Mystery Maestro

Who hasn’t heard the one about Mozart scribbling a diabolically difficult concerto at 5? Or how virtuoso Paul Wittgenstein, having lost his right arm in World War I, got Ravel to write him a left-hand-only piano concerto. The lives of composers are rife with amazing stories (some even true.) See if you can identify the musical titans behind these biographical tidbits.

1. New Yorkers flocked to hear the 27-year-old “Bolshevik pianist” who, a year earlier in 1917, had rejoiced in the streets of St. Petersburg when the Tsar was overthrown. Years later, unlike most artists under Stalinism, the internationally famous composer fled the West for the Soviet Union, where he was celebrated as a leading cultural figure.

2. His priestly profession and distinctive red hair earned this immensely prolific Venetian the sobriquet Il Prete Rosso. Many of his upward of 500 concertos were written for child performers at an orphanage. Also a celebrated opera composer, he was all but forgotten until the 20th century brought a revival of interest in the Baroque style.

3. A convert to Catholicism, this English composer found little favor in Queen Elizabeth’s court and spent years as lutenist to Christian IV of Denmark. A master of melancholy, he punned aptly on his own name in a song titled “… Semper Dolens.” His pavan, “Lachrimae,” was a smash hit by Renaissance standards.

4. One of the great tone poets of all time, this Polish-born firebrand found the love of his life in a free-thinking French novelist named Aurore Dudevant. Though he composed only for the piano, his melodic clashes, ambiguous chords, unresolved dominant sevenths and excursions into pure chromaticism influenced such symphonic masters as Liszt, Grieg and Rachmaninov.

5. Mystery shrouds this late 19th-century Russian’s death. Some say he took poison when rumors spread of a love affair with a male member of the imperial family. Others say the failure of his last symphony drove him to commit suicide by drinking unboiled water during a cholera epidemic.

6. Considered a greater improvisational pianist than even Mozart, this performer’s concert career was cut short by hearing loss. Thereafter he applied himself to composing in silence. On the podium at the première of his final symphony, the deaf composer didn’t perceive his triumph until a soloist turned him to face the wild applause.

7. The quintessential landscape artist, this American composer wrote colorful music – much of it evoking the grandeur of nature – and led a colorful life. Leaving home at 14, he worked as a honky tonk pianist in the mining camps of northern California. Later he became a renowned jazz arranger, a violist with the Los Angeles Symphony, a conductor and a professor at Juilliard.

8. This mighty Austrian-American maestro set Western music on its ears by “liberating dissonance” through a new composition method based on a series of 12 tones. His rational approach was curiously at odds with a morbid fear of the number 13. Triskaidekaphobia prompted the USC-affiliated maverick to remove an “A” from the title of his masterpiece, thereby avoiding a 13-character phrase.

9. A child piano prodigy, she first played for her future husband – a tortured, great Romantic master – at age 9. Though she bore him eight children, this remarkable woman managed to also compose four works for piano and orchestra, three chamber works and dozens of piano solos and lieder, in addition to teaching at the Leipzig Conservatory and concertizing.

 

 

Mystery Maestro Answers

Judging by the overwhelming response to our latest puzzle, there ought to be a Biography channel devoted just to classical musicians. More than 200 entries jammed our fax machines and e-mail boxes , the vast majority scoring perfect 9s. Of the 43 who did not, a frequent error was naming William Byrd in lieu of John Dowland for question No. 3. Both were Catholics snubbed by Elizabeth I, but it seems Byrd composed for every instrument but the lute. As ever, Last Worders quibbled over clues. James Erler MSEE ’79 questioned the claim that Beethoven was “a greater improvisational pianist than even Mozart.” So saith Encyclopedia Britannica. Others tickled our ribs. USC English professor Joseph Dane cited this zinger about Vivaldi’s prolificacy: “He really only wrote one concerto 500 times.”
And who knew that Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite was originally titled “Santa Monica Canyon Suite”?
That said, gift certificates are on their way to five winners, selected by lot from 158 correct entries:. Allen E. Rogers ’50, Rachel Aldrich, Frank S. DeLucia PhD ’75, Walter Nakano PharmD ’73 and Christine Limb DMA ’95.
The correct answers to “Mystery Maestros” are listed below.

1 Sergei Prokofiev
2 Antonio Vivaldi
3 John Dowland
4 Frédéric Chopin
5 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
6 Ludwig van Beethoven
7 Ferde Grofé
8 Arnold Schoenberg
9 Clara Wieck Schumann

Last Word Solutions - SPRING 2002