The Best Symphony of Each Decade of the 1800s

  Emily E. Hogstad  October 31st, 2026

Ten decades, ten symphonies, and one central question: what happened to the symphony over the 1800s?

The form entered the century as a genteel curtain-raiser: twenty minutes of Classical politeness, often featuring courtly, aristocratic minuets.

It left the century capable of embodying autobiography, nationalist argument, spiritual crisis, and philosophical statement – sometimes all at once, and sometimes for the better part of two hours.

This list traces that transformation decade by decade, picking the symphony that did the most to move the genre forward.

1800s – Beethoven, Symphony No. 3, “Eroica” (1803–1804)   

Beethoven’s third symphony broke the rules the genre had followed for decades. Before 1804, symphonies were expected to last between twenty and thirty minutes. However, Beethoven’s Third lasts nearly fifty minutes. Its opening movement alone is longer than many of Haydn’s and Mozart’s symphonies.

Christian Hornemann: Ludwig von Beethoven, 1803

That massive first movement isn’t the only stand-out moment in the work. The second movement is a dramatic funeral march; the third a beefy scherzo with three horns; and the finale is a massive set of variations on a theme.

That doesn’t even touch on the extramusical story of the work. It was originally meant to be a tribute to Napoleon. Still, after Napoleon declared himself emperor in 1804, Beethoven was furious and struck out the symphony’s nickname so violently that he tore a hole in the title page.

It was a fittingly dramatic coda to the creation of a work that went on to shape the rest of the 19th century.

1810s – Beethoven, Symphony No. 7 (1811–1812)   

Beethoven’s Third permitted symphonists to dream bigger, but his Seventh let them find inspiration in one of music’s smallest, most basic elements: rhythm.

Each movement of Beethoven’s Seventh showcases a different, insistent pulse. The first movement uses swinging, dotted rhythms; the second, hushed funereal march rhythms; the third, bouncy presto rhythms; and the fourth, swirling sforzandos on dazzling fly-by sixteenth notes.

As different as each movement is, this focus on rhythm lends coherence to the entire work.

Richard Wagner called this symphony “the apotheosis of the dance.” It gave future composers a blueprint for building large-scale orchestral works around rhythmic drive rather than melody alone.

1820s – Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 (1822–1824)    

You might be thinking, Beethoven again? But it’s undeniable: for three decades in a row, Beethoven composed what is unquestionably the most important symphony of the decade.

Beethoven’s ninth (and final) symphony is where he pushed himself furthest creatively. First, it outpaced even the Third Symphony in length, taking around 70 minutes to perform.

More consequentially, he created a final movement scored for orchestra and voices, setting a text from Schiller’s Ode to Joy in an ecstatic celebration of universal brotherhood.

Beethoven’s Ninth has reverberated ever since. Mahler answered Beethoven directly, writing choral symphonies of his own. Brahms avoided choral writing in his symphonies entirely, aiming to prove a purely orchestral symphony alone could pack the same punch. Meanwhile, Wagner found the Ninth so overwhelming he came to believe it marked the culmination – and the end – of purely instrumental music and turned to opera instead.

This symphony isn’t just influential for how it sounds; it’s influential for the ideas it unleashed.

1830s – Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique (1830)       

Berlioz heard Beethoven’s Ninth in 1828 and was deeply inspired. Two years later, he took the form a step further, giving his own symphony an overt narrative.

Inspired by his obsession with Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, the Fantastique tells the (suspiciously autobiographical) story of a drug-fueled artist obsessing over a woman. The story ends with the artist’s execution and a witches’ sabbath.

The young Hector Berlioz

In the symphony, Berlioz uses a device called an idée fixe, a single melody that recurs and mutates across all five movements. It grants the symphony a new kind of unity: narrative rather than purely structural or rhythmic.

The orchestration was also groundbreaking, calling for col legno bowing (string playing that uses the wooden part of the bow), offstage oboe, and church bells.

The flash and colour of Berlioz’s storytelling and orchestration inspired composers for the rest of the century, from Liszt’s symphonic poems to the psychological programs of Tchaikovsky’s later symphonies.

1840s – Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 3, “Scottish” (1829–1842)   

After Berlioz’s fever dream of a symphony, Mendelssohn wrote one that also embraced the idea of thematic material transforming from movement to movement.

However, where Berlioz aimed for narrative, flash, and spectacle, Mendelssohn focused on atmosphere and control, proving the two impulses could coexist within Romanticism rather than compete. Even the symphony’s structural innovation – having each movement performed without any break in between – is inextricably linked to the fact that the work employs the traditional four-movement structure.

