans tonalité.
"One O'Clock Jump"
The concert popularized this recently-composed 12-bar blues standard featuring a rhythm intro that modulates from F to D-flat, then has a series of solos and overlapping riffs. The Count Basie Orchestra ended concerts with it.
gamelan
The couple Judith and Alton L. Becker studied the "grammars" intrinsic to this style of music that inspired Poulenc's double piano concerto and Debussy's string quartet. This percussion ensemble comes from Bali and Java.
An Alpine Symphony or Eine Alpensinfonie
The death of Gustav Mahler prompted Strauss to finally complete this ambitious and somewhat misleadingly-titled tone poem, whose finale calls for heavy organ and even a thunder machine. This piece also calls for the oboes to use flutter-tonguing to evoke some delightfully melodic sheep bleating.
sonata
The exposition, development, and recapitulation are the three main components of this musical form, which is often employed in the first movement of symphonies and in its namesake genre of solo pieces.
Rakoczi March
The fifteenth of the Hungarian Rhapsodies is an arrangement of this tune, which appears as one of the instrumental numbers in Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust.
harp
The idee fixe interrupts the waltz in the movement "Un bal," which is dominated by two of these instruments that only play in that movement. Berlioz supposedly had a hard time performing the symphony due to the lack of capable players of this instrument.
Charlie Parker
The jazz club Birdland is named in honor of this saxophonist, who was nicknamed "Bird." This bebop pioneer composed "Ornithology" and "Yardbird Suite."
The Tempest
The last movement of Lélio is a Fantasy on this play by Shakespeare. Sibelius's incidental music for this play was one of his last compositions, and Arthur Sullivan's incidental music for this play was his earliest major work.
Das Lied von der Erde
The lyrics of this Mahler work are partially based on a Tang dynasty poem by Qian Qi. It contains the movements, "Of Youth," "Of Beauty," and "The Farewell."
"Heart of Oak"
The lyrics of this song state that "'tis to glory we steer" and asks, "who are so free as the sons of the waves?" Its lyrics say, "jolly tars are our men" and that "we'll fight and we'll conquer again and again."
sarabande
The main 'aria' theme of the Goldberg Variations is in the form of this slow dance in triple time, which originated in Latin America and Spain before travelling to France. In Baroque suites, it usually followed the courante.
Brandenburg Concertos
The flute joins the violin and the harpsichord in the concertino group of the fifth piece in this J.S. Bach set of concertos written for a German margrave.
Sibelius's Symphony No. 2 in D major
The fourth movement of this Sibelius symphony immediately begins with the rising three half-note theme in the strings in the tonic D major which gets a response from the trumpets. This is probably his most often performed work.
madrigals
The frottola was a predecessor to this genre of a cappella secular music of the 16th and early 17th centuries, known for its word-painting. Luca Marenzio and Carlo Gesualdo composed many of these pieces.
national anthem
The melody of the second movement of Haydn's "Emperor" Quartet was later used as one of these pieces. Alexander Alexandrov, Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, and John Stafford Smith are best known for pieces of this kind.
"Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity"
The melody of this middle movement of The Planets, subtitled "The Bringer of Jollity," was adapted into the hymn tune "Thaxted," which fit the patriotic poem "I Vow to Thee My Country."
Glenn Gould
The most famous recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations may be thoseof this eccentric Canadian pianist, whose own compositions include So You Want to Write a Fugue?
Antonin Dvorak
The most popular cello concerto is probably the one by this Czech composer of the Slavonic Dances and the New World Symphony.
Uranus
The movement dedicated to this planet is subtitled "the magician" and is a scherzo that contrasts with the female choir used in the subsequent section. It uses abundant syncopation and it ends with a "magic" F9 chord.
perfect octaves
The only perfect consonances permitted in first-species counterpoint are unisons, perfect fifths, and these intervals. It is forbidden to use parallel instances of these intervals, whose name is from the Latin word for "eighth."
"Ev'ry Valley Shall Be Exalted"
The opening sinfonia of Handel's Messiah is followed by two tenor arias, "Comfort Ye My People" and this aria, which uses text painting to illustrate a hill being made low and the crooked being made straight.
Thelonious Sphere Monk
The original score for Vadim's Les liaisons dangereuses was composed by this jazz pianist. This composer of "Epistrophy" and "Misterioso" included "Pannonica" on his album Brilliant Corners.
coloratura
The performer who sings the "Queen of the Night" aria from The Magic Flute employs this virtuoso technique, characterized by wide leaps, trills, and other elaborate flourishes.
"Pianists"
The performers are asked to imitate the awkward style of beginners in this movement of The Carnival of the Animals. It depicts rather unusual animals and consists of etude-like scalar passages, modulating upwards from C major.
John Coltrane
The phrase "sheets of sound" was used to describe the playing style of this tenor saxophonist, whose later free jazz albums include Ascension and Meditations. He is more famous, however, for Giant Steps and A Love Supreme.
Felix Mendelssohn
The premier of the Spring Symphony was conducted by this man. He composed the Songs Without Words as well as a Violin Concerto in E minor.
double stop
The probable inspiration for Bach's Sonatas and Partitas is Johann Paul von Westhoff's six partitas for solo violin, which make extensive use of this technique in which two notes are played simultaneously, using two strings.
Brandenburg Concertos
The second of these Bach pieces has a difficult but important trumpet part. Bach wrote these six pieces for the German Margrave Christian Ludwig.
Chaconne
The second partita from Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin concludes with this really long movement.
Three Places in New England
The sections "Putnam's Camp" and "The Housatonic at Stockbridge" appear in this Ives composition, which depicts a certain region of America.
bourrée
The seventh movement of the first suite and fifth movement of the second suite of Water Music are both this type of gavotte-like French dance, which originated in Auvergne.
Florestan
The sixth movements of Carnaval was based on this alter ego of Schumann representing his passionate, fiery side, whom Schumann credited for composing the rousing fourth movement of his Davidsbündlertänze suite.
passing tone
The study of musical counterpoint includes the study of nonchord tones like this one which resolves in the same direction in which it was prepared. For example, in the sequence C-D-E, D would be this type of nonchord tone.
Quartet for the End of Time
The teacher of Stockhausen wrote this work for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. It features movements like "Liturgy of Crystal" and "Abyss of Birds."
Henry Purcell
The text for My Heart is Inditing was written by this earlier composer for the coronation of James II. This student of John Blow is better known for composing the aria "When I am laid in earth."
"Why Fum'th in Fight the Gentiles Spite"
The theme by Tallis that Vaughan Williams used is a setting of Psalm 2:1-2, which is most commonly referred to by this name.
Leonard Bernstein
The then 14-year-old Japanese violinist Midori Goto famously broke two strings during a 1986 performance of this American composer's Serenade for violin. This composer also wrote the music for Candide and West Side Story.
gavotte
The third movement of the Holberg Suite is one of these Baroque dances, which usually start on the third of four beats. François-Joseph Gossec's most famous piece is one of these, and a celebrated one with variations ends Rameau's Suite in A minor.
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin
The third movement was by this composer, who is known for the third-movement nocturne from his second string quartet, as well as the "Polovtsian Dances."
Liebesträume No. 3
The third of this set of three Liszt solo piano works has two cadenzas and was called a notturno by its creator because it is modeled after Chopin's nocturnes.
cannons
These instruments sound at the end of Donizetti's opera Anna Bolena and fire sixteen times total in the 1812 Overture.
Hungarian Rhapsodies
These nineteen pieces by the composer of Totentanz are partly based on folk songs. The ninth is known as the "Pest Carnival," and the second in C-sharp minor is the most well-known.
the Rhine Maidens
These three characters, the only ones in the Ring cycle not drawn from Norse mythology, lament the loss of the gold at the end of Das Rheingold, and drag Hagen to his death while reclaiming the ring in Gotterdamerung.
Overture to Candide
This Bernstein piece opens with a timpani strike and brass fanfare and goes on to quote songs like "Glitter be Gay" and "The Best of All Possible Worlds." This work begins a larger work with libretto by Lillian Hellman.
Tragic Overture
This Brahms composition was written in the same year as, and is the contrasting companion piece to, the Academic Festival Overture.
Tragic Overture, Op. 81
This Brahms concert overture was meant to contrast with the joyful expression in the Academic Festival Overture. Its three main sections are all in the key of D minor.
Max Richter
This British composer "recomposed" The Four Seasons using minimalist techniques. He composed the soundtrack for Waltz with Bashir, and released the album The Blue Notebooks.
Benjamin Britten
This British composer wrote the War Requiem and used a theme of Henry Purcell in his A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra
This Britten work, subtitled "Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell," was designed as an introductory and educational piece of classical music.
Waldstein Sonata
This C-Major Beethoven piano sonata unexpectedly modulates up to the mediant of E-Major rather than the dominant of G-major in the first movement. Beethoven decided the original second movement was too long and published it as the Andante Favori.
Bohuslav Martinů
This Czech composer of six symphonies and the opera Julietta wrote a 1954 orchestral work that sets the frescoes of Piero della Francesca to music. This student of Albert Roussel also composed a trio for flute, cello, and piano.
Symphony No. 5
This D minor Shostakovich symphony was written in response to a scathing review that denounced his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District as "muddle instead of music."
Fifths
This D minor quartet by Haydn which immediately precedes the Emperor features a "witches' minuet" with a trio in D major, and is named for the falling interval that dominates its first movement.
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor
This D-minor orchestral composition by Rachmaninoff, whose first movement cadenza exists in two versions, was played by Van Cliburn to thunderous applause at the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958.
Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong
This Dixieland trumpeter recorded a gravelly-voiced cover of the title song from "Hello, Dolly!" which he sang in the film version alongside Barbra Streisand. His other vocal hits include "What A Wonderful World."
John Dowland
This English Renaissance composer is most renowned for his lute songs, such as "Flow, my tears," also called the "Lachrymae Pavane."
Gerald Finzi
This English composer composed Five Bagatelles for clarinet and piano. He is better known for his choral works like Dies Natalis and For St. Cecilia as well as his clarinet concerto in C minor with a notable Adagio second movement.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
This English composer of The Lark Ascending studied under Bruch. He employed a string quartet and two string orchestras in his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.
Gustav Holst
This English composer wrote The Planets in addition to two suites for military band.
Adrian Boult
This English conductor premiered The Planets, transformed the BBC Symphony Orchestra into a major player on the international stage in his twenty years of conducting it, and championed modern English music.
"Greensleeves"
This English folk song usually begins with the line "Alas my love, ye do me wrongly." Its 6/8 tune begins D F [pause] G A B A G [pause] E C.
Leif Segerstam
This Finnish composer has developed his own style of aleatoric composition that he calls "free pulsation", which he used in writing many of his 286 symphonies, as well as his Lemming String Quartet
Francois Couperin
This French Baroque composer is commonly believed to be the first composer to have composed a bagatelle. He was best known for his works for harpsichord such as Les Barricades Mystérieuses and his trio sonatas.
Francois Couperin ("FRANCE"-wah KOO-puh-RENG)
This French Baroque composer wrote a treatise on The Art of Playing the Harpsichord. He was known as "le Grand" to differentiate him from family members such as his uncle Louis.
Claude Debussy
This French Impressionist described the "Play of the Waves" and "Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea" in his orchestral suite La Mer. He also composed "Clair de Lune."
Érik (Alfred Leslie) Satie
This French avant-garde composer wrote Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. He was known for his bizarre performance indications such as: "Like a nightingale with a toothache".
