Type your answers into the boxes, then press the 'Check' buttons to display the correct answer.
The answers are all well-known composers, in approximate order of their birth dates.
1. Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name; he has taste, and, furthermore, the most profound knowledge of composition.
said this about
Haydn said it about Mozart
2. Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!
said this about
Robert Schumann said it about Frederic Chopin
3. (On leaving a dinner party) If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.
Johannes Brahms
4. Because I have conducted my own operas and love sheep-dogs; because I generally dress in tweeds, and sometimes, at winter afternoon concerts, have even conducted in them; because I was a militant suffragette and seized a chance of beating time to The March of the Women from the window of my cell in Holloway Prison with a tooth-brush; because I have written books, spoken speeches, broadcast, and don't always make sure that my hat is on straight; for these and other equally pertinent reasons, in a certain sense I am well known.
Ethel Smyth
5. The symphony must be like the world—it must contain everything.
Gustav Mahler
6. Whereas most other modern composers are engaged in manufacturing cocktails of every hue and description, I offer the public pure spring water.
Jean Sibelius
7. I don't know whether I like it, but it's what I meant.
said this about his
Ralph Vaughan Williams said this about his Fourth Symphony.
8. I have composed only one masterpiece. Alas, there is no music in it.
said this about his
Maurice Ravel said this about his 'Bolero'.
9. There will be music dedicated to Stalin, and there will be music about Stalin. But I am for the latter.
Dmitri Shostakovich
10. I play through all Brahms every so often to see if he's as bad as I thought and usually find him worse.