Academically speaking

Question Results

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Question:

Which of Haydn's symphonies is nicknamed the 'Schoolmaster'?

Response:

	Symphony No. 55
	Symphony No. 56
	Symphony No. 57
	Feedback: It was actually No. 55. The nickname isn't Haydn's own but has come about because the dotted figures in the slow movement, it has been suggested, call to mind a fingerwagging schoolmaster admonishing a pupil

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Question:

'Three little maids from school are we,' they chirrup merrily. But in which operetta?

Response:

	HMS Pinafore
	The Mikado
	Feedback: Correct! The three maids in question are Yum-Yum, Peep-Bo and Pitti-Sing
	Pirates of Penzance

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Question:

Which British composer, who lost his life fighting in the First World War, was a teacher of music at Radley College public school in Oxfordshire?

Response:

	Vaughan Williams
	Ivor Gurney
	George Butterworth
	Feedback: Correct! Butterworth is probably best known for his work 'A Shropshire Lad', inspired by the set of poems of the same name by AE Housman.

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Question:

Which famously maverick composer turned down an honorary doctorate of music in 1932 saying 'I feel that my music must be regarded as a product of non-education'?

Response:

	Percy Grainger
	Feedback: Correct! The Australian-born composer was well known for his eccentricities which extended to flagellation and sado-masochism
	Peter Warlock
	Malcolm Arnold

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Question:

Which composer, having take the exams needed to follow in the footsteps of his schoolteacher father, was urged instead to concentrate on music?

Response:

	Gustav Holst
	Dmitri Shostakovich
	Feedback: It was Max Reger, a German composer who was born near Bayreuth in 1873 and died in Leipzig in 1916
	Max Reger

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Question:

'A very endearing little man in a grey suit that was usually crumpled (and) very thick, gold-rimmed glasses.' Which composer and schoolteacher is being remembered here by a former pupil in a 1970s BBC TV documentary?

Response:

	Frank Bridge
	Feedback: It was Gustav Holst, who taught at St Paul's Girls' School from 1905 until his death in 1934
	Gustav Holst
	Vaughan Williams

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Question:

Who, in 2005, was tasked by BBC TV with turning the pupils of Northolt High School – where music had long since disappeared off the curriculum – into a world-beating choir?

Response:

	Gareth Malone
	Antonio Pappano
	Sir Mark Elder
	Feedback: It was Gareth Malone, who went on to create the 'Military Wives' choir whose song 'Wherever You Are' was the Christmas No. 1 in 2011

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Question:

Margarita Andreyevna Kaynova, a schoolteacher, married which Russian composer in 1956 (they divorced in 1959)?

Response:

	Sergey Rachmaninov
	Modest Musorgsky
	Feedback: It was Dmitri Shostakovich who met and impulsively married Kaynova, despite the objections of his children. He got married again – for the third time – in 1962, to literary editor Irina Antonova Supinskaya.
	Dmitri Shostakovich

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Question:

Which cantata was written by Britten in 1948 to celebrate the centenary of Lancing College in Sussex?

Response:

	Phaedra
	Saint Nicolas
	Feedback: Correct! It was first performed in 1948 with the tenor Peter Pears as the adult saint
	Cantata academica

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Question:

Haydn's Symphony No. 92 and Brahms's Academic Festival Overture were both conducted by their composers after the conferral of what honour?

Response:

	Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur
	A Knighthood
	An honorary doctorate
	Feedback: Correct! Both composers were given honorary doctorates – Haydn from Oxford in 1791 and Brahms from Breslau in 1879