Eduard Magnus: Felix Mendelssohn, 1846 (Berlin State Library)

In the end, Mendelssohn’s third became a model for composers who wanted emotional impact without completely abandoning convention.

The “Scottish” took Mendelssohn thirteen years to finish. He began it after visiting a ruined chapel at Holyrood, Scotland, during his European Grand Tour in 1829.

“In the deep twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved… The chapel below is now roofless… Everything is ruined, decayed, and the clear heavens pour in. I think I have found there the beginning of my ‘Scottish’ Symphony.”

Although he may have found the beginning there, he didn’t finish it until 1842.

1850s – Schumann, Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish” (1850)   

Robert Schumann wrote this symphony in a five-week burst in the fall of 1850, between November 2 and December 9. Although it was the last symphony he completed, it’s numbered as his third.

Schumann gravitated naturally toward songwriting throughout his career, and that instinct shaped his symphonic writing too. He admired how Mendelssohn had folded songlike, lyrical melodies into orchestral form, and he used that device in his own symphonies.

Robert Schumann

That same instinct extended to a taste for storytelling, though Schumann resisted attaching an explicit program the way Berlioz had. Instead, the “Rhenish” suggests its story rather than narrating it: the second movement evokes the Rhine River, and the fourth movement portrays a “solemn ceremony,” inspired by an archbishop’s elevation to cardinal at Cologne Cathedral, which Schumann had witnessed in person.

Where Beethoven had expanded the symphony in his third and ninth symphonies by making its four movements longer, Schumann expanded it by adding a fifth movement outright – treating movement count itself as a variable, rather than a fixed convention, to be adjusted to fit the material.

That precedent gave later composers room to do the same: Mahler, working within an even more flexible sense of symphonic structure, would take that same license further.

1860s – Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 1, “Winter Dreams” (1866–1868)   

The 1860s were a quiet stretch, symphonically speaking. Brahms was a decade into writing his first symphony but paralysed by Beethoven’s enormous shadow. Meanwhile, Bruckner, Borodin, and Dvořák were still young men finding their voices.

A 26-year-old Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky stepped into that gap. Tchaikovsky, a recent graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, wrote his first symphony while suffering something close to a breakdown from insomnia and overwork.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky at 23

He revised it twice over the following years, never fully satisfied.

What survives is the first symphony by a Russian composer to enter the standard modern repertoire. Although Tchaikovsky’s later symphonies ultimately overshadowed it, this first one is important, proving that the German-Austrian tradition wasn’t the only path to symphonic legitimacy.

1870s – Brahms, Symphony No. 1 (1854–1876)   Play

Brahms began sketching this symphony in the 1850s and didn’t finish it for over twenty years, paralysed by the idea that any symphony he wrote would be compared to Beethoven’s.

He was right to be nervous about the inevitable comparisons, because they came. In fact, when it finally did premiere, in 1876, a conductor dubbed it “Beethoven’s Tenth” – fortunately for Brahms, meant as a compliment.

The symphony’s Beethovenian C minor-to-C major trajectory, its finale’s echo of the “Ode to Joy” theme, and its sheer structural and technical rigour all read as a direct answer to Beethoven.

Johannes Brahms, 1866

Brahms was working against another headwind too: Liszt and Wagner’s flashy new symphonic poems and music dramas were making the case that the old purely instrumental forms Brahms treasured were becoming obsolete.

Brahms’s success with this work breathed new life into a form that Liszt and Wagner had all but declared obsolete.

1880s – Dvořák, Symphony No. 7 (1885)   

Antonín Dvořák came up with the idea for the first movement of his Seventh Symphony after seeing a train of Czech men travelling to Prague to perform at the National Theatre.

Dvořák was inspired to write a serious intellectual work that would depict the drama of the national struggle for independence while being imbued with Czech character.

Antonín Dvořák, 1882

His most famous symphony is the Ninth Symphony, nicknamed the “New World.” But that popularity has eclipsed many of his other works, including the seventh. Musicologist Donald Tovey called his seventh “among the greatest and purest examples in this art-form since Beethoven.”

Dvořák’s seventh also contained an unspoken, extramusical argument: that Czech composers like him could use the symphony – widely seen as a primarily Austro-German art form – to express nationalist ideas and emotions.

Between the 1860s and 1880s, Tchaikovsky and Dvořák proved that nationalist identity wasn’t a limitation on the symphony. Still, a source of new vitality – a tradition Sibelius and Shostakovich would carry into the 20th century.

