Friday Quiz with Mark Pennell is a whimsical contest held each friday during classic music featuring trivia pulled from the annals of classical music.
Tickle your funnybone as Mark quizzes your intellect!
Friday, July 18th, 2008
Q: It has often been said that it was ‘Fate knocking on the door’ at the beginning of the 5th symphony. That is what Beethoven said (still struggling with the fact that he was going deaf) to a friend in describing the most famous opening four notes of any Classical work, the 5th Symphony. The that account however, came from a man who was known for stretching the truth (as a matter of fact, a lot of what he said about his ‘friend’ after he passed away proved to be a complete fabrication) . But there was another person who knew Beethoven personally, and he was known to be truthful. After starting out to be an admiring student, became a true good friend to Beethoven. He was Karl Czerny, who had become famous as a pianist himself when he told his story. He claimed the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth was inspired by something else less dramatic. It was a bird call. What kind of bird was it? If you know, you could win the Friday Quiz.
A: The Yellowhammer. Before Beethoven went deaf, he used to love to take walks in the Vienna Woods, and was often caught up in either sound in his head; whistling a tune he had just made up and was trying to expand on, or he was into finding nature’s sounds. They could be just as captivating. One of his favorite birds to see and hear was the Yellowhammer (which looks a little like a sparrow that someone has brushed with one of those bright yellow highlighters). But the 5th Symphony, it is most likely that Beethoven could no longer hear the bird, but just by looking at it, remembered its call, and took home to make it one of the most famous symphonies ever composed.
Friday, July 11th, 2008
Q: This composer let his sense of humor overshadow the seriousness as a musician. We missed the 100th anniversary of his birth, which was a little more than a week ago. This new CD just showed up, and it begins to show more of what he accomplished. He was a student of Walter Piston and Georges Enescu at Harvard, as he also dove into the studies of German and Scandinavian languages. Before long, he was an arranger with the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler. NPR had a story on his anniversary and I put it in Quicklinks. Just stay in WKSU.org and click on Classical Quicklinks. In the meantime, who was he?
A: Leroy Anderson
Friday, June 27th, 2008
Q: What is an Eclogue?
A: Most of the time, if you hear one, it’s being read, as a poem. Sometimes they are called ‘bucolics’, and were known to be spoken by simple people. The word came from the Greek meaning: ‘choice, selection of small passages', and was originally meant short little poems, and later to imitate the poems of Virgil. My favorite description comes from Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, where they say an Eclogue can be simply: “a poem in which shepherds converse”
Friday, June 20th, 2008
Q:"The Wiz" opens June 26th at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights. The 1975 Broadway show begins in Kansas, as do most versions of Frank L. Baum's "Wonderful Wizard of Oz".
But in the 1978 film version of "The Wiz", Dorothy and the gang dance down another road.
Where does the film version of "The Wiz" take place?
A:Dorothy is from Harlem, and "Oz" is a magical version of New York City.
Enjoy the show at Cain Park!
Friday, June 13th, 2008
Q:We'll hear music from a new CD of arrangements for wind orchestra by Percy Grainger. The English folk song "Sheep-Shearing Song" appears in the collection. It was collected from rural England in 1904 by Cecil Sharp, later arranged for piano by Eugene Goossens, and appeared in Grainger's 1942 collection "Chosen Gems for Winds" as a piece for wind orchestra.
OK - enough background - these 3 guys all lived or were born in what country?
A:Australia. Grainger was born there and eventually moved to the U.S. where he spent most of his adult life. Goossens was instrumental in the development of the Sydney Opera House, and Sharp spent more than a decade "Down Under".
Sorry - no Friday the 13th stories...
Friday, June 6th, 2008
Q: In the 1st week of March, 1807, Beethoven gave two concerts in the big house of Prince Lobkowitz…They included his first 4 symphonies, one of his piano concertos, some of his opera Fidelio and another piece too. Now, even if I enjoyed every note of evenings, my modern-day bottom would be squirming in my seat after several hours of music. This didn’t seem to bother fortunate guests witnessing this history. They were starving for any entertainment, and Beethoven’s was the best then. What was the one piece I didn’t mention?
A: Coriolan Overture.
Friday, May 30th, 2008
Q: Camille Saint-Saëns put The Carnival of the Animals together by in the winter of 1886, and of the fourteen movements, including the opening and the finale, twelve were about animals (if you count pianists). There is the Royal March of the Lion, the Hens and Roosters, the Wild Asses (or jackasses), followed by the Tortoises and The Elephant. Kangaroos came next. One of the most famous is the Aquarium. Then Mules (or ‘Characters with Long Ears’), The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods, and the Aviary, Fossils, and ‘Two Pianos’ is after that. The Swan is the last one before the finale. Which movement is this (the one you will he hearing at 10:25)?
A: The ‘Jackass’.
Friday, May 23rd, 2008
Q: There is a composer who very much positively affected many of the other composers that we will hear on Friday the 23rd. Giocomo Meyerbeer, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Felix Mendelssohn were just a few of the ones this composer helped, either by teaching them, selflessly promoting their talents or defending them. Who was he?
A: From the time he was a boy, he was passionate about the music of Beethoven, and especially after getting to know the man, tirelessly promoted his music the rest of his life. He was the first teacher of a young Felix Mendelssohn, and they remained close friends always…and he came to the defense of Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn and others of Jewish heritage, when Wagner went off on his anti-Semitic tirades against them. He was a much more powerful man in classical music than we might think today. He was Ignaz Moscheles, born on this date in 1794.
Friday, May 16th, 2008
Q: (As I air the tortoise from Saint-Saëns'Carnival of the Animals), I open the mic and say, "This was a mock by Saint-Saëns of Jacques Offenbach’s famous "Can-can" of nearly 30 years earlier in his ‘The Carnival of the Animals, by having the infuriatingly slow rendition of the famous 'Can-Can' from Offenbach’s ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’. Ironically, Offenbach went about blatantly mocking of an earlier opera by a late Baroque composer with the work. What opera was Offenbach mocking?
A: It shocked a lot of people when it was first staged in 1858. A lot of bawdiness and Burlesque humor was a bit hard on the French when it premiered. But eventually, it became so famous that Saint-Saëns made fun of it in his masterpiece of 1886, Carnival of the Animals. Gluck and his Orfeo ed Euridice
Friday, May 9th, 2008
Q: At 11:28 we will hear a flute concerto from the most famous of Johan Sebastian Bach’s sons to go into music. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach composed this piece in 1847. It was only recently that is was found arranged for flute. For a good two-hundred years, it was known as a harpsichord concerto. Why would he compose yet another piece for flute (especially when he didn’t play it) ? If you know, you could win the Friday Quiz.
A: For many years, C. P. E. Bach was employed under one of the best bosses in Classical Music history. He was later to known as ‘Old Fritz’, but also Frederick the Great. A lover of the arts, he had an orchestra that included Johann Joachim Quantz (who was a great flutist), and Franz Benda. The leader of the orchestra was Bach. Frederick the Great was actually a very good flutist himself and had both Quantz and Bach composed a lot of music for the Emperor.
