Composers
Known as the "Father of the Symphony," this Austrian composer wrote 104 symphonies and mentored a young Beethoven
Who is Joseph Haydn?
This Italian dynamic marking, abbreviated "F" tells a musician to play loudly.
What is forte?
Spanning roughly 1600 to 1750, this ornate era gave the world Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel.
What is the Baroque era?
The largest and lowest-voiced member of the orchestral string family, often played standing up or on a stool.
What is the double bass?
This Beethoven symphony, his Fifth, opens with a famous four-note "short-short-short-long" motif.
What is Symphony No. 5?
This composer kept producing masterworks — including his Ninth Symphony — even after becoming almost completely deaf.
Who is Ludwig van Beethoven?
This seven-note scale follows the whole-and-half-step pattern W-W-H-W-W-W-H and is the most common scale in Western music.
What is the major scale?
Prized for balance and clarity, this era — roughly 1750 to 1820 — perfected the symphony and sonata form through Haydn and Mozart.
What is the Classical era?
Unlike its plucking ancestor, this keyboard instrument makes sound when felt-covered hammers strike its strings.
What is the piano?
This Vivaldi set of four violin concertos paints a musical portrait of spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
What is "The Four Seasons"?
This Baroque master composed the Brandenburg Concertos while serving as a cantor and organist in Leipzig.
Who is Johann Sebastian Bach?
Musicians use this term for an unstable-sounding chord or interval that creates tension and wants to resolve.
What is dissonance?
This 19th-century era prized emotion and individual expression, expanding the orchestra for composers like Chopin and Tchaikovsky.
What is the Romantic era?
Grouped by how air produces their sound, this instrument family includes the flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon.
What are woodwinds?
Featuring the "Waltz of the Flowers," this Tchaikovsky ballet follows a girl's Christmas Eve journey to a magical kingdom.
What is "The Nutcracker"
A member of the Russian nationalist group known as "The Five," this composer wrote "Pictures at an Exhibition" and the opera "Boris Godunov."
Who is Modest Mussorgsky?
This Italian tempo marking instructs a performer to gradually speed up.
What is accelerando?
This 1913 Stravinsky ballet triggered a riot at its Paris premiere thanks to its jarring rhythms and primal choreography.
What is "The Rite of Spring"?
Distinguished by a slide instead of valves, this brass instrument is a staple of both orchestras and jazz bands.
What is the trombone?
Based on a Beaumarchais play, this Mozart opera follows a clever valet outwitting his philandering employer on his own wedding day.
What is "The Marriage of Figaro" (Le nozze di Figaro)
Often called a father of opera, this early Baroque Italian composed "L'Orfeo" in 1607.
Who is Claudio Monteverdi
Pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg, this compositional method treats all twelve chromatic pitches as equal, avoiding any home key.
What is twelve-tone technique (serialism)
This French composer's 1894 tone poem "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune" helped usher in musical Impressionism.
Who is Claude Debussy?
This Baroque-era keyboard instrument, a forerunner of the piano, produces sound by plucking its strings with quills.
What is the harpsichord?
Left unfinished at the composer's death and completed by his student Süssmayr, this Latin setting of the Mass for the Dead is one of Mozart's final works.
What is the Requiem (in D minor)