Camille Saint-Saens
This French composer of Cypres et lauriers and the Organ Symphony quoted his Danse macabre in his Carnival of the Animals.
Olivier Messiaen
This French composer was organist at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, and composed his Book of the Holy Sacrament for the organ. You may know him better for his Quartet for the End of Time.
(Joseph) Maurice Ravel
This French composer wrote the "Scarbo" third movement of his Gaspard de la Nuit to be more difficult than Islamey. He also composed the very repetitive Bolero.
gavotte
This French dance popularized at the court of Louis XIV is usually in 4/4 time and begins on the third beat of a measure. It became an optional component of Baroque suites.
Darius Milhaud
This Frenchman and member of Les Six was influenced by Brazilian music to compose the ballet The Ox on the Roof. He also borrowed from jazz music to write the ballet The Creation of the World.
J.S. Bach
This German Baroque (bah-ROHK) composer wrote the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor.
Johann Sebastian Bach
This German Baroque composer of the Brandenburg Concertos wrote the Goldberg Variations.
Ludwig von Beethoven
This German composer of "Fur Elise" used Neapolitan chords extensively in the third movements of his "Appassionata" and "Moonlight" piano sonatas.
Paul Hindemith
This German composer wrote a Symphony in B-flat for Band. Music from his symphony Mathis der Maler was reworked into an opera about the painter Matthias Grünewald.
Richard Strauss
This German composer wrote the tone poem Ein Heldenleben and included the "dance of the seven veils" in his opera Salome. He also wrote the tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra.
George Frideric Handel
This German-born British composer of that famous sarabande produced three suites for a concert on the River Thames, collectively known as Water Music.
Bela Bartok
This Hungarian composed Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta and Mikrokosmos, as well as Duke Bluebeard's Castle and The Miraculous Mandarin.
Franz Liszt
This Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso displayed the folk influences of his native land in pieces like his nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies.
Franz Liszt
This Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist wrote Totentanz and the Hungarian Rhapsodies.
Zoltán Kodály
This Hungarian composer's 1939 Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for its fiftieth anniversary. A musical sneeze opens his folk opera about the hussar Háry János.
George Szell
This Hungarian-born longtime conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra made recordings of all five Beethoven piano concertos with Leon Fleisher as the soloist.
Sitar
This Indian stringed instrument has around 6 played strings and 13 sympathetic strings. It was made popular in the West by the Beatles in Norwegian Wood.
Claudio Monteverdi
This Italian Baroque composer courted controversy with his Fifth Book of Madrigals, which included "Cruda Amarilli." You may know him better for his operas L'Orfeo and The Coronation of Poppea.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
This Italian Renaissance composer wrote a collection of motets setting texts from the Song of Solomon, his Canticum canticorum. His Pope Marcellus Mass is credited with saving polyphony.
Giovanni Palestrina
This Italian Renaissance composer wrote the Pope Marcellus Mass, whose streamlined polyphonic texture is said to have convinced the Council of Trent to not ban polyphony.
Luigi Cherubini
This Italian composer and contemporary of Beethoven is known for his operas, like Lodoiska, as well as his C minor requiem.
Claudio Monteverdi
This Italian composer of nine books of madrigals helped usher in the Baroque era and composed the innovative operas The Coronation of Poppea and L'Orfeo.
Giacomo Puccini
This Italian composer wrote the music for Madame Butterfly, along with Tosca and La Boheme.
Antonio Vivaldi
This Italian composer's The Contest Between Harmony and Invention includes a group of programmatic violin concerti called The Four Seasons.
portamento
This Italian term is sometimes used interchangeably with glissando, but in general it refers to a smooth sliding between notes, common in vocal music.
pizzicato
This Italian term refers to plucking the strings of the instrument rather than using the bow. Johann and Josef Strauss collaborated on a polka in which all the strings play this way.
Arturo Toscanini
This Italian-born conductor gave a series of concerts at Carnegie Hall as director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, in which capacity he premiered Barber's Adagio for Strings. Earlier, while conducting Puccini's Turandot, he said, "Here the opera ends, because at this point the maestro died."
Miles Davis
This Jazz artist behind the album Porgy and Bess recorded "Straight, No Chaser" on Milestones and titled another album 'Round About Midnight after Monk's similarly named song.
The Merry Widow
This Lehar operetta includes "You'll Find Me at Maxim's." In it, Baron Zeta of Pontevedro tries to marry Count Danilovitsch to Hanna Glawari so that the fortune she inherited from her late husband stays in the country.
Jascha Heifetz
This Lithuanian-born American violinist's recording of the concerto with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony is considered by some to be the greatest of all time, though some critics have called his playing too cold and clean.
"March of the Trolls"
This Lyric Piece from the fifth book uses runs of staccato notes to depict the title supernatural creatures. Along with "Shepherd's March," "Notturno," and "Norwegian March," this piece was later orchestrated and published in Grieg's Lyric Suite.
Symphony No. 3
This Mahler symphony includes a setting of Nietzsche's "Midnight Song" in a fourth movement originally titled "What Man Tells Me," though Mahler later abandoned all titles associated with this piece. It is often considered the longest symphony in the standard repertoire.
String Quartet No. 2
This Mendelssohn chamber piece in A minor establishes its cyclic form with a three note quotation of his song "Ist es wahr" that appears in all four movements.
Steve Reich
This Minimalist composer won the Pulitzer Prize for his Double Sextet. He included parts for tape in It's Gonna Rain and Different Trains.
Edvard Hagerup Grieg
This Norwegian composer wrote the Holberg Suite and In the Hall of the Mountain King.
Witold Lutosławski (loo-toh-SWAV-skee)
This Polish composer of a non-Bartok Concerto for Orchestra began his four-movement cello concerto, composed for Rostropovich, with a five-minute solo. He used "limited aleatoricism" in his third of four symphonies.
Bronislava Nijinska
This Polish-Russian choreographer of Les Biches collaborated with Stravinsky on Les Noces. She joined Ballet Russes like her brother, the most talented dancer for that company.
All-Night Vigil
This Rachmaninoff choral a cappella piece is meant to be sung on Russian Orthodox Sunday evening services. Its Nunc Dimittis section requires a group of bassi profondi to hit a low B-flat.
Isle of the Dead, Op. 29
This Rachmaninoff symphonic poem inspired by an Arnold Böcklin painting portrays the oars of Charon against the waters of the river Styx.
Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina
This Renaissance composer supposedly convinced the Church not to ban polyphony by writing the Pope Marcellus Mass.
Russian Easter Festival Overture
This Rimsky-Korsakov work begins in 5/2 with an early violin cadenza, and ends with an allegro agitato section. It is subtitled "Overture on Liturgical Themes" and includes quotations from Psalms and Mark before the score.
Dinu Lipatti
This Romanian pianist recorded some of Brahms's opus 39 Waltzes with Boulanger, but is better known for his recordings of Chopin, and for tragically dying of Hodgkin's lymphoma at age thirty-three.
Felix Mendelssohn
This Romantic German composer of The Hebrides is best known for his incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
This Romantic composer's violin concerto was premiered by Ferdinand David. He wrote the oratorios St. Paul and Elijah as well as symphonies subtitled "Scottish" and "Italian."
Sergei Prokofiev
This Russian composer dedicated his difficult Sinfonia Concertante to Mstislav Rostropovich. He is probably best known for composing Peter and the Wolf.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
This Russian composer of Marche Slave included cannons firing blank shells in his 1812 Overture.
Dmitri Shostakovich
This Russian composer quoted "You'll Find Me at Maxim's" in his "Leningrad" Symphony. His operas include Katerina Ismailova and Lady Macbeth of Mtensk District.
Igor Stravinsky
This Russian composer wrote all of those works in his neoclassical phase. In his earlier "Russian" period, he wrote the ballets The Firebird and The Rite of Spring.
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky
This Russian expatriate composed an Elegy for J.F.K. a whole half century after premiering The Rite of Spring.
Vexations
This Satie piece consists of 840 repetitions of a theme in which the right hand plays a series of tritones.
Anton Webern
This Second Viennese School composer's sparse œuvre features Klang·farben·melodie, a technique like hocket or pointillism. His Opus 21 Symphony's second movement has 7 palindromic 11-bar variations on a symmetrical tone row.
Antonio Soler
This Spanish contemporary of Haydn's wrote for an unusual chamber ensemble with his organ quintets, but is best known for his numerous keyboard sonatas possibly influenced by study with Domenico Scarlatti.
Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36
This Tchaikovsky symphony opens its B-flat minor Andantino second movement with an oboe melody and has an entirely pizzicato 3rd movement. Its Allegro con fuoco finale is interrupted by the same brass fanfare on repeated A-flats which opens this symphony.
1812 Overture
This Tchaikovsky work written to commemorate the Russian victory at the Battle of Borodino quotes "La Marseillaise" numerous times. Its climax features cannon blasts and ringing chimes.
Gustavo Dudamel
This Venezuelan-born current director of the L.A. Philharmonic conducted the premiere of Adams's City Noir.
"Nessun dorma"
This aria, which was encored at the performance, was also famously sung by Pavarotti at the final performance of his career. Calaf assures that "none shall sleep tonight" in this aria from Turandot.
The Seasons
This ballet collaboration between Cage and his partner, Merce Cunningham, was his first work composed for orchestra. Tchaikovsky wrote some solo piano pieces of this name, and Haydn wrote an oratorio of this name.
Count Basie
This bandleader joined Frank Sinatra on a 1962 album and worked with Dizzy Gillespie on The Gifted Ones. His work with his orchestra included "April in Paris" and "One O'Clock Jump."
Art Blakey
This bandleader's contributions to Les liasons dangereuses were included on the soundtrack, unlike Thelonious Monk's. He was the first to record the Bobby Timmons standard "Moanin," releasing it on an album of the same name.
Freddie Hubbard
This cat was a session musician throughout the 60s. With Don Cherry, he played trumpet on Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz. His own albums include First Light, Hub-Tones, and Red Clay.
"The Trout"
This cheerful song gives its name to Schubert's piano quintet, because it was used in that works' variations movement. Its text uses fishing for the title animal as a metaphor for rape.
bass clef
This clef uses two dots, one above and one below the line, to denote F below middle C on the staff. It is the standard clef for the bassoon, tuba, and the left hand of piano parts.
Carnaval
This collection of piano pieces by Schumann features movements inspired by commedia dell'arte characters as well as composers like Paganini and Chopin. It contains a three-bar long piece with no tempo markings, which many suspect was never meant to be played.
Carnaval, Op. 9
This collection of piano pieces by Schumann includes three musical cryptograms, portraits of Schumann's alter-egos Eusebius and Florestan, and depictions of the Commedia dell'arte characters Pantalon and Colombine.
"Mood Indigo"
This colorfully titled co-composition by Ellington and clarinetist Barney Bigard is notable for inverting the ranges of the standard Dixieland front line: the trombone plays above the trumpet which plays above the clarinet.
Einojuhani Rautavaara
This composer also incorporated birdsong into a musical piece, his Cantus Arcticus: A Concerto for Birds and Orchestra. This composer's Angel Series includes his Symphony No. 7, Angel of Light
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
This composer created two flute concertos, although his second was simply a reworking of his Oboe Concerto in C major. The last symphony of this composer, his 41st, is nicknamed "Jupiter."
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff
This composer did not publish the 24 preludes as a unified set, but nonetheless managed to cover all the keys. His other compositions include The Bells and four piano concertos.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
This composer featured unisons, word painting, and a strong plagal cadence in a six-part motet, the first setting of O Magnum Mysterium. His Pope Marcellus Mass supposedly "saved polyphony" from condemnation at Trent.
