Tom Service, Imogen Tilden 

Roll over Beethoven: who really wrote these famous pieces of music?

As Opera North open a new production of L’Incoronazione di Poppea – whose best-known final aria was most probably not even written by Monteverdi – we ask if you know the real guiding hands behind these other well-known bits of classical music?
  
  


  1. Who wrote Albinoni’s Adagio?

    1. The answer’s in the title, you eejit.

    2. Antonio Vivaldi, who wrote it anonymously and gave it to his mate Albinoni as a compositional freebie.

    3. A 20th-century musicologist, who turned a few notes of Albinoni he found on a scrap of paper into one of the great musical hoaxes.

  2. Stravinsky’s Pulcinella is usually said to be based on music by Pergolesi. But who really wrote the 18th-century music that his delicious neoclassical ballet is indebted to?

    1. Serge Diaghilev, in a duplicitous attempt to lure Stravinsky into writing another ballet for him.

    2. Gallo, van Wassenaer, Monza, Parisotti. And maybe a bit of Pergolesi, too.

    3. Tomaso Albinoni

  3. Johannes Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Haydn is one of music’s most generous tributes from a romantic master to a genius of an earlier age. Or so Johannes thought. But who really wrote that theme?

    1. Ignaz Pleyel

    2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

    3. Karl Stamitz

    4. No one knows.

  4. Who wrote Nessun Dorma?

    1. If it’s not Puccini, I’ll eat my hat.

    2. Franco Alfano, who completed the third act of Turandot after Puccini’s death.

    3. Luciano Berio, who also made a completion of Turandot.

  5. Frère Jacques: who composed it?

    1. Trick question – it’s a folk tune – the people!

    2. Brother Jack, a Parisian monk, in 1732 (not Father Ted’s Father Jack)

    3. Jean-Philippe Rameau

  6. Franz Xaver Süssmayr famously completed Mozart’s Requiem after his death. But he wasn’t Constanze Mozart’s first choice. Who was?

    1. Antonio Salieri

    2. Joseph von Eybler, one of Mozart's pupils

    3. Joseph Haydn

  7. As Flanders and Swann put it, the royalties from Greensleeves go to royalty. Which composing monarch was often said to have written the tune?

    1. Elizabeth I

    2. King Arthur

    3. Henry VIII

  8. Bach’s Goldberg Variations: who wrote the harmonic scheme and theme on which this most magnificent of all sets of keyboard variations is based?

    1. Goldberg

    2. Bach

    3. Count Kaiserling

  9. Rossini’s Barber of Seville Overture is one of the most famous upbeats in operatic history. But which Rossini opera did it originally introduce?

    1. William Tell

    2. Aureliano in Palmira

    3. Elizabeth, Queen of England

  10. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring: one of the most original works in musical history. But some of it is actually a palimpsest of folk tunes. Where does the opening melody come from, which you hear on that vertigo-inducing solo for the bassoonist?

    1. Lithuania

    2. Latvia

    3. Albania

Solutions

1:C, 2:B, 3:D, 4:A, 5:C, 6:B, 7:C, 8:B, 9:B, 10:A

Scores

  1. 3 and above.

    Adagissimo. You need a classical education

  2. 7 and above.

    Moderato. Increase your concert-going

  3. 10 and above.

    Brillante. Bravo
 

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