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Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2025 10:31 am
by the elephant
Use this thread to share your new-found music history or theory tidbits. But it has to be in the form of a question, and you cannot reveal the answer for 24 hours from the time of your post. When you post the answer you have to quote your original question so we know WTF you are on about.

Please don't post commonly known stuff that you just got around to figuring out. I want the arcane. (Look that up if you don't know the definition. Make an effort to learnfrom the posts of others in this thread, not to profess or show off.)

I will start below.

Re: Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2025 10:31 am
by the elephant
Name any opera that generated more than one overture.

Re: Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2025 10:32 am
by the elephant
[tick-tock, tick-tock… now imagine 24 hours has passed…]

Re: Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2025 10:34 am
by the elephant
the elephant wrote: Tue Apr 29, 2025 10:31 am Name any opera that generated more than one overture.
Berlioz wrote the opera Benvenuto Cellini, which has its own overture, but the opera was a commercial failure and he scrapped it in short order. To save some of the great music that would never be heard again, the took excerpts from the scene at a festival in Rome, built a great concert overture from them, and gave it the title "Roman Carnival".

Re: Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2025 10:35 am
by the elephant
There. Like that.

NOW GET TO WORK, PEOPLE!

:tuba:

[By the way, there are other answers to this question. I just gave an example of interest to low brass players.]

Re: Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2025 10:39 am
by dp
the elephant wrote: Tue Apr 29, 2025 10:31 am Name any opera that generated more than one overture.
Didn't you say it has to be in the form of a question?

Re: Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2025 10:45 am
by the elephant
For me, that is a question. As per Mr. Jacobs' instructions to me in lessons: I only issue statements.

:laugh:

This statement is a directive to provide information. Instead of "Would you give me that item?" it is phrased more as my mother would have done: GIVE ME THAT DAMNED THING!


Thank you, Dale.

Image

Re: Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2025 12:24 pm
by MiBrassFS
What the is the onomatopoeia that famously best represents disdain for the ridiculousness associated with all things musical, tuba, euphonium, their respective players, and ridiculousness in general?

Who first employed this word and applied it to the above subjects?

Re: Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2025 3:06 pm
by MikeS
the elephant wrote: Tue Apr 29, 2025 10:31 am Name any opera that generated more than one overture.
The Pirates of Penzance premiered in New York City. Shortly after Gilbert and Sullivan left England en route to the U.S. they realized they had left the score in London. They spent the voyage furiously rewriting it. When they got back to London they compared the original to the rewritten version and ended up incorporating some of the (inadvertent) changes. So I guess Pirates had three overtures.

I’m going for half credit on this one, since it’s not an overture. Anyway, I think it at least qualifies as a fun piece of musical trivia. Rossini loved to write music in bed. One morning, he finished writing a duet and then dropped it on the floor. He couldn’t reach it without getting up, so he grabbed a new sheet of blank staff paper and wrote another duet. A friend dropped by later, and Rossini asked him to retrieve the first version. Comparing the two, he liked both of them, but preferred the second. Not wanting to waste all the effort he put into the first version, he added another part to it so he could use it for a trio in the same opera.

Re: Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 7:24 am
by russiantuba
the elephant wrote: Tue Apr 29, 2025 10:31 am Name any opera that generated more than one overture.
I was going to guess Leonore

Re: Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 8:10 am
by arpthark
Who wrote the first sonata for tuba and piano?

Don't Google it!

Re: Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 8:52 am
by russiantuba
arpthark wrote: Wed Apr 30, 2025 8:10 am Who wrote the first sonata for tuba and piano?

Don't Google it!
Zoltan Gardonyi, a student of Hindemith. Great piece

Re: Musical Trivia Thread

Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 9:47 am
by MiBrassFS
“Mr. d. p. wrote:Pffft!