Miles Davis
This composer had a bass soloist pluck eight notes in D-Dorian, followed by a 2-note band response, then pluck 9 more notes, then get another 2-note response, in the head of "So What," the first track on his album Kind of Blue.
Gustav Holst
This composer included a movement called "Song of the Blacksmith" in his Second Suite in F for Military Band. He is best known for his program works such as the Planets.
George (or Jacob) Gershwin
This composer included four taxi horns in the instrumentation for his tone poem An American in Paris.
Jean-Baptiste Lully
This composer likely laid the framework for the "late Folia" by giving it a defined chord progression. He contracted gangrene and died after striking himself with a baton.
Toru Takemitsu
This composer made careful use of silence in the scores he composed for over 100 films, such as after a gunshot during a battle scene in Ran. He's better known for pieces like Rain Coming and Rain Tree Sketch II, the latter of which was dedicated to his idol Olivier Messiaen.
Manuel de Falla y Matheu
This composer many bars of trills on E and F for the piano shifting from pp to mf in the "Ritual Fire Dance" from his ballet about Candela and Carmelo, El amor brujo.
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky
This composer memorialized Viktor Hartmann's paintings in Pictures at an Exhibition.
Camille Saint-Saens
This composer of Carnival of the Animals and Danse Macabre wrote his piece Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso especially for Sarasate.
Maurice Ravel
This composer of Pavane for a Dead Princess repeated an ostinato rhythm played by snare drums in his piece Bolero.
Gustav Mahler
This composer of Songs of a Wayfarer drew from folk poetry collected by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim for his Des Knaben Wunderhorn. He also composed The Song of the Earth and "Symphony of a Thousand."
Ottorino Respighi
This composer of The Pines of Rome was also inspired by other aspects of the city, writing The Fountains of Rome and Roman Festivals as well.
Charles Ives
This composer of Three Places in New England sought to capture the "spirit of transcendentalism" or some such crap in his Concord Sonata.
Olivier Messiaen
This composer of Turangalila-Symphonie considered the octatonic scale to be the "second mode of limited transposition," and used it in his Quartet for the End of Time.
George Frideric Handel
This composer of Water Music wrote the "Hallelujah" chorus for his oratorio Messiah.
Raymond Murray Schafer
This composer of massive music-theater works like Apocalypsis and the Patria cycle founded the World Soundscape Project for acoustic ecology. He's probably Canada's most famous composer.
Giuseppe Verdi
This composer of operas such as Rigoletto and Aida also composed a requiem mass in memory of Alessandro Manzoni.
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov
This composer of the Capriccio Espagnol is better known for composing an interlude for The Tale of Tsar Sultan called "The Flight of the Bumblebee."
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov
This composer of the Russian Easter Festival Overture also wrote two "Alborada" movements and a "Fandango asturiano" in his Capriccio espagnol. He also wrote "Flight of the Bumblebee."
Bela Bartok
This composer of the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin and the opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle relentlessly collected and arranged folk music from his native Hungary.
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius
This composer of the massive Mass of Life based his composition Sea Drift on the poem "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking."
Alessandro Scarlatti
This composer of the opera Griselda ring-led the Neapolitan school of composers, for whom the Neapolitan chord is named. His son Domenico produced a whopping 555 harpsichord sonatas.
Joseph Canteloube
This composer orchestrated folk songs from the Auvergne region of France in his Chants d'Auvergne. His first opera, Le Mas, was set on a Provençal farm, and his second opera was about Vercingétorix.
Leonard Bernstein
This composer premiered his Kaddish Symphony with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. This long time conductor of New York Phil may be better known for composing the opera Candide.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
This composer preserved many of the rapidly-disappearing folk songs of the English countryside. He's best known for The Lark Ascending.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
This composer purportedly transcribed Allegri's Miserere from memory after a single trip to the Vatican. His own masses include the "Great Mass" in C Minor and the "Coronation" Mass in C major.
Luigi Boccherini
This composer rearranged many of his string quintets into Guitar Quintets at the request of Marquis de Benavente. Of those that survived, his Guitar Quintet No. 4 "Fandango" remains popular today.
Ennio Morricone
This composer received an honorary Academy Award in 2007 for his contributions to film music. This Italian film composer's most famous piece is probably "The Ecstasy of Gold" from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
George Frideric Handel
This composer wrote both Zadok the Priest and Music for the Royal Fireworks for George II, and he composed Water Music for the monarch's father George I.
Vincent Persichetti
This composer wrote his Parable V for carillon. His other works include Flower Songs and Symphony for Band.
Maurice Ravel
This composer wrote the Spanish-inspired Rapsodie espagnole. His other works include Jeuxd'eau and Pavane for a Dead Princess.
Franz Liszt
This composer wrote the Transcendental Etudes, the Mephisto Waltzes, and a collection of nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies.
Claudio Monteverdi
This composer wrote the Vespers of 1610 and composed L'Orfeo, the earliest opera still regularly performed today.
Leonard Bernstein
This composer wrote the music for West Side Story. His symphonies have nicknames such as Jeremiah, The Age of Anxiety, and Kaddish.
Irving Berlin
This composer's "double" songs "Play a Simple Melody" and "Old-Fashioned Wedding" combine two tunes in counterpoint. He wrote the latter for a revival of his musical Annie Get Your Gun, which includes "There's No Business Like Show Business."
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
This composer's Elijah was seen as a huge improvement over his disappointing oratorio Paulus. More successful ventures of his include the Hebrides overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Frederic Chopin
This composer's Op. 9, No. 2 is a Nocturne in E-flat major. His other piano pieces include many mazurkas and polonaises evocative of his native Poland.
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin
This composer's Opus 11 is a set of 24 preludes. This synaesthete planned to write a monumental work which would bring about the end of the world, Mysterium.
Hector Berlioz
This composer's Symphonie fantastique was inspired by his own infatuation with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson.
Johannes Brahms
This composer's Symphony No. 2 is also in D major. His fourth symphony ends with a passacaglia whose bass line is taken from a J.S. Bach cantata, while his third symphony begins with a "free but happy" motif.
Christoph Willibald von Gluck
This composer's ballet Don Juan has a fearsome Sturm und Drang finale. He reformed opera with Calzabigi ("kalt-sah-BEE-jee") in Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, integrating overtures and using music to reflect drama not vocality.
Heitor Villa-Lobos
This composer's first choro was for guitar, as were his six independent preludes, one of which is now lost. This composer also wrote the nine suites of the Bachianas Brasileiras.
Sergei Prokofiev
This composer's first film score Lieutenant Kijé included that "Troika." He soon returned to Soviet Russia and found renewed success with Alexander Nevsky, Romeo and Juliet, three War Sonatas, and Peter and the Wolf.
Bedřich Smetana
This composer's symphonic poem Má vlast, dedicated to the city of Prague, contains a section depicting the Moldau River.
Frederic Chopin
This composer's third piano sonata in B minor ends in a major key and is very difficult, making it less popular than the work it succeeded, nicknamed "The Funeral March." This composer of many mazurkas is Polish.
antiphony
This form of responsory now refers to any call-and-response singing. A group of four hymns including Regina Coeli and Alma Redemptoris Mater is referred to as the "Marian" type of these songs.
Robert Schumann
This german composer of Carnaval married his teacher's daughter, Clara Wieck, and wrote other piano works like Papillons and Kinderszenen. He also composed "Spring" and "Rhenish" symphonies.
Tragic Overture, Op. 81
This grim Brahms work in D minor was composed as a sort of companion piece to the Academic Festival Overture. It may have been inspired by Beethoven's Corolian Overture.
Talking drum
This hourglass-shaped West African drum was created by the Yoruba and often used by griots, who could communicate detailed messages with it.
"A Mighty Fortress is Our God"
This hymn composed by Martin Luther is featured prominently in the finale of Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony. Max Reger's Op. 27 Choral Fantasy was also based on this tune.
Charles Mingus
This ill-tempered bassist attacked a segregationist governor in "Fables of Faubus," and included a "Love-Chant" on his album Pithecanthropus Erectus. He also released an album titled for his surname followed by Ah Um.
French (but really German) horn
This instruments is often keyed in F and played with a conical mouthpiece. The right hand of the player is usually stuffed into the bell to lower the pitch of this instrument, whose ancestor was featured in four Mozart conciertos written for Joseph Leutgeb.
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea
This jazz pianist of Spanish descent replaced Herbie Hancock in Miles Davis' band and played piano on Bitches' Brew. He used the adagio from Concierto de Aranjuez for the opening of his song "Spain," recorded with the band Return to Forever.
Oscar Peterson
This jazz pianist recorded a live album at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival with his trio, including Ray Brown and Herb Ellis. He composed the Canadiana Suite.
Bill Evans
This jazz pianist wrote the foreword to Bud Powell's biography The Dance of the Infidels, praising Powell for the "incomparable originality of his creation." This pianist recorded Waltz for Debby with his trio that included Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian.
John Coltrane
This jazz saxophonist recorded "Naima" with his quartet including Jimmy Garrison and McCoy Tyner. He also played soprano saxophone for the album My Favorite Things.
Sonata No. 32
This last Beethoven sonata is in only two movements and shares the stormy character of his other C minor works. Sergei Prokofiev modeled his second symphony after this work, whose second movement is an "Arietta." Sorry, no nicknames here!
"Erdödy" String Quartets, Op. 76
This last complete set of string quartets by Haydn include the "Fifths" Quartet and the "Emperor" Quartet. The opening motif of the fourth of these is sometimes called the "sunrise" motif.
Gustav Mahler
This late-Romantic Austrian composer of the Symphony of a Thousand could have beaten the curse of the ninth had he chosen to regard his Das Lied von der Erde as a symphony.
Symphony No. 8
This later Bruckner symphony in C minor, is his longest. The scherzo features a theme intended to represent "Deutscher Michel," while the 25-minute adagio is perhaps the longest in the standard repertoire. This work is sometimes named for its overpowering, stern character.
Maurice Ravel
This later French composer wrote a Baroque-style French keyboard suite dedicated to the victims of World War I called Le Tombeau de Couperin. His other compositions include Miroirs and Bolero.
Robert Schumann
This later German composer wrote an A minor piano concerto in the modern sense after several abortive attempts. His other piano compositions include Kreisleriana.
Jon Hendricks
This lead vocalist on Blood on the Fields, the "James Joyce of Jive," joined Dave Lambert and Annie Ross in a famous trio that promoted vocalese, the vocal arrangement of instrumental songs.
Busoni Piano Concerto
This lengthy concerto features an offstage male chorus singing the words from Adam Oehlenschlager's Aladdin in the Cantico final movement. Its tarantella fourth movement is difficult for both the soloist and the orchestra.
Death and the Maiden
This lied by Schubert starts with slow D minor chords in pianissimo; Schubert later adapted it into a quartet whose second movement is a theme and variation on the piano accompaniment of the song.
John Dowland
This lutenist contemporary with Byrd composed The Frog Galliard in addition to such songs as "Come again, sweet love doth now invite" and "Flow my tears."
Claudio Monteverdi
This maestro's innovations include the string tremolo introduced in his work The Combat of Tancredi and Clorinda. His other works include L'Arianna, The Coronation of Poppea, and L'Orfeo.
John Cage
This man called for such odd instruments as turntables and radio receivers in his Imaginary Landscapes. He's probably better known for a piece consisting entirely of silence, 4'33".