1890s – Mahler, Symphony No. 2 (1888–1894)  

Mahler’s second symphony doesn’t close out the century so much as it kicks the door open to the next one.

Subtitled the “Resurrection”, it runs for nearly ninety minutes, demanding a massive orchestra, offstage brass, a soprano and alto soloist, and a full chorus that doesn’t enter until the final movement, where it sings a text written in part by Mahler himself.

Emil Orlík: Gustav Mahler, 1902

The symphony’s use of the human voice, its willingness to confront death and resurrection head-on as explicit textual subject matter, and its refusal to resolve neatly within Classical proportions all point away from the 19th century and squarely toward the next one.

That expanded sense of what a symphony could be – part autobiography, part spectacle, part spiritual reckoning – became the inheritance every 20th-century symphonist had to reckon with.

Conclusion

Line up all ten choices and a pattern appears that no single entry reveals on its own: the story of the 19th-century symphony is the story of composers answering their predecessors, one symphony at a time.

Beethoven answered Haydn and Mozart by making the form bigger and stranger. Berlioz answered Beethoven by making it explicitly personal. Brahms answered Beethoven, but it took him twenty years of honing his creative powers. Mahler wrote such long, complicated works that he seemed to answer everyone at once.

Sibelius, Shostakovich, and the rest of the 20th century’s symphonists inherited a form so thoroughly reinvented that “symphony” stopped meaning any one thing – and started meaning everything.

Composers with Disabilities, Part 2 Pettersson, Chopin, Joyce, Beethoven

 

by Emily E. Hogstad  September 9th, 2026

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at four composers who lived and worked with significant disabilities.

Here are four more – spanning three centuries and five countries, with disabilities ranging from chronic pain to hearing loss to impacts from injuries sustained in childhood.

Allan Pettersson

Rheumatoid arthritis

Allan Pettersson

Allan Pettersson was born in 1911 to an alcoholic blacksmith and his dressmaker-and-singer wife.

Against his father’s wishes, he began teaching himself the violin at age 10. In 1930, he enrolled at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music to continue his studies.

The viola would eventually become his favoured instrument, and in the 1940s, he began working as a violist in the Stockholm Concert Society Orchestra, later the Stockholm Philharmonic.

Pettersson has been described as a “combative loner”; he was once scolded by visiting conductor Willem Mengelberg for refusing to blend with his section.

His interest in being an orchestral musician eventually faded, and he began focusing on composition instead, writing multiple symphonies.

His seventh symphony, premiered in 1968, was a breakthrough, becoming a huge success in Sweden.  

In the early 1950s, his chronic pain was diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis.

At the time, there were limited effective treatments, and his physical condition deteriorated throughout the 1950s.

He kept composing, but by the early 1960s, his mobility was severely curtailed. His apartment was on the fourth floor of a building without an elevator, leaving him essentially homebound for years.

In 1970, he was hospitalised for nine months with kidney issues.

Still, he continued composing as his health deteriorated. When he died of cancer in 1980, he was working on his seventeenth symphony.

Frédéric Chopin

Tuberculosis

Maria Wodzińska: Frédéric Chopin, 1836 (Wasaw: National Museum)

After Chopin moved from his native Poland to Paris in 1831, his health deteriorated, and he began coughing up blood: classic symptoms of a dreaded tuberculosis infection.

A few years later, he came down with laryngitis and bronchitis, too. He got so ill that rumours of his death began circulating.

Even after he recovered from the acute infections, he continued to endure intense and exhausting coughing spells.  

In Chopin’s day, tuberculosis was often treated by bloodletting (the process of draining blood from the body) and colon cleansing. These treatments did not provide lasting relief, if any.

With the lack of treatment options available to him, Chopin turned to belladonna and opium for relief. We wrote about his relationship with opium and how it may have affected his music-making here: https://interlude.hk/piano-opium-eater/.

Throughout his thirties, his condition deteriorated steadily. During a tour of Scotland and England in 1848, he made out his will, acutely aware that his days were limited.

He died the following year in Paris.

Molly Joyce

Injuries from a car accident

Molly Joyce

American composer Molly Joyce was a seven-year-old violinist when she was in a car accident. Her left hand was almost completely severed from her body.

She would go on to study at the Juilliard School, the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and the Yale School of Music.  

