Quiz.

Started by Irons, January 19, 2019, 11:54:09 AM

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Florestan

Quote from: San Antone on March 20, 2019, 04:46:10 AM
It is the trio in E-flat, D. 929 - published posthumously a month after Schubert died.  Schumann heard it first most likely at the Wieck house and became almost obsessed with it.  He and three friends from university in Heidelberg rehearsed it and performed it privately possibly a half dozen times.

What's your source for their playing Onslow as well? It strikes me as rather odd.

Quote
You and Florestan appear to have solved it together - y'all decide between you who is up.

I'll let Biffo have his turn.

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Florestan

Quote from: San Antone on March 20, 2019, 05:17:25 AM
This book, "Crossing Paths: Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms" by John Daverio where this paragraph appears:

"In the weeks and months after these initial encounters, references to Schubert's trio appear frequently in Schumann's diaries. Moreover, the period encompassed by these references—late November 1828 through mid-March 1829—coincides almost exactly with Schumann's participation in a group he had organized for the express purpose of studying the literature for piano trio and piano quartet. Comprised of three amateur string players (Johann Friedrich Täglichsbeck, violin; Christoph Soergel, viola; Christian Glock, cello), with Schumann himself at the keyboard, the ensemble focused on the chamber music for piano and strings of Mozart, Beethoven, Ferdinand Ries, J. L. Dussek, Prince Louis Ferdinand, and Georges Onslow. But the mainstay of the group's repertory was Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat, which figured in its sessions of 7 December 1828 and 19 January, 31 January, and 13 March 1829."

Thanks. The irony is that I have this book but didn't manage to read it. I also have Daverio's "Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age" and guess what? Exactly, haven't read it either.  :D
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Biffo

Quote from: Florestan on March 20, 2019, 04:51:23 AM
What's your source for their playing Onslow as well? It strikes me as rather odd.

I'll let Biffo have his turn.

Thanks!

Incidentally, for those still wondering, Anna Mahler sculpted a bust of William Steinberg.

Now I will have to put my thinking cap on.

Biffo

This fiery-tempered composer studied in Leipzig (where else!) but when he returned to his native land he clashed with the musical establishment and so founded his own music college. He mainly enjoyed success with his stage music. This includes incidental music to a stage play based on a well-known (in his native land) legend. This legend also inspired a cycle of poems that became a massive work by a well known German composer and is probably the best known version of this legend.

Biffo

Quote from: San Antone on March 20, 2019, 06:00:38 AM
I am guessing the poetry is Gurre-Lieder by Jens Peter Jacobsen. Delius wrote a song cycle based on his poems called Fennimore and Gerda.

Am I close?

Spot on with the literary source, not Delius however.

Biffo

Quote from: San Antone on March 20, 2019, 06:36:24 AM
Ole Olsen

You panicked me there in case I had missed something - Olsen studied in Leipzig but otherwise doesn't fit the profile of our fiery-tempered composer. Also, wrong nationality.

Biffo

Quote from: Biffo on March 20, 2019, 05:56:15 AM
This fiery-tempered composer studied in Leipzig (where else!) but when he returned to his native land he clashed with the musical establishment and so founded his own music college. He mainly enjoyed success with his stage music. This includes incidental music to a stage play based on a well-known (in his native land) legend. This legend also inspired a cycle of poems that became a massive work by a well known German composer and is probably the best known version of this legend.

This hasn't had much of a response for a couple of days, either it is too obscure or contributors are quizzed out so here is a hint.

Another much better known composer possibly (not certain) played the violin in the theatre orchestra for the incidental music mentioned above. An exotic fairy tale links both composers.

Florestan

Quote from: Biffo on March 22, 2019, 01:40:52 AM
This hasn't had much of a response for a couple of days, either it is too obscure or contributors are quizzed out so here is a hint.

Another much better known composer possibly (not certain) played the violin in the theatre orchestra for the incidental music mentioned above. An exotic fairy tale links both composers.

Are they listed here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Danish_classical_composers

:laugh:
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Biffo


Biffo

Quote from: San Antone on March 22, 2019, 04:47:11 AM
Svendsen and Nielsen?

Nielsen is one of them but not the main subject of the question.