Erwartung
This one-act monodrama for a solo soprano depicts the interior monologue of a woman looking for her lover in a forest. The score has no organized repetition and has no formal structural organization, mimicking the stream-of-consciousness state it represents.
Claudio Abbado
This one-time music director of La Scala, conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and frequent performer of Mahler's works such as the Symphony No. 6 recently became a Senator for Life in Italy.
Juditha triumphans devicta Holofernis barbarie
This only surviving oratorio by Vivaldi includes an Agitata Infidu Flatu aria for the title character's enemy and was written to celebrate the Venetian victory at Corfu.
Death Valley Suite
This other Grofé work opens with a movement in 5/4 called "Funeral Mountains." The movements "Sand Storm" and "49er Emigrant Train" appear in this suite, which was commissioned for California's State Centennial.
Hary Janos Suite
This other Hungarian work includes movements like "Viennese Musical Clock" and "The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon." It begins with a "musical sneeze," and is taken from an opera about a soldier telling stories in an inn.
Central Park in the Dark
This other Ives work is one of the "Two Contemplations." It quotes popular early twentieth century songs like "Washington Post March" and "Hello! Ma Baby."
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
This other Russian composer wrote Scheherazade (shuh-HAIR-uh-zahd) and included the "Flight of the Bumblebee" in his opera The Tale of Tsar Sultan.
Symphony No. 4
This other Tchaikovsky work, in the key of F minor, opens with a blaring 'fate motif' in the horns and bassoons, which recurs throughout the work. The second movement features a plaintive oboe melody of steady eighth notes, while in the third movement, the string section plays entirely pizzicato.
Leos Janacek
This other composer used folk themes for the Moravian Dances and an opera about the title stepdaughter of Kostelnicka, Jenufa.
Giovanni Pierluidi da Palestrina
This other composer was used as an example in Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum. He supposedly saved polyphony by writing the Pope Marcellus Mass.
Johannes Brahms
This other composer wrote a Violin Sonata in G major which is called the Rain Sonata. He is better known for writing the Academic Festival Overture and four symphonies.
Maurice Ravel
This other composer wrote an overture and a song cycle based on the Scheherazade myth. He may be better known for paying homage to his Spanish heritage in Rapsodie Espagnole and Pavane for a Dead Princess.
Richard Georg Strauss
This other composer's tone poem Don Quixote includes a long viola solo. Two violas feature prominently in the agitato section of his mournful composition titled Metamorphosen.
minuet
This other dance in 3/4 time was the standard choice for the third movement of symphonies until it was supplanted by the scherzo. A very famous and simple one in G is found in the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.
"Old Folks at Home"
This other folk tune is the state song of Florida and begins with the lyrics, "Way down upon de Swanee Ribber."
New World Symphony
This other ninth symphony was likely inspired by African-American spirituals the composer heard during a visit to America. It features a prominent English horn solo at the beginning of its second movement.
Guillaume Dufay
This other old-school composer wrote the motet Nuper rosarum flores for the consecration of the Florence cathedral. He was the foremost composer of the Burgundian School.
Children's Corner
This other piano suite by Debussy was dedicated to his daughter Claude-Emma. Interestingly, it had an English name for each its six sections, which include "Jimbo's Lullaby," "The Snow is Dancing," and "Golliwog's Cakewalk."
Carnaval
This other piano work by Schumann contains a series of musical cryptograms based on the letters A, S, C, H. It includes musical depictions of Pierrot and Harlequin.
"Black Keys" Etude
This other popular Chopin etude is nicknamed for the fact that the repeating triplet figures in the right hand are played on a very constrained set of notes.
Estampes
This other suite by Debussy takes inspiration from Javanese gamelan music in "Pagodes," which also heavily incorporates pentatonic scales. It also contains "Jardins sous la pluie," or "Gardens in the Rain."
Alexander's Feast
This other work by Handel is a setting of a John Dryden poem written to celebrate Saint Cecilia's Day, and is noted for the arias "Bacchus, ever fair" and "Revenge, Timotheus cries."
"Hymn of Praise" Symphony
This other work by Mendelssohn was written to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. Its opening "sinfonia" section is followed by nine movements for chorus and soloists.
Oud
This pear-shaped stringed Middle Eastern instrument is similar to the lute. It was allegedly invented by Lamech in the Bible.
"Der Müller und der Bach"
This penultimate song in Die schöne Müllerin ends with the Miller resolving to commit suicide. It takes the form of a dialogue between the two title characters, who are the most important in the cycle.
Franz Liszt
This pianist and composer included "Paysage" and "Will-o-the-Wisp" in his insanely hard Transcendental Etudes. He also wrote 19 not-so-insane Hungarian Rhapsodies.
Clara Wieck Schumann
This pianist and staunch advocate of Brahms' music gave the premiere of Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 and his "Werther" Piano Quartet, and is possibly depicted by the opening theme of the latter piece.
Sviatoslav Richter
This pianist gave the premiere of Prokofiev's seventh and ninth piano sonatas, the latter of which was dedicated to him. He gave a definitive performance of the original solo piano version of Pictures at an Exhibition at a 1958 recital in Sofia.
the Italian Concerto
This piece concludes with a scale-heavy Presto in F major after an elaborately ornamented D minor middle movement, in which the left hand alternates playing parallel thirds in the treble clef with pairs of repeated notes in the bass clef. For 10 points each:
Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Alte deutsche Lieder
Unlike the 6th, the first four of Mahler's symphonies all set text from this anonymous collection of German folk poetry, and he also used it for his Humoresques and Songs of a Wayfarer.
"Greensleeves"
Vaughan Williams also wrote a Fantasia on this traditional English folk song of uncertain musical authorship. Well, we do know that Henry VIII did not, in fact, write it for Anne Boleyn.
violoncellos
Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 is scored for soprano soloist and an orchestra consisting entirely of these instruments.
Rhapsody in Blue
This piece for piano and jazz band by George Gershwin was commissioned by Paul Whiteman. It opens with a clarinet glissando.
Konzertstück in F minor, Op. 79, J. 282
This piece for piano and orchestra by Carl Maria von Weber depicts a damsel waiting for the return home of her knight, who is off fighting in the Crusades. It ends with their happy reunion.
coda
This portion of the first ballade, marked "presto con fuoco," is written with a 2/2 time signature. This term denotes the concluding passage of a movement or a piece, independent from the rest of its structure.
Johann Stamitz
This prolific composer and virtuoso violinist was primarily in charge of training the musicians at Mannheim Court. His symphonies such as Sinfonia 8 in D major contain many examples of Mannheim mannerisms.
Baldassare Galuppi
This proponent of dramma giocoso composed operas like Arcadia in Brenta and The Country Philosopher. You may know him better for stating "I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!" in a Browning poem about one of this man's works.
Carl Stumpf
This psychologist pioneered the whole field of comparative musicology with his 1911 study The Origins of Music, theorized that tones were sensory and imaginary, and archived primitive music.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
This recently-deceased German lyric baritone, purportedly the most recorded singer of all time, was known for his recordings of Schubert lieder. Gerald Moore frequently served as his accompanist.
John (William) Coltrane
This saxophonist, known for his "sheets of sound" approach, musicalized his spiritual aspirations in the album A Love Supreme.
"The Viennese Musical Clock"
This second movement of the Hary Janos suite opens with drums whirring and bells chiming while winds and percussion play a theme based on an E-flat major arpeggio, representing the title machine.
Agnus Dei (AHG-nuss "day")
This section of the Mass in B minor begins with a G minor aria for alto soloist and ends with a Dona nobis pacem (DOH-nah NOH-bis PAH-chem), which are the last words of its corresponding text.
Gradus Ad Parnassum
This seminal work by Johannes Fux defined five species counterpoints that are still widely used today. It is written as a socratic dialogue between Aloysius and Josephus.
Mikrokosmos
This series of 153 graded piano pieces starting with the easiest and becoming very difficult was composed by the creator of the aforementioned work. It is commonly used in modern piano lessons.
The Four Seasons
This set of four concerti from The Trial between Harmony and Invention is regarded as Vivaldi's most famous work. Each concerto in this work begins and ends with a movement marked "Allegro" except for the second piece, "Summer."
Kinderszenen
This set of thirteen pieces for piano are meant to evoke a reminiscence of youth. Its movements include An Important Event and Of Foreign Lands and People.
Kinderszenen
This set of thirteen solo piano pieces by Schumann was originally called "Easy Pieces," and it includes sections like "Of Foreign Lands and Peoples" and "Traumerei."
"Gretchen am Spinnrade"
This six-eight setting of a poem by Goethe uses the pianist's left hand to symbolize both the title object and the title girl's pounding heart. It dramatically builds up to the words "sein Kuß!" meaning "his kiss!"
The King's Singers
This six-member British a cappella group often performs English folk tunes, as well as pop songs, Renaissance music, and Ligeti. With The Consort of Musicke, they hosted the BBC program Madrigal History Tour.
wind machine
This slightly more conventional instrument, often consisting of a fabric-wrapped drum rubbing against wooden rods, evokes an eerie atmosphere in numerous Richard Strauss pieces, including Don Quixote and An Alpine Symphony.
"Take Five"
This song on Time Out is in 5/4 time throughout. It was an unexpected hit, reaching number one on the pop charts.
"God Save the Queen"
This song's lyrics ask the first title figure to send the second title figure "victorious, happy and glorious, long to reign over us." This royal anthem of many Commonwealth is the UK's national anthem.
perfect authentic cadence
This specific type of cadence consists of the movement from a root position five chord to a root position one chord.
Aaron Copland
This student of Nadia Boulanger first came to prominence with the folk-inspired El Salon Mexico and also wrote a Fanfare For The Common Man.
Alexander Glazunov
This student of Rimsky-Korsakov wrote a concerto in E-flat major for saxophone and strings. His A minor violin concerto groups the first two movements as one large sonata-form movement.
Le tombeau de Couperin
This suite by Ravel, originally written for solo piano and later orchestrated by the composer, employs Baroque dance forms like the forlane and rigaudon, paying homage to the titular composer.
scordatura
This technique refers to a nonstandard tuning of a string instrument. The solo violin in Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre uses this technique.
"Dorabella"
This tenth of Elgar's Enigma Variations includes a melody played by solo viola and has the woodwinds parody the stutter of the composer's title female friend.
Decca Classics
This titan among classical labels has been releasing albums in its Entartete Musik series for about twenty years, to bring back forgotten works of "degenerate" composers. This British label got huge after developing full frequency range recording and is instantly recognizable by their two-tone blue and red logo.
In the Steppes of Central Asia
This tone poem by a Russian composer uses a recurring "travelling" theme in pizzicato strings to depict a caravan crossing the desert under the protection of Russian troops.
"Naima"
This track from Giant Steps takes its name from Coltrane's first wife. Often cited as Coltrane's favorite composition, this track sees bassist Paul Chambers play an E-flat pedal tone throughout the piece.
Louis Armstrong
This trumpeter made a popular recording of W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" with Bessie Smith. He also made a 1954 album of W. C. Handy's music.
Dizzy Gillespie
This trumpeter wrote "Salt Peanuts" and "A Night in Tunisia." Known for his bent trumpet and puffed-out cheeks, he innovated bebop with Charlie Parker.
Miles (Dewey) Davis III
This trumpeter, whose albums include Sketches of Spain and Kind of Blue, called Coleman "all screwed up inside" after hearing him play at Five Spot.
the Choral Fantasy
This two-movement Beethoven piece for piano, orchestra, and chorus, his Op. 80, prefigures several elements of his ninth symphony. It sets a German text of unknown authorship beginning, "Schmeichelnd hold und lieblich klingen."