In a 2022 interview, she told contemporary art music blogger Sandris Murins:

“I identify as disabled because of a car accident that happened a little more than 20 years ago, when my left hand was nearly amputated. Since the accident, I have been on a journey of acceptance… I have had to come a long way, while unfolding my disability, and it has paralleled the progression of my artistic practice.”

Due to her own experiences, Joyce has become increasingly interested in prioritising the experiences of audience members with disabilities. For instance, she provides sign language interpretation and audio descriptions for people who have reduced vision or hearing.

She also works with other artists who have disabilities, such as dancer Jerron Herman, who has cerebral palsy.

According to her official biography, her primary instrument is “her electric vintage toy organ, an instrument she bought on eBay that suits her body and engages her disability on a compositional and performative level.”

Ludwig van Beethoven

Deafness, alcoholism, depression, liver issues, possible lead poisoning

Christian Honeman: Ludwig van Beethoven, 1803 (Beethovenhaus Bonn)

Beethoven dealt with many more health issues than his well-known hearing loss, tinnitus, and depression.

For one, he had severe and lifelong gastrointestinal problems.

These symptoms first began appearing after his beloved mother died when he was just sixteen, leaving his violent and alcoholic father as his only parental figure. During flares of stress or grief, his abdominal pain and digestive problems would often worsen.

In 1821, six years before his death, he also began showing signs of liver disease, including jaundice, vomiting, and more abdominal pain. One contributor was likely his alcohol consumption.

Based on what historians know, it is commonly accepted that his final cause of death was actually liver failure.  

Modern research has unearthed additional information about Beethoven’s health and disabilities.

For instance, a clipping of Beethoven’s hair was recently tested for heavy metals at the Mayo Clinic.

NPR reported in May 2024 that the lead level in the hair was “64 to 95 times higher than the hair of someone today.”

Paul Jannetto, director of the lab, told NPR he believes this was “likely” due to “the goblets and glasses [Beethoven] drank out of.”

Lead poisoning alone likely wouldn’t have killed Beethoven, but it can worsen liver disease, GI issues – and, yes, hearing loss.

We’ll never know exactly what disabilities Beethoven would be diagnosed with had he lived today – but it would certainly be more than deafness and depression.

Conclusion

Pettersson composed from a fourth-floor apartment he could barely leave. Chopin made out his will on tour, knowing he was dying. Joyce’s art expanded once she came to terms with her disability. Beethoven wrote some of the most celebrated music in the Western canon while going deaf, poisoned by his own cups, and battling organ failure.

Disability is woven into the history of classical music – and these four great composers are just a small part of that larger story.

10 Best Short Works by the Great Composers

 by Emily E. Hogstad  July 5th, 2026

Some masterpieces reshape music history over the course of an hour. Others can do it in a few minutes.

The greatest composers have an uncanny ability to compress entire worlds into small spaces: a prelude that feels like a cathedral, a motet that suspends time, a piano miniature that captures an entire universe of grief.

Today, we’re looking at some examples. Here are some of the best short works by the great composers.   

Few pieces are as deceptively simple as this opening prelude from Bach‘s Well-Tempered Clavier.

Built almost entirely from flowing broken chords, the music unfolds with a serene inevitability. There are no fireworks, just harmonies moving forward with quiet confidence.

Elias Gottlob Haussmann: Johann Sebastian Bach, 1748 (Leipzig: Bach-Archiv)

Yet within two minutes, Bach creates a sense of architectural balance so complete that another composer, Charles Gounod, later layered a melody on top to create his famous “Ave Maria.”

It’s a reminder that profundity doesn’t require complexity – or length.  

Written just months before his death, this four-minute motet distills Mozart‘s sacred style to its essence.

The harmonies are gentle but luminous, unfolding with serene inevitability.

In a scant 46 measures, Mozart achieves a spiritual awe that many composers spend entire masses trying to find. 

Beethoven is often associated with titanic symphonies and stormy sonatas. But this brief rondo shows his mischievous side.

Virtuosic, breathless, and slightly unhinged, “Rage Over a Lost Penny” feels like a comic outburst. Sudden dynamic contrasts and tumbling passagework make the piece feel barely contained.

Christian Horneman: Ludwig van Beethoven, 1803 (Beethovenhaus Bonn)

The title wasn’t Beethoven’s, but it fits: the music whirls and sputters with the manic energy of someone being driven mad by an inconvenience.  

At barely two minutes long, this prelude feels like a confession.

The left hand descends in quietly desperate, repeated chords. Meanwhile, the right hand sings a restrained, sorrowful melody. The climax is dark but resigned.