Biffo

Quote from: San Antone on March 22, 2019, 05:20:56 AM
I can only find three composers who studied in Leipzig and are older than Nielsen:

Joseph Marie François Volkmar Busch
Christian Frederik Emil Horneman
Johann Adolf Scheibe

Of those Horneman is my best guess since he founded a music conservatory.  Also, Horneman's best known work, along with the four-movement suite drawn from incidental music for the Holger Drachmann drama Gurre (also the basis for Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder).

None of the composers I looked up from the Danish list were described as having a fiery temper.  And I've heard of none of these guys.

Horneman is the correct answer.

The only music I have by him is the incidental music to Gurre coupled with two overtures, one of them to his opera Aladdin, apparently his masterpiece. The booklet note describes him as 'a fiery soul and his temper got in the way of both his productivity and acceptance by the musical establishment'.

Nielsen wrote incidental music to a different version of Aladdin.

I hadn't heard of him either until the disc came my way in a Chandos Mystery Box, several years ago.

Florestan

Quote from: San Antone on March 22, 2019, 05:53:37 AM
I think most of us have heard of the subject of my challenge question. In fact, it might be quite easy:

This composer was prolific and wrote symphonies, concertos, operas, and numerous other works in many genres. His teacher was famous, and our composer published a book of reminiscences about him. He had a successful career in several major cities but at the time of his death he was a forgotten figure.  Today, however, much of his repertory has been recorded.

Beeethoven's pupil Ferdinand Ries?
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Ken B

Quote from: San Antone on March 22, 2019, 05:53:37 AM
I think most of us have heard of the subject of my challenge question. In fact, it might be quite easy:

This composer was prolific and wrote symphonies, concertos, operas, and numerous other works in many genres. His teacher was famous, and our composer published a book of reminiscences about him. He had a successful career in several major cities but at the time of his death he was a forgotten figure.  Today, however, much of his repertory has been recorded.
Ries?

Biffo

Quote from: San Antone on March 22, 2019, 05:53:37 AM
I think most of us have heard of the subject of my challenge question. In fact, it might be quite easy:

This composer was prolific and wrote symphonies, concertos, operas, and numerous other works in many genres. His teacher was famous, and our composer published a book of reminiscences about him. He had a successful career in several major cities but at the time of his death he was a forgotten figure.  Today, however, much of his repertory has been recorded.

Ferdinand Ries, pupil of Beethoven fits the bill - more so than Anton Schindler who also wrote a biography of the great man but left very little music

Biffo

Quote from: San Antone on March 22, 2019, 06:34:01 AM
You're all right!  See, I said it would be easy.  Decide amongst yourselves whose turn it is.

8)

I am part way through reading Jan Swafford's biography of Beethoven so he has been on my mind recently.

I am happy to let anyone else have a go while I exhume another obscure Scandinavian composer (only joking about the last bit).

Ken B


Florestan

#1016
This composer studied in his home country with three of her most famous composers and teachers. He wrote a ballet in which the most famous three dancers of the same country performed. He then went on to study abroad, in a city where he met a famous poet and a famous painter and wrote music for the latter's attempt at experimental theatre.

Back in his country he met another composer whose fame rests on another field though. Together they composed music inspired by, and in the service of, that other field. This music has been recorded in its entirety.

Both these composers were born in the same country and both had different ethnic backgrounds than the majority of their fellow countrymen.

Name them.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Ken B


Florestan

Bump!

Quote from: Florestan on March 22, 2019, 07:06:22 AM
This composer studied in his home country with three of her most famous composers and teachers. He wrote a ballet in which the most famous three dancers of the same country performed. He then went on to study abroad, in a city where he met a famous poet and a famous painter and wrote music for the latter's attempt at experimental theatre.

Back in his country he met another composer whose fame rests on another field though. Together they composed music inspired by, and in the service of, that other field. This music has been recorded in its entirety.

Both these composers were born in the same country and both had different ethnic backgrounds than the majority of their fellow countrymen.

Name them.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Christo

Quote from: San Antone on March 25, 2019, 01:35:56 AM
So sue me, but I am going to put forward a challenge out of order - probably easy

This composer was not spectacularly gifted nor a prodigy but he possessed a work ethic that made up for any lack of innate talent. He excelled in symphonic as well as chamber music.  It might be easy to think that two younger contemporaries overshadowed him, but he is a major figure and his entire oeuvre is available in recordings.

Gabriel Fauré?
... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948