Manfred Symphony
This unnumbered symphony by Tchaikovsky was written for Mily Balakirev. It depicts the title Byronic character wandering and dying in the Alps. Schumann wrote an overture on the same subject.
Amedee Ernest Chausson
This upstart French composer wrote an oft-performed "Poeme" and died a very painful death when he collided with a brick wall while biking downhill.
Niccolò Paganini
This virtuoso composer was also rumored to have made a deal with the devil; the trill-heavy thirteenth piece of his 24 Caprices for Solo Violin is nicknamed the "Devil's Chuckle."
Franz Liszt
This virtuoso pianist and composer wrote the Piano Sonata in B minor and the Hungarian Rhapsodies.
trio
This word names the lyrical second section of a march, and the counterpart of the minuet in the third movement of classical symphonies. This word names a type of sonata that Corelli wrote for two violins over a basso continuo.
Wanderer
This word titles a Schubert lied whose title figure repeatedly asks the question "Where?" Schubert later quoted that lied in a C major piano piece with this name which was transcribed by Franz Liszt for piano and orchestra.
Schelomo
This work by Ernest Bloch was planned to be a vocal work based on Ecclesiastes before the composer decided to rewrite it for Alexandre Barjansky. It is part of Bloch's Jewish Cycle and is subtitled "Rhapsodie Hébraïque."
Spem in Alium
Thomas Tallis himself is perhaps best known for this circa 1570 work, a motet written for eight choirs of five voices each. Â Meaning "Hope in any other" in Latin, this composition was inspired by a similar work by Alessandro Striggio
Benjamin Britten
Three divertimenti for string quartet were written by this 20th-century composer, who set Latin texts alongside poems by Wilfred Owen in his major choral work.
fugue
Three of Haydn's Op. 20 Sun quartets end with this type of piece, which characterizes the second movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's requiem.
Aida
Three of the four soloists at the premiere of Verdi's Requiem also performed at the premiere of this Verdi opera about an Ethiopian princess.
Richard Strauss
Thus Spoke Zarathustra was written by this German composer, who also wrote tone poems about Don Juan and Macbeth. His operas include Der Rosenkavalier.
(David Warren) "Dave" Brubeck
Time Out, which also features the songs "Kathy's Waltz" and "Take Five", is an album featuring the quartet of this jazz pianist.
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Toscanini's stylistic opposite and artistic rival was said to be this principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1922 to 1945, known for his broad and highly flexible tempi.
Arnold Schoenberg
Transfigured Night and Erwartung were both composed by this Austrian composer who invented the twelve-tone system.
car horns
Twelve of these instruments in different pitches play in the overture of Ligeti's opera Le grande macabre. Four of them were brought from Paris for the New York premiere of Gershwin's An American in Paris.
Franz Liszt
Two downward runs of an arpeggiated C7 chord feature in the simplest Transcendental Etude by this pupil of Czerny.
Hector Berlioz
Édouard Lalo first studied under François Antoine Habeneck, who conducted the premieres of this composer's Requiem and his work Lélio. This composer is also known for his choral work The Childhood of Christ.
pianos
Violin sonatas most frequently feature a solo violin accompanied by this instrument, for which Für Elise was composed.
On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring
Violins play the theme "In Ola Valley" for this Delius composition, a tone poem whose first movement includes calls by the title birds.
bassoon
Vivaldi also wrote several concertos for this woodwind instrument, for which Mozart wrote one concerto in B-flat. In Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice, this instrument introduces the scherzo theme of the walking brooms.
"Gloria in excelsis Deo"
Vivaldi's RV 589 is a setting of this hymn for chorus and small orchestra, starting with a jaunty D major rendering of the title phrase before the "Et in terra pax" section in B minor. It ends with the "Cum sancto spiritu" fugue.
Gloria in excelcis Deo
Vivaldi's most popular choral composition is arguably a setting of this part of the Ordinary of the Latin Mass, which follows the Kyrie in the Catholic liturgy.
piano concertos
Vladimir Horowitz popularized the third of these compositions by Rachmaninoff. The second was produced after Rachmaninoff received hypnotherapy for his depression and opens with eight bell-like chords from the soloist.
jazz fusion
Weather Report was a leading light in this style of jazz, which incorporated the bass lines and danceable rhythms of rock music. Miles Davis experimented with this style in his albums In a Silent Way and Bitches' Brew.
Vienna
Webern was a key part of the "Second" school of music in this European city, which experimented with serialism and Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.
Chick Corea
When Powell died, this jazz pianist recorded the album Remembering Bud Powell. This jazz and fusion pianist is recorded the song "Spain" and founded the group Return to Forever.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Which composer of the Jupiter Symphony and The Magic Flute died at age 35, although there is little evidence to suggest he was poisoned by Antonio Salieri?
Antonin Dvorak
Who is this Czech composer who is indubitably most well known for his "American String Quartet" and New World Symphony?
Ralph Vaughan Williams
William Byrd was mentored by Thomas Tallis, who wrote a melody that served as the basis for a fantasia by this more recent composer. This man also wrote The Lark Ascending.
Franz Peter Schubert
Winterreise is by this composer of the Unfinished Symphony and the Trout Quintet.
Franz Schubert
Winterreise was completed by this Austrian composer near the end of his life. He also wrote the "Trout" Quintet and the string quartet "Death and the Maiden."
Franz Schubert
Winterreise was composed by this Austrian master of lieder, who defined the genre with such songs as "Death and the Maiden," "Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel," and "Erlkönig."
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin
With Alexander Glazunov, Rimsky-Korsakov completed this other composer's Prince Igor.
Symphonie Espangnole
Written for Pablo de Sarasate, this work is generally considered to be a violin concerto although its name suggests otherwise. It is also Lalo's best known work.
Giuseppe Verdi's requiem (prompt on "requiem")
Written in honor of Alessandro Manzoni, this sacred choral work uses the pounding of the timpani and bass drum to depict thunder in its "Dies Irae" movement.
trumpet
Wynton Marsalis plays this highest brass instrument, an unusually bent version of which was played by Dizzy Gillespie.
Walter Piston
Years after Fux and Rameau, this American student of Nadia Boulanger wrote textbooks on both Counterpoint and Harmony. He composed the Lincoln Center Festival Overture as well as the ballet The Incredible Flutist.
: "The Swan"
] This frequently excerpted penultimate movement of The Carnival of the Animals is scored for two pianos and solo cello.
Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata
ame this solo composition in G minor which is based on a dream its composer had.
urg Concerto
asks the winds to play sixteenths while violas quote the third
Sonata No. 21 in C major or "Waldstein"
ften named for the count to whom it was dedicated, this middle-period Beethoven sonata opens with a pulsating eighth-note rhythm in the bass.
Leonard Bernstein
The Kaddish Symphony is by this American composer, who also wrote the musicals Candide and West Side Story
Jean Sibelius
The Karelia Suite depicts part of this composer's homeland. He used scenes from the Kalevala in The Swan of Tuonela.
Jean Sibelius
The Karelia Suite is by this Finnish composer of Finlandia and seven symphonies.
sotto voce
The Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem calls for this technique, a dramatic lowering of one's singing voice for emphasis.
Gustav Mahler
The Resurrection Symphony was composed by this Romantic Austrian composer of the Symphony of a Thousand and the Titan symphony.
Gustav Mahler
The Resurrection Symphony was written by this Austrian composer of the "Titan" Symphony and the "Symphony of a Thousand."
Symphony No. 85
After a dotted introduction, this B-flat major Haydn symphony's monothematic exposition features a held oboe note over a descending scale and quotes Farewell. This fourth Paris symphony, Marie Antoinette's favorite, includes variations on "La gentille et jeune Lisette" ("la jon-TEE yay juhn lee-ZET").
Comfort ye many people
After its instrumental overture, Handel's Messiah opens with this accompagnato for tenor drawn from Isaiah.
"I know that my redeemer liveth"
After the Hallelujah Chorus, this soprano aria opens the third part of Messiah. Its title first line is taken from Job 19:25.
Le chant du rossignol
After this piece's failed 1917 premiere, Sergei Diaghilev turned it into a ballet. Stravinsky adapted this symphonic poem, set in China, from his similarly named first opera, based on a Hans Christian Andersen story.
quodlibet
Bach also composed one of these pieces named after a wedding, which basically is an amalgam of various popular tunes that an artist assembled. The last of the Goldberg Variations is also in this form.
violincello
Bach composed six suites for this solo instrument, each of which begins with a prelude and ends with a gigue. Those suites have been recorded by Mstislav Rostropovich, Pablo Casals, and Yo-Yo Ma.
Francois Couperin le Grand
Bach included Les Bergeries by this French composer of Les Barricades Mystérieuses in the second notebook.
five
Bach's Magnificat, his cantata Der Himmel lacht! Die Erde jubilieret, and his funeral motet Jesu, meine freude are all set for an extended chorus with this many voices.
Adagio for Strings
Barber is best known for this orchestral work in B-flat minor, which was adapted from the second movement of his Opus 11 String Quartet. Barber later arranged this piece as the setting for his Agnus Dei.
cantata
Bartok also wrote one of these works subtitled "The Nine Enchanted Stags." Prokofiev reworked his score for Alexander Nevsky into one of these, while another example of this type of musical work is Edward Elgar's The Black Knight.
Allegro barbaro, Sz. 49
Bartók exploited the percussive possibilities of the piano in this solo piece titled for its ferocious tempo indication. It uses elements of Hungarian folk music in its pentatonic melodies, and Romanian music in its chromatic harmonies.
six
Bartók wrote this many string quartets. Haydn's string quartets were usually published in sets of this many. Beethoven's Opus 18 contains this many quartets, and Mozart wrote this many "Haydn" quartets.
Mikrokosmos
Bartók's pedagogical works includes this set of 153 piano pieces, which increase in difficulty as the set goes on. It includes many works titled for their use of national folk styles, such as several pieces titled "Bulgarian Rhythm".
Alto Rhapsody
Based on Goethe's Harzreise im Winter, this Brahms work for a vocal soloist, male chorus, and orchestra describes a soul lost in a wasteland.
rondo
Beethoven used this musical form in the finales of his piano concertos. Haydn's 39th Piano Trio ends with a "gypsy" piece in this form, which is often structured ABACABA.
Leonard Bernstein
Beethoven's Seventh Symphony was the first and the last piece conducted by this man, the 16-time Grammy winner who directed the New York Philharmonic.
Jupiter Symphony
Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 was strongly influenced by this other C major symphony, whose coda is characterized by a large fugue in five voices.
Johannes Brahms
Beethoven's fate motif figures into three of the whopping five movements of this composer's third piano sonata in F minor.
"Emperor"
Beethoven's fifth piano concerto was given this nickname by Johann Baptist Cramer, because of its "regal" nature. Johann Strauss wrote a waltz of this name for Franz Joseph I, who held this title.
Symphony No. 2 by Gustav Mahler
Berio quoted this other composer's symphony in the third movement of his Sinfonia. This symphony contains the "cry of despair" in its climactic third movement, and its fifth movement was inspired by a Klopstock poem that asks the listener to "rise again."
trombone
Berio's Sequenza V [five] is scored for this large brass instrument; the piece involves rattling a plunger mute against the bell of this instrument and performing difficult glissandi using its long brass slides.
embouchure
Brass instruments are distinguished from woodwinds not by the materials they are made of, but by how the player produces a sound with them. By shaping the lip and face muscles into one of these, brass players can utilize the full range of their instrument.