Chopin compresses an entire Romantic emotional arc into a miniature: intimate, fragile, and devastating.  

Late in his life, Brahms wrote some of his most personal music, and this Intermezzo is among those pieces.

This solo piano work is tender without being sentimental. Its rocking rhythm and warm harmonies create a feeling of nostalgic reflection.

Johannes Brahms, c. 1872

Beneath the surface, subtle inner voices shift and color the mood, creating different gorgeous gradations of bittersweet emotion.

In five minutes, Brahms captures the ache of memory – as well as the comfort of it. 

Despite its title, Ravel insisted that this was not a lament for a dead princess, but rather a pavane that such a princess might have danced to.

Whether melancholy or nostalgic, the piece shimmers with a truly regal elegance.

Its slow procession, delicate orchestration, and restrained melody show Ravel’s extraordinary command of colour: French refinement distilled into its purest musical form.  

Few arias have achieved the global recognition of “Nessun dorma.”

Beginning in hushed anticipation and building toward the triumphant “Vincerò!” (“I will win!”), Puccini crafts a miniature drama in just a few minutes.

Giacomo Puccini

The orchestration swells, the tenor line climbs, and the emotional payoff is immediate and overwhelming.

This aria proves that even within the context of a major opera, just a few minutes can make a major impression.   

Composed as part of a patriotic pageant protesting Russian censorship, Finlandia became a national symbol.

The opening brass erupts with defiance, and the central hymn section unfolds with noble calm.

In just eight minutes, Sibelius moves from protesting oppression to joyful affirmation. It is a political statement and a symphonic poem intertwined.  

Few works have become so synonymous with public mourning as Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

Built from a single rising phrase that gradually intensifies before collapsing into silence, Barber’s Adagio seems to stretch time itself.

The harmonic language is modern but accessible. The emotional trajectory – from sorrow to despair to resignation – is unforgettable.   

To end, we jump into the late 20th century.

John Adams

Adams’ four-minute orchestral burst is sheer rhythmic exhilaration. A relentless woodblock pulse drives shimmering harmonies and bright brass fanfares.

It’s propulsive, witty, and unapologetically modern: a flash of brilliance and orchestral virtuosity.

Conclusion

Short pieces reveal something essential about great composers. Without the scaffolding of large forms, there’s nowhere to hide. Every note must matter.

From Bach’s poised architecture to Adams’ kinetic brilliance, these works prove that genius does not depend on duration. Sometimes the smallest forms leave the deepest impression.

Twenty Trivia Questions About Classical Music

 by Emily E. Hogstad  March 25th, 2024

Need some trivia questions about classical music? We’ve got you covered!

Today we’re looking at the history of classical music for trivia inspiration. Learn about everything from a composer who murdered his wife, to a Venetian orchestra of talented orphans, to forbidden love affairs, a deaf composer at the premiere of his groundbreaking symphony, and hypnotherapy that inspired a piano concerto.

© classicalregister.com

Without further ado, here are our twenty trivia questions from classical music history:

Which composer from Bingen is also known as a saint?

Hildegard of Bingen!

Hildegard of Bingen was born around 1098 in present-day Germany. She started having visions at an early age and joined a Benedictine monastery as a child.

Around 1150 she composed a famous sacred music drama called Ordo Virtutum, or Order of the Virtues.

Hildegard of Bingen wasn’t just a composer. She also wrote theological works based on her visions, as well as scientific and medical texts.

Some modern popes have referred to her as a saint.   

Which composer murdered his first wife and was never punished for it?

Carlo Gesualdo!

In 1586, when he was twenty, Gesualdo married his first cousin, Donna Maria d’Avalos. They had one son.

Four years later, Gesualdo came home and discovered his wife in bed with another man. Gesualdo killed both his wife and her lover with a gun and sword.

The authorities decided he had not committed a crime.   

Which composer died after striking his foot with a staff he used while conducting?

Jean-Baptiste Lully!

Italian composer Jean-Baptiste Lully was both a dancer and musician.

He got a job in the court of Louis XIV. In 1687, to celebrate Louis’s recovery from surgery, he conducted a performance of his Te Deum.

He conducted by pounding a staff on the floor. In the process, he accidentally hit his foot. Gangrene developed and he refused to amputate because he still wanted to be able to dance.

Lully died on 22 March 1687 of his injuries.   

Which composer had seven kids with his second cousin, and thirteen kids with his second wife?

Johann Sebastian Bach!

In 1707, Johann Sebastian Bach married his second cousin, Maria Barbara