Crazy for Composers
This German composer famously started going deaf in his 20s, but still wrote some of his greatest works, including his 9th Symphony.
Who is Beethoven?
It’s the largest and lowest-pitched member of the brass family.
What is the tuba?
Whenever you see a Mozart piece, the title is usually followed by a "K" and a number. This letter stands for the last name of the man who cataloged all of Mozart's music.
What is Köchel?
In Camille Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, a slow, elegant melody played by the cello represents this graceful white bird.
What is a swan?
Most first movements of Classical symphonies are written in this three-part musical structure, which consists of an Exposition, a Development, and a Recapitulation.
What is Sonata form?
This child prodigy started composing at age five and wrote famous operas like The Magic Flute.
Who is Mozart?
This string instrument is slightly larger than a violin but smaller than a cello, and it has a slightly deeper, warmer sound. Plus, twoset hate!!!!
What is the viola? 🤢🤮
Wolfgang wasn't the only prodigy in the family; he frequently toured Europe performing piano duets with his highly talented older sister, who went by this nickname.
Who is Nannerl?
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov wrote a frantic, buzzing, and incredibly fast orchestral piece that sounds exactly like the flight of this insect.
What is a bumblebee?
If a piano student plays a C-sharp, and then plays a D-flat, they are playing the exact same physical key. This relationship between the two notes is known by this term.
What is enharmonic?
Known as the "Father of the Symphony," he wrote a piece with a sudden, crashing loud chord meant to wake up sleepy audience members, now called the Surprise Symphony.
Who is Haydn?
This woodwind instrument uses a "double reed" and famously plays the part of the duck in the story Peter and the Wolf.
What is the oboe?
In Mozart's famous opera The Magic Flute, the character Papageno is covered in feathers because he has this specific, unusual job.
What is a birdcatcher?
In Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, the scary wolf is represented by three of these coiled, circular brass instruments playing together. (Linna, you learned this in mini camp!)
What are French horns?
This is the special solo section near the end of a concerto movement where the orchestra stops playing completely so the soloist can show off their technical skills, sometimes making it up on the spot.
What is a cadenza?
This Russian composer wrote the magical music for some of the world's most famous ballets, including Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.
Who is Tchaikovsky?
This keyboard instrument came before the piano. Instead of striking the strings with little hammers, a mechanism inside actually plucks the strings.
What is the harpsichord?
This final, haunting piece of music by Mozart was famously left unfinished when he died, and had to be completed by his student, Franz Xaver Süssmayr.
What is the Requiem?
Franz Schubert wrote a famous piano quintet nicknamed for this freshwater fish, because he reused a melody from a song he wrote about one. We also hear it in everyday life, although if I tell you, it would give it away...
What is a trout?
Made famous by J.S. Bach, this is a complex type of composition where a single melody is introduced, and then repeated by different voices overlapping each other like a mathematical puzzle.
What is a fugue?
This Polish composer, known as the "poet of the piano," wrote almost exclusively for the keyboard, giving the world famous Waltzes, Preludes, and Nocturnes.
Who is Frédéric Chopin?
It looks like a slightly longer oboe with a bulb-shaped bell, but despite its confusing name, this double-reed instrument is neither from Britain nor made of brass.
What is the English horn?
Mozart wrote a famous concerto for his friend Anton Stadler, who was one of the first true virtuosos to play this then-newly invented, single-reed woodwind instrument.
What is the clarinet?
The English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote a beautiful, soaring piece for solo violin and orchestra called "The Lark..." doing this specific action.
What is Ascending?
This is the term for a chord where the notes are played one after another in a sweeping motion rather than all at the exact same time, taking its Italian name from a plucked string instrument.
What is an arpeggio?