Dmitri Shostakovich
Britten used the musical cryptogram of this composer in his Rejoice in the Lamb and The Rape of Lucretia. This composer used the motif D E-flat C B in all five movements of his String Quartet No. 8, dedicated "to the victims of fascism and the war."
Mstislav Rostropovich
Britten wrote the soprano part in the War Requiem for Galina Vishnevskaya, who was this musician's wife. Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto in E minor and Britten's Symphony in D Major were composed for him.
Paul Sacher ("ZOKH-uh")
Britten wrote the theme for a set of cello pieces by 12 composers that Rostropovich gathered for a tribute to this Swiss conductor, which was based on a hexachord. He commissioned Bartók's Divertimento and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.
Simple Symphony
Britten wrote this work when he was twenty, using themes from his childhood. Its alliteratively-named movements include "Playful Pizzicato" and "Frolicsome Finale."
Jazz at Oberlin
Brubeck first reached national prominence by touring various colleges as a way to introduce youth to jazz. One live album that sprang out from those efforts was this 1953 effort, which included a cover of Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust." It was recorded at an Ohio school.
piano
Brubeck played this instrument. Other jazz musicians who primarily played this instrument include Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington.
Speak No Evil
Brubeck wasn't the only musician fond of jazz waltzes. The waltzes "Dance Cadaverous" and "Wild Flower" appear on this album by Wayne Shorter, his sixth and most famous.
"Blue Rondo a la Turk"
Brubeck's most famous album is undoubtedly Time Out, made with his quartet. This track from Time Out, which isn't "Take Five," got its rhythm from street musicians in the title country. It is in an unusual 9/8 time signature.
Richard Wagner
Bruckner's Third Symphony is nicknamed for this German composer, to whom it was dedicated. The original version contains quotations from this composer's Tristan und Isolde and Die Walküre.
Ralph Vaughn Williams
Byrd 's teacher Thomas Tallis composed a theme that became subject to a notable fantasia by this later English composer. He also wrote a fantasia on "Greensleaves," the Sinfonia Antarctica, and the viola concerto Flos Campi.
motets
Byrd wrote dozens of these often-sacred vocal compositions that emerged in the late Middle Ages. Byrd's colleague Thomas Tallis wrote one of these called Spem in alium for forty distinct voices.
chaconne
Bülow was also kind of insane. He insisted that his Meiningen orchestra play from memory, and once had ten of his violinists play this piece in unison. This D minor piece concludes Bach's second partita for solo violin.
G
C major's dominant scale degree is this note. Like all dominant degrees, it can be abbreviated as V [five].
Classical period
CPE Bach is often regarded as the bridge between the Baroque period and this period of Western music, which was exemplified by Mozart and Haydn.
The Art of Fugue (or Die Kunst der Fuge)
CPE Bach's handwriting appears in Contrapunctus XIV of this collection by his father, Johann Sebastian. This unfinished work includes many of the title types of pieces, as well as four canons.
Sonatas and Interludes
Cage was inspired by Indian philosophers to compose works like this collection of twenty pieces for prepared piano. Sixteen of the pieces are in AABB form.
Sonatas and Interludes
Cage was inspired by Indian philosophy to write this sets of twenty pieces for prepared piano made up of thirteen pieces in binary form and three pieces in ternary form divided into groups of four by four more free-form pieces.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Capriccio Italien was written by this composer, who enlisted Wilhelm Fitzenhagen's help for the Variations on a Rococo Theme and first used "God Save the Tsar" in Marche Slave.
études
Carl Czerny and Charles-Louis Hanon both wrote sets of this kind of piece commonly used in piano pedagogy. This term denotes an exercise meant to build musical technique.
Franz Liszt
Carl Czerny, who also wrote a Gradus ad Parnassum, was the teacher of this other composer. This man wrote some Transcendental Etudes as well as the Mephisto Waltzes and Hungarian Rhapsodies.
bassoon
Carl Maria von Weber also wrote a concerto for this instrument, in which the soloist enters playing risoluto with a half note on F, then a dotted eighth-sixteenth note rhythm. A solo from this instrument opens The Rite of Spring.
Davidsbündler
Carnaval ends with the march of this group against the Philistines. This society was founded by Schumann to promote contemporary music and his Opus 6 is a series of eighteen dances named for this group
Robert Alexander Schumann
Carnaval was composed by this German composer of the Spring and Rhenish symphonies, who married Clara Wieck.
Elliott Carter
Carnegie Hall was where Daniel Barenboim performed this composer's Interventions for his hundredth birthday party. This American composer used a chiasmatic structure for the seven movements of his Double Concerto for harpsichord, piano, and two chamber orchestras.
Pastoral Symphony
Cellos and basses play tremolos at the start of the thunderstorm depicted in the fourth movement of this programmatic Beethoven symphony about the countryside.
Charles Ives
Central Park In The Dark was written by this American composer and insurance executive, who paired it with his The Unanswered Question.
"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat"
Charles Mingus composed this jazz standard in honor of Lester Young, who would often wear the titular piece of clothing. This piece was first released as a part of Mingus Ah Um.
double bass
Charles Mingus played this largest string instrument. Paul Chambers also played this instrument that joins the piano for the introduction to "So What," the first track of Kind of Blue.
counterpoint
Charles Seeger's "dissonant" type of this technique reversed its strict rules of "five species" taught by J. J. Fux. In this technique used in canons and fugues, voices are melodically and rhythmically independent, but harmonically dependent.
Edvard Hagerup Grieg
The Lyric Pieces were composed by this Norwegian, who included the famous melody "In The Hall of the Mountain King" within his incidental music to Peer Gynt.
President of the United States of America
Hindemith's requiem is dedicated to one of these people. One of these people was the dedicatee of another composer's Kaddish Symphony.
Edvard Hagerup Grieg
The Lyric Pieces were written by what composer who extracted two suites of music from his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt?
symphony
The Mannheim School standardized the form of this type of composition after Stamitz added a fourth, allegro movement to its form. Mendelssohn's 3rd and 4th ones are nicknamed "Scottish" and "Italian", respectively, while Dvorak's 9th is called "From the New World".
George Frideric Handel
The Music for the Royal Fireworks is by this German-English Baroque composer of the Water Music and Messiah.
gamelan
In Britten's operatic version of Death in Venice, Tadzio is often accompanied by music inspired by this kind of musical ensemble. Britten also drew upon this kind of ensemble in a ballet about Belle Rose and a magical prince.
Sharpless
In Madame Butterfly, this is the character whom Butterfly asks about robins' nesting behaviors in America. He is an American consul who accompanies Pinkerton to Butterfly's house in the third act.
tritone
In Micrologus, Guido of Arezzo rejected the use of this musical interval, which was often called "devil in music." This dissonant interval was often rejected due to its difficulty to vocalize.
clarinet
In Morton's band, Johnny Dodds and Omer Simeon played this instrument, whose other players included Goodman and Artie Shaw.
Scordatura
In Sinfonia Concertante, Mozart calls the viola to practice this technique in order to make it sound louder; the violins are asked to do this in the final movement of Haydn's Symphony No. 60, Il Distratto.
Mirror Canon
The Musical Offering's "Quaerendo invenietis" section is an example of this kind of arrangement of a musical canon, in which the following voice plays the inversion of the leading voice.
Frederic Francois Chopin
The Revolutionary Etude is part of the Opus 10 of this prolific Polish pianist of many nocturnes, mazurkas, waltzes, and polonaises.
oblique motion
In a traditional Fuxian two-voice counterpoint exercise, this type of motion occurs when the top voice moves up or down but the cantus firmus stays on the same note.
Sir Edward Elgar
In addition to his Cello Concerto in E minor, this composer depicted Dora Penny's stutter in "Dorabella" from his Enigma Variations and wrote Pomp and Circumstance.
mazurkas
In addition to writing waltzes and polonaises, Chopin also composed over 50 of these Polish dances in 3/4 time. They often feature a dotted eighth-sixteenth rhythm on the first beat, followed by a stressed second beat.
Alan Lomax
In an interview with this musicologist, Jelly Roll Morton claimed to have invented jazz. With his father John, he recorded many songs and interviews for the Archive of Folk Culture.
Gregorian chant
In early organum, the upper voice, or vox principalis, was simply one of these monophonic melodies named for a pope.
Sir Donald Tovey
In his 1903 essay "The Classical Concerto," this British musicologist identified movements from Mozart's concerti that best manifested the "concerto principle." This writer's Essays in Musical Analysis dissect the works of Bach and Beethoven.
"Ode to Joy"
In his Ninth Symphony, Beethoven set this Friedrich Schiller poem about a "Daughter of Elysium" to music.
modes of limited transposition
In his book The Technique of My Musical Language, Messiaen laid out this set of seven modes used in his music, made up of symmetrical groups, such that the first note of each group is the same as the last note of the preceding group.
French horn
In his criticism of Beethoven's fifth, Hoffmann describes his admiration for the E-flat major second theme of the first movement played by this instrument. Beethoven's ninth symphony contains a famous solo for this instrument.
cantata
In his sole work in this genre, Stravinsky controversially set the 15th century text, "Tomorrow shall be my dancing day", which perpetuates the blood libel against the Jews. At the end of his life, Anton Webern wrote two works in this genre, based on texts by Hildegard Jone.
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
The Pathetique symphony is often referred to as this composer's suicide note. Some of the motives in that work harken back to his Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, and he also created The Nutcracker.
minuet
In symphonies based on the Mannheim School's standard, this type of dance made up the third movement, though Beethoven replaced it with a scherzo. Usually in 3/4 time, one in G Major is found in the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.
Stephen (Collins) Foster
In the "Desert Water Hole" section of his Death Valley Suite, Grofé combined "Old Folks at Home" and "Oh! Susanna," two songs by this American songwriter of "Camptown Races."
Edward Elgar
The Pomp and Circumstance Marches are by this English composer, who depicted various friends in his Enigma Variations.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
The Pope Marcellus Mass is the most famous work of this composer, the subject of an opera by Hans Pfitzner and writer of many madrigals.
cimbalom
In the Hungarian Rhapsodies, Liszt frequently employs tremolo and other effects to imitate this Gypsy instrument: a box with metal strings stretched across, which are beaten with two hammers.
"The Old Castle"
In the Ravel orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition, this section includes a saxophone solo to represent a singing minstrel at the title location. This is the second non-promenade section of the suite.
cello
In the beginning of Schelomo, this instrument plays a lengthy cadenza representing King Solomon's reaction to the surrounding world. Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei was also written for this instrument and the orchestra.
augmented
In the harmonic minor scale, because a certain scale degree is raised from the natural minor, the III chord is this type of triad.
D
In the key of G major, the dominant is this note, whose major key Johann Pachelbel used to write a canon.
III, VI, and VII
In the natural minor scale, name the three scale degrees that are a half step lower than in the parallel major scale.
parody mass
The Pope Marcellus Mass is this type of mass, which borrows multiple voices from a pre-existing, usually secular, musical source. It contrasts with cantus firmus or paraphrase masses, in which only one voice is borrowed.
scherzo
In the symphony, Nielsen replaced this kind of movement with a Poco allegretto. This kind of movement, often the third in a given composition, is typically fast-moving and playful.
clarinets
In the third movement of Pines of Rome, "Pines of the Janiculum," this instrument plays the main melody after a piano solo. Strangely, the tune is almost identical to this instrument's solo at the opening of Scriabin's first symphony.
Étude Op. 25, No. 11
In this Chopin etude, a four-measure lento introduction of the melody opens into a much more difficult allegro con brio section evoking the "howling" phenomenon it's often nicknamed for.
