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Music
Notes, Strings & Symphonies
Instruments, composers and the words written on every score.
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How many strings does a standard violin have?
Composers and Their Works
Every question here names a famous work and asks who wrote it. The wrong answers are all composers who could plausibly have done so, which is the point.
About this topic
Classical music is often taught as a list of names, which makes it feel like homework. It becomes far easier once you attach each composer to a single work you can actually hear in your head, and to the circumstances that produced it. Bach wrote the Brandenburg Concertos as a job application. Handel wrote Messiah in a few weeks. Ravel called Boléro a piece with no music in it. The ten works here span roughly two hundred years, from the Italian Baroque to the early twentieth century. They are among the most performed pieces ever written, so the answers are worth knowing, and each explanation adds the detail that tends to be left out.
Questions & answers
Composers and Their Works: all 10 questions and answers
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
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1Who wrote the set of four violin concertos known as The Four Seasons?
- A Tomaso Albinoni
- B Antonio Vivaldi Correct
- C Arcangelo Corelli
- D Giuseppe Tartini
Answer: B. Antonio Vivaldi
Why: Vivaldi published the four concertos in 1725 as part of a larger collection. Each one was printed alongside a sonnet describing the scene, so the barking dog and the chattering teeth in the music have written explanations.
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2Who composed the six Brandenburg Concertos?
- A Johann Sebastian Bach Correct
- B George Frideric Handel
- C Georg Philipp Telemann
- D Arcangelo Corelli
Answer: A. Johann Sebastian Bach
Why: Bach assembled the set in 1721 and sent it to the Margrave of Brandenburg, essentially as an application for work. There is no evidence the Margrave ever had them performed, and the manuscript sat unnoticed for well over a century.
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3The oratorio Messiah, which includes the Hallelujah chorus, was written by whom?
- A Johann Sebastian Bach
- B Joseph Haydn
- C Henry Purcell
- D George Frideric Handel Correct
Answer: D. George Frideric Handel
Why: Handel wrote the whole work in roughly three weeks in 1741. It was first performed in Dublin the following year, at a concert given for charity rather than in London.
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4Which composer, often called the father of the symphony, wrote over a hundred of them?
- A Luigi Boccherini
- B Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
- C Joseph Haydn Correct
- D Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Answer: C. Joseph Haydn
Why: Haydn left 104 numbered symphonies, written largely during nearly thirty years working for the Esterházy family. He did as much to settle the form of the string quartet, which is why that title gets attached to him too.
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5Who wrote the ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker?
- A Sergei Prokofiev
- B Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Correct
- C Igor Stravinsky
- D Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Answer: B. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Why: All three are Tchaikovsky, though only the last two were successes in his lifetime. The version of Swan Lake danced today comes from a revival staged in 1895, two years after he died, rather than the poorly received original of 1877.
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6The Rite of Spring, whose 1913 Paris premiere caused an uproar, was composed by whom?
- A Igor Stravinsky Correct
- B Claude Debussy
- C Maurice Ravel
- D Béla Bartók
Answer: A. Igor Stravinsky
Why: Stravinsky wrote it for the Ballets Russes, with choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky. The audience reaction was probably provoked as much by the deliberately ungainly dancing as by the hammering rhythms in the score.
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7Which composer wrote the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen?
- A Giuseppe Verdi
- B Carl Maria von Weber
- C Richard Strauss
- D Richard Wagner Correct
Answer: D. Richard Wagner
Why: Wagner worked on the cycle for around twenty-six years, producing roughly fifteen hours of music. No existing theatre suited it, so he had one built at Bayreuth, where the complete cycle was first staged in 1876.
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8Which Polish-born composer wrote almost exclusively for solo piano?
- A Robert Schumann
- B Johannes Brahms
- C Frédéric Chopin Correct
- D Franz Liszt
Answer: C. Frédéric Chopin
Why: Chopin poured nearly everything into nocturnes, mazurkas, preludes, études and polonaises, and never wrote a symphony or an opera. He also disliked performing in public and gave only around thirty public concerts in his life.
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9Who left the two-movement work known as the Unfinished Symphony?
- A Antonín Dvořák
- B Franz Schubert Correct
- C Anton Bruckner
- D Gustav Mahler
Answer: B. Franz Schubert
Why: Schubert completed two movements in 1822 and then set the score aside, six years before his death, for reasons nobody has established. It was not performed until 1865, more than forty years after he wrote it.
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10Boléro, built on one melodic idea repeated over an unchanging snare drum rhythm, was written by whom?
- A Maurice Ravel Correct
- B Claude Debussy
- C Erik Satie
- D Gabriel Fauré
Answer: A. Maurice Ravel
Why: Ravel wrote it as a ballet score in 1928 and was faintly embarrassed by its popularity, describing it as orchestration without any music. The whole piece is a single long crescendo, with the interest coming from the changing combinations of instruments.
Read alongside this quiz
Why some notes sound right together
Harmony is not a matter of taste alone. Simple ratios, overtones, and the compromise hiding inside every piano.
7 min readFrequently Asked Questions
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