Sheep

Question Results

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Question:

The aria 'Sheep May Safely Graze' appears in which Bach cantata?

Response:

	The 'Hunt' Cantata, BWV 208
	The 'Coffee' Cantata, BWV 211
	The 'Peasant' Cantata, BWV 212
	Feedback: It's the 'Hunt' Cantata. The work is a secular cantata and was written in 1713 for the birthday of Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels. 'Sheep may safely graze' or 'Schafe können sicher weiden' is the fourth aria

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Question:

Which leading British conductor spends much of his time rearing and managing a flock of 1,000 sheep?

Response:

	Edward Gardner
	John Eliot Gardiner
	Mark Elder
	Feedback: It's John Eliot Gardiner. He has an 800-acre farm on the Dorset-Wiltshire border.

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Question:

Music's gain was sheep-farming's loss when one composer, born in 1811, decided not to follow in his father's footsteps as a sheep accountant (ovium rationista), but instead dazzled European society with displays of piano pyrotechnics. Who was he?

Response:

	Sergey Rachmaninov
	Camille Saint-Saëns
	Franz Liszt
	Feedback: Correct! His father, Adam, described himself as an 'ovium rationista' on the young Liszt's baptism certificate.

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Question:

Who in 1984 wrote an opera Yan Tan Tethera named after a method of counting sheep?

Response:

	Harrison Birtwistle
	Feedback: Correct! The opera has a libretto by the poet Tony Harrison and is based on a supernatural folk tale about two shepherds, their sheep and the Devil.
	Peter Maxwell Davies
	Alexander Goehr

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Question:

Which two-piano suite written in 1897 shares its name with a famous sheep (1996-2003)?

Response:

	'Suite bergamasque' by Debussy
	'Dolly Suite' by Fauré
	Feedback: Correct! Fauré wrote the 'Dolly Suite' as a gift for the daughter of the woman he was having an affair with, Emma Bardac. Dolly the sheep was the first mammal to be cloned.
	'Mother Goose Suite' by Ravel

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Question:

Which British composer invited us to Rejoice in the Lamb in 1943, setting the poetry of 18th-century asylum inmate Christopher Smart in an anthem for choir and organ?

Response:

	Benjamin Britten
	Feedback: Correct! The piece is a festival cantata which was written to mark the 50th anniversary of the consecration of St Matthew's Church, Northampton and uses a text based on Smart's poem 'Jubilate Agno'.
	Frank Bridge
	Ralph Vaughan Williams

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Question:

'All we like sheep' sang a choir to the excited people of Dublin on 13 April, 1742. What was the big occasion?

Response:

	A concert to mark the birthday of George III
	The first performance of Handel's 'Messiah'
	Feedback: Correct! The premiere took place on Fishamble Street, Dublin. The concert was so popular that ladies were asked to come 'without hoops' in their skirts and gentlemen 'without swords' so that everyone could fit in.
	The first performance of 'Judas Maccabaeus' by Handel

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Question:

Whose setting of 'The Lord is My Shepherd' provided the theme tune for the TV comedy The Vicar of Dibley?

Response:

	Bob Chilcott
	Patrick Doyle
	Feedback: It was Howard Goodall. He donated the manuscript of the work to the Bodleian Library, Oxford in 2009.
	Howard Goodall

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Question:

The Frenchman Jean de Hollingue (1459-1522), composer of many fine motets, is better known under a name that has a certain sheep-like ring to it. And that is?

Response:

	Loyset Compère
	Pierre de Manchicourt
	Jean Mouton
	Feedback: Correct! One contemporary said of him: 'Besides being gifted he is the most humble man that one can find, and a good servant of God’

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Question:

Which composer is said to have been banned from practising his trombone in a Cotswold field after the farmer accused him of causing the ewes to lamb too early?

Response:

	Gustav Holst
	Feedback: Correct! According to fellow composer Edmund Rubbra, Holst would play the trombone as he walked home from the Royal College of Music in London to his home in Cheltenham becuase he was too poor to afford the train fare.
	Edward Elgar
	Benjamin Britten