Symphony No. 41 in C Major, or "Jupiter" Symphony
In this Mozart symphony, the closing theme of the first movement uses a motive from the arietta Un bacio di mano and closes with a sonata movement with fugato passages. This work, K551, was its composer's last symphony.
Karlheinz Stockhausen
In this composer's Klavierstucke XI, the player begins with the first of the 19 fragments on the page that their eyes land on, and from there they may proceed to any other. This German composer also wrote the "Helicopter" String Quartet.
Golliwogg's Cakewalk
In this final movement of Debussy's Children's Corner, a ragtime melody is occasionally interrupted by a leitmotif from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. It is named after a type of racist doll.
Sirens
In this final movement of Debussy's Nocturnes, a wordless chorus depicts the title mythological figures.
Frédéric François Chopin
The Revolutionary Étude and Minute Waltz were both composed by this Polish-born French composer.
Russian Orthodox Church
The Protecting Veil is one of several of Tavener's pieces reflecting this faith, to which he converted in 1977. Rachmaninov's All-Night Vigil and an "Easter Festival Overture" by Rimsky- Korsakov draw on the liturgy of this Christian denomination.
Paul Dukas
The Quartet for the End of Time is a piece by Olivier Messiaen, a student of this composer of the tone poem The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
Thomas Tallis
One famous motet is Spem in Alium, a work by this English composer who made two settings of the Lamentations.
Easter
One of Bach's most listened-to Quartalstücke was a cantata composed for this festival. His father composed an oratorio for this festival in which Mary Magdalene sings, "He is risen from the dead!"
Capricorn Concerto, Op. 21
One of Barber's rare forays into a more neoclassical style was this concerto grosso for flute, oboe, trumpet, and string orchestra.
Pablo de Sarasate
One of Bruch's own fantasies, the four-movement Scottish Fantasy, was dedicated to this Spanish violin virtuoso. This man's Zigeunerweisen, or Gypsy Airs, finishes Allegro molto vivace and extensively employs spiccato.
Heinrich Schenker
One of Bruckner's students at the Vienna Conservatory was this theorist who names a method of analysis that involves reducing pieces along their fundamental levels of structure to find the "Ursatz".
trio sonata
One of Couperin's contributions to classical music was his unification of the French and Italian styles of music during the Baroque era through his Apotheosis of Corelli. That work takes this form, which includes two solo instruments and a basso continuoso.
études
One of Debussy's last works was a set of twelve pieces in this genre. Chopin's works in this genre have nicknames like "Harp," "Winter Wind," "Tristesse," and "Revolutionary."
A minor
One of Grieg's most popular pieces is a piano concerto in this key that begins with a crescendoing timpani roll that leads to the full orchestra playing a "one" chord before a section for the pianist.
fugue
One of Scarlatti's sonatas is a G minor piece written in this form and nicknamed Cat. The coda of the fourth movement of the Jupiter Symphony is in a two-subject version of this musical form.
drums
The Quintet included Max Roach who played this instrument. This instrument was also played by Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich.
Joseph Hadyn
One of this composer's oratorios sets James Thomson's poem "The Seasons" to music. This composer's other oratorios include The Creation.
Johann Sebastian Bach
The Art of Fugue was composed by this Baroque master, who also included preludes and fugues in every major and minor key in The Well-Tempered Clavier.
adagio
The B-major second movement of Beethoven's "Emperor" concerto is given this Italian tempo marking, meaning "slowly," modified with the extra instruction "un poco mosso." Samuel Barber wrote a piece of this tempo for Strings
Mephisto Waltzes
The Bagatelle sans tonalité (bah-gah-TELL sahn toh-nah-lee-TAY) is sometimes grouped with this set of Liszt pieces, the first of which begins with a sequence of stacked fifths that depicts the title character tuning his fiddle.
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi
The Contest Between Harmony and Invention included The Four Seasons, which were violin concerti by this Italian composer.
Gabriel Urbain Fauré
The Dies Irae is omitted from this composer's requiem, which features a soprano aria in its fourth movement Pie Jesu. He also composed the Dolly Suite, the Masques et Bergamasques, and a famous Pavane.
Kind of Blue
The Dorian mode was also used in "So What," the first track on this album, which was influential for using modality instead of the chord-based hard bop style. It also includes "Freddie Freeloader" and "Flamenco Sketches."
Joseph Haydn
The Emperor string quartet is one of the most esteemed of the sixty-seven composed by this Austrian father of the symphony and string quartet.
Richter
The Enigma Variations were premiered by an Austrian conductor of this last name, who also premiered Brahms's Second and Third Symphonies. A Soviet pianist of this last name gave the premieres of Prokofiev's Seventh and Ninth Piano Sonatas.
The Art of Fugue
The Fantasia Contrappuntistica frequently references this work, which contains 14 complex pieces all based on the same subject, in D-minor.
saxophone
The First Great Quintet became a sextet when it was joined by Cannonball Adderley, who played this instrument. Another member of the quintet who played this instrument recorded the albums Blue Train and My Favorite Things.
The Contest between Harmony and Invention
The Four Seasons is part of this larger collection of twelve violin concertos, which also includes "La tempesta di mare," or "The Sea Storm."
Romeo and Juliet, TH 42, CW 39
The Glinka Prize was awarded to this Tchaikovsky overture-fantasy with a famous "love theme," based on a work of literature.
Johann Sebastian Bach
The Goldberg Variations were written by this German Baroque composer of the St. Matthew Passion, as well as the so-called English Suites and French Suites for keyboards.
Erik Satie
The Gymnopedies and Gnossiens were written by this French composer. As he got older his titles got weirder, as exemplified by Dried Up Embryos and Three Little Stuffed Pieces.
George Frideric Handel
The Harmonious Blacksmith is among the works of this German composer, whose other works include Music for the Royal Fireworks and another played on the Thames at the request of George I, Water Music.
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
The Hebrides Overture and the Scottish Symphony were composed by this man, whose chamber pieces include a String Octet in E-flat major.
Franz (Ritter von) Liszt
The Hungarian Rhapsodies are by this 19th-century Hungarian pianist and composer.
Franz Liszt
The Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 is the most famous piece by this Romantic piano virtuoso from Hungary, who also composed the Transcendental Etudes.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
The Isle of the Dead is a work of this Russian composer of four notoriously difficult piano concertos and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
Johann Sebastian Bach
The Italian Concerto was written by this Baroque composer whose other keyboard works include the English Suites and The Well-Tempered Clavier.
Franz Peter Schubert
The Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida is renowned for her performances of Mozart, as well as her recordings of this composer of the Wanderer Fantasy and "Ellen's Third Song," which is popularly known as his Ave Maria.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The Jupiter Symphony was written by this Austrian composer of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the "Haffner" and "Prague" Symphonies.
"Dargason"
The finale of Holst's St. Paul's Suite is named after this folk song, since it is adapted from the fantasia on this song from Holst's Second Suite in F for Military Band.
"Solveig's Song"
The first Peer Gynt Suite features a violin in place of the female soloist of this other piece, who says that though winter, spring, and summer go by, she will wait for her lover. It is not to be confused for a "cradle song" later sung by the same character.
"Morning Mood"
The first Peer Gynt suite opens with this movement, which depicts a scene from the fourth act of the play that shows the sun rising in Morocco.
Couperin
The first composer to actually write out unmeasured preludes was a student of Chambonnières with this last name. Another composer with this last name wrote "The Art of Playing the Harpsichord."
Sergei (Mikhailovich) Lyapunov
The first melody in Islamey is based on a traditional Lezginka dance. Another Lezginka is the eleventh of the Liszt-inspired Transcendental Etudes by this Russian composer, who was nicknamed the "Black Balakirev."
Dresden Amen
The first movement of Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony twice uses this six-note motif, played by the strings with an interruption by the brass.
Kyrie eleison
The first movement of an ordinary mass is traditionally a setting of this prayer in Greek, which asks for the Lord's mercy. It is usually followed by a Gloria .
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov
The first movement of the quartet was composed by this member of The Five, who also composed the Russian Easter Festival Overture and "The Flight of the Bumblebee."
Anatoly Konstantinovich Liadov
The second movement was written by this composer, whose tone poems include The Enchanted Lake, Kikimora and Baba Yaga. Before hiring Stravinsky, Diaghilev asked this composer to score The Firebird.
Aeolian mode
The relative minor of C major is A minor. A minor's natural scale is equivalent to this mode of A.
rondo
The replacement finale for the first of Mozart's violin concerti is a separately played concert piece of this lively character type. Another such piece by Mozart is the one "alla turca" from his eleventh piano sonata.
Concierto de Aranjuez
The resort palace of Philip II inspired this work by another composer for guitar and orchestra. The english horn introduces the theme of the famous second movement Adagio after the Allegro con spirito first movement.
woodblock
The rhythmic ostinato in Short Ride in a Fast Machine is provided by this percussion instrument.
soprano
The role of Lucia is sung by the coloratura type of this voice, the highest vocal range in opera.
J.S. Bach's six solo cello suites
The sarabande from the fifth of these compositions contains no chords. These compositions all have six movements, of which the fourth is a sarabande, and Pablo Casals is responsible for their popularity.
French horns
The scherzo of Mahler's Fifth begins with this instrument playing a solo before transitioning into a landler and a waltz. Mahler's Third Symphony begins with a passage for eight of these instruments.
Miles Dewey Davis III
The score for Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour l'échafaud was allegedly improvised by this jazz musician, who also composed "Solar." This trumpeter recorded the albums Kind of Blue and Birth of the Cool.
Ludwig van Beethoven
The trumpet solo that begins Mahler's Fifth plays a "short-short-short-long" figure that is similar to the fifth symphony by this other composer, whose opening has been described as "fate knocking at the door."
E and C-sharp
The tunes of the first movements of several of Mozart's works in A major, including the clarinet concerto, clarinet quintet, and twenty-third piano concerto, begin with these two notes. Please say them in the order in which they come in the piece.
piano
Thelonious Monk played this instrument, as did the big-band leader who composed "It Don't Mean a Thing," Duke Ellington.
ledger lines
These extensions of the musical staff are used to notate pitches that are higher or lower than those on the staff.
Minute Waltz (or Waltz in D-flat major, Op. 64, No. 1)
This 138-measure-long D-flat major piece by the same composer as the Revolutionary Étude is sometimes named after a "little dog" that supposedly inspired its composer.
Ode for St. Cecilia's Day
This 1739 cantana contains the arias "The soft complaining flute" and "Orpheus could lead the savage race." It is based on a poem of the same name by John Dryden.
Goldberg Variations
This 1741 composition starts with an aria in sarabande form, upon which the next thirty sections are based. Apocryphally it was composed as a sleep aid for Count Keyserlingk.
Domenico Scarlatti
This 18th-century Italian composer wrote 555 keyboard sonatas, which do not fit the aforementioned concept of sonata form. His father Alessandro was the leading composer of the Neapolitan school of opera.
The Rite of Spring
This 1913 Stravinsky ballet had perhaps the most notorious premiere in music history. Its two parts, "The Adoration of the Earth" and "The Sacrifice," depict a pagan ritual.
Boshulav Martinu
This 20th century Czech neoclassical composer of the cantatas The Opening of the Wells and The Epic of Gilgamesh and the orchestral tribute Memorial to Lidice wrote a concerto grosso for chamber orchestra.
Samuel (Osmond) Barber II
This 20th-century American composer adapted the second movement of his String Quartet, Opus 11 for string orchestra, and called it Adagio for Strings.
Carl Orff
This 20th-century German composer invented an approach called "Schulwerk", which teaches music as a form of group play for children, involving dancing, improvising, and playing percussion pieces such as "Gassenhauer".
John Cage
This American composer also incorporated elements of chance into his pieces such as the I-Ching-inspired HPSCHD. He also wrote a piece consisting of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence.
Samuel Barber
This American composer of Knoxville: Summer of 1915 also composed the opera Vanessa, which contains the aria "Must the Winter Come So Soon?".
George Gershwin
This American composer sought out Boulanger for lessons but never studied with her. His compositions include the Cuban Overture and Rhapsody in Blue.
Leonard Bernstein
This American composer wrote the Jeremiah Symphony and worked with Stephen Sondheim on West Side Story.
John Adams
This American minimalist composer turned towards Renaissance scales in an early piano piece called "Phrygian Gates," though now he is more famous for his operas The Death of Klinghoffer and Nixon in China.
Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn
This American pianist won the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, which was hailed as a cultural victory for the US in the Cold War. He passed away in early 2013.
Milton Babbitt
This American serial composer combined the synthesizer with both live and recorded soprano in his Philomel. Also noted for his contributions to theory, he examined the state of the avant-garde composer in an article for High Fidelity called "Who Cares if You Listen?"
Franz Peter Schubert
This Austrian composer employed a Mannheim Rocket in the opening movement of his Trout Quintet. He famously left his eighth symphony unfinished.
Johann Strauss II
This Austrian composer known as "The Waltz King" wrote The Blue Danube and the comic operetta Die Fledermaus.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
This Austrian composer wrote forty-one symphonies, including ones nicknamed "Haffner" and "Paris." Another Mannheim Rocket appears in his chamber piece Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
Franz
This Austrian composer wrote the song cycles Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin. Despite dying at 31, he wrote over 900 pieces, including the "Unfinished" symphony and the "Trout" Quintet.
Arcangelo Corelli
This Baroque Italian composer wrote four sets of twelve trio sonatas, but is most famous for his Op. 6 set of twelve concerti grossi.
Johann Sebastian Bach
This Baroque master and composer of the St. Matthew Passion satirized the Leipzig addiction to coffee in that cantata.
An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98
This Beethoven work is often called the first song cycle. Its sixth song, "Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder," includes a reprise of the first song, "Auf dem Hügel sitz ich spähend."
César Franck
This Belgian organist and composer used the organ in his Panis Angelicus. He may be better known for his Violin Sonata in A major written for Ysaÿe, or for his Symphony in D minor, which uses cyclic form.
Franz Joseph Haydn
This composer used elements of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater to compose his own setting of that hymn. He also wrote twelve "London Symphonies."
Johannes Brahms
This composer was in love with Clara and frequently found himself third-wheeled at the Schumann household. His famous pieces include A German Requiem and a lullaby.
Ludwig van Beethoven
This composer was inpsired to write the "Les adieux" sonata by Rudlph, to whom he also dedicated his "Archduke" trio and the "Emperor" concerto.
Ralph ("rafe") Vaughan Williams
This composer worked extensively with English folk music and carols, and even wrote a Fantasia on Greensleeves. He also edited the 1906 Hymnal and wrote Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
This composer wrote Variations on a Theme of Corelli off of a Corelli violin sonata that used La Folia as its theme. He also composed Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
Georg Philipp Telemann
This composer wrote a seven-movement Suite in A minor for Flute and Strings. His Tafelmusik comprises three suites of six pieces each, scored for increasingly smaller ensembles.
organum
This form of medieval polyphony arose late in the first millennium as simple two-part note-against-note singing in perfect fifths.
Gregorian chant
This form of plainchant named for a pope was the standard form of monophonic song in the Catholic church.
Paul Hindemith
This composer, who attempted to write a sonata for every instrument of the orchestra, wrote his Symphony in B Flat for wind band.
Henri Dutilleux
This contemporary French composer wrote a cello concerto for Mstislav Rostropovich titled Tout un monde lontain or A Whole Distant World. His orchestral works include Timbres, espace, mouvement or Time, Space, Movement.
Antonio Stradivari
This contemporary of Corelli and native of Cremona created a number of namesake violins, still played by such virtuosi as Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, and Maxim Vengerov.
William Byrd
This contemporary of Thomas Tallis collaborated with him on a series of motets called Cantiones Sacrae. His keyboard output includes My Ladye Nevells Booke.
the Modern Jazz Quartet
This cool jazz band often integrated classical music, especially Bach, into performances. Its members were bassist Percy Heath, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, pianist John Lewis, and drummer Connie Kay.
swing
This dance style, nicknamed "The Jitterbug," developed concurrently with its namesake jazz style. Lindy Hop emerged out of this dance style.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
This degenerate composer came to the United States just before the Anschluss and revolutionized film scores. His violin concerto was the first classical work he wrote after vowing to only compose film music until Hitler was defeated
William Byrd
This earlier organist of the Renaissance era studied under Thomas Tallis at the Chapel Royal in London. He wrote the keyboard pieces in the collection My Ladye Nevells Booke.
organum
This early form of polyphony typically consisted of a Gregorian chant paralleled by a second line a perfect fourth or fifth below. This form was pioneered by members of the Notre Dame school like Léonin and Pérotin.
Zoltán Kodály
This ethnomusicologist did extensive folksong collection in his native Hungary. He composed Háry János and Psalmus Hungaricus, and developed a music education system that teaches solfege with hand signs.
Béla Bartok
This father of ethnomusicology broke Hungarian folk songs into "old" and "new" styles, a classification still used for Slovak and Romanian folk music. Kubrick used his Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta in The Shining.
Darius Milhaud
This fellow member of Les Six with Tailleferre also penned a harp concerto, as well as the ballet The Creation of the World.
Four Last Songs
This final work of Richard Strauss reflects on death and prominently features the French horn. It uses three texts by Hermann Hesse, while "Im Abendrot" quotes the composer's tone poem Death and Transfiguration.
"Lonely Woman"
This first track on The Shape of Jazz to Come was inspired by a photograph that Coleman saw in a department store. On this song, the alto sax and cornet open by simultaneously playing the notes A-D-G-D.
Sinfonietta
This five-movement work by Janacek was dedicated to the Czechoslovak Armed Forces, and the military influence is evident in the first movement, which is a huge brass fanfare.
Luigi Boccherini
This man composed over 100 string quintets. His 30th string quintet is subtitled "Night music of the streets of Madrid," and his 11th string quintet included a noted minuet.
J.S. Bach
This man composed the Christmas Oratorio. Charles Rosen labeled the six-voice ricercar (ree-cher-CAR) from this man's The Musical Offering as the most important composition in music history.
Edgard Varese
This man wrote his Poeme electronique for a pavilion at the 1958 World's Fair designed by Le Corbusier. He also composed Density 21.5 to mark the invention of the platinum flute.
Charles-Valentin Alkan
This man's Opus 31 consists of 24 preludes in all the major and minor keys, plus an extra one in C major. He also composed Grand Sonata: The Four Ages and Le chemin de fer.
Louis Spohr (or Ludwig Spohr)
This nineteenth-century German composer of the opera Jessonda wrote a popular single-movement Violin Concerto No. 8 in A minor.
Miles Davis
This man's quintet is divided into two periods, known as the First Great Quintet and Second Great Quintet. This trumpeter released such legendary albums as Bitches Brew and Kind of Blue.
Ottorino Respighi
This man'sthree Ancient Airs and Dances suites are based on Renaissance lute music. He is probably best known for his Roman Trilogy, in which he depicted that city's Fountains, Pines, and Festivals.
Carl Philip Emanuel Bach
This man, known for solo keyboard pieces like the Solfeggieto and his oratorio The Israelites in the Desert, composed a setting of the Magnificat just like his father did.
The Stars And Stripes Forever
This march for wind band, written by John Philip Sousa in tribute to the American flag, may be bestknown for the piccolo solo in its trio section.
Francois Poulenc
This member of Les Six composed an opera about the martyrdom of Sister Marie of the Incarnation, Dialogues of the Carmelites, as well as Les Bitches.
Steve Reich
This minimalist composer paired a string quartet with a tape recording of interviews with Holocaust survivors in his Different Trains, and wrote Music for 18 Musicians.
Benjamin Britten
This modern English composer used reverse variation form in Nocturnal after John Dowland for guitarist Julian Bream, based on the melancholy lute song "Come, heavy sleep." He adapted Peter Grimes into Four Sea Interludes.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
This more famous Roman School composer composed the Pope Marcellus Mass which did not, in fact, rescue polyphony in the eyes of the clergy at the Council of Trent. The legend lives on, though.
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff
This morose late Romantic Russian composer produced The Isle of the Dead, as well as The Bells and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
Scott Joplin
This most-famous ragtime composer wrote the pieces "The Entertainer" and "Maple Leaf Rag".
Wayne Shorter
This musician was tenor saxophonist and primary composer for Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and a co-founder of Weather Report with Joe Zawinul.
Lester (Willis) Young
This musician, nicknamed "Prez", was famed for his time with the Count Basie Band and for his collaborations with Billie Holliday. His namesake tune is titled "[his name] Leaps In".
Arthur "Art" Tatum, Jr.
This nearly-blind yet extremely fast-playing jazz pianist was revered by other pianists like Bud Powell and Count Basie. He is probably most famous for his recordings of "Tiger Rag" and one of Dvorak's Humoresques.
La bonne chanson
This nine-mélodie song cycle by Fauré was written for Emma Bardac after he fell in love with her. Like Fauré's Cinq mélodies "de Venise", it's based on Paul Verlaine's poetry and features recurring musical themes between songs.
Images pour orchestre
This orchestral suite by Debussy includes an extended middle movement, titled "Iberia". It is believed the Andre Caplet may have orchestrated portions of its first movement, titled "Gigues".
Steve Reich
This other American minimalist tends to make use of recorded speech in his compositions, such as the preaching of a Pentecostal minister in his It's Gonna Rain and interviews about World War II in Different Trains.
the Diabelli Variations
This other Beethoven composition for solo piano is a technically rigorous set of 33 variations based on a C major waltz by a minor Austrian contemporary.
Moonlight Sonata
This other Beethoven piano sonata is subtitled "Quasi una fantasia" and gained its title when Ludwig Rellstab compared its music to the reflections of Lake Lucerne.
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett
This other British composer created the opera King Priam for the Coventry festival. He also wrote an oratorio inspired by Kristallnacht.
Concord Sonata
This other Charles Ives piece quotes Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata, and features an optional part for flute, representing Henry Thoreau, in its final movement.
The Dream of Gerontius
This other Elgar work features a full chorus singing a section beginning with Praise to the Holiest of the Height, after which an encounter with the Angel of Agony leads the Soul's Angel to sing an "Alleluia." It is based on a poem by Cardinal Newman.
Joseph-Maurice Ravel
This other French composer wrote Le Tombeau de Couperin and featured "Dorcon's grotesque dance" from the opera Daphnis et Chloé. He also wrote a continuous crescendo in Boléro.
Jean-Philippe Rameau
This other French composer wrote the opera-ballet Les Indes Galantes (luh ZEEND gah-LAHNT), a 1722 Treatise on Harmony, and three books of Pièces de clavecin ("piece" duh CLAH-vuh-SENG), the last of which includes an A minor gavotte with six variations.
Charles-Marie Widor
This other Frenchman wrote ten organ symphonies for actual solo organ. His most famous piece is the toccata from the fifth of those, often played as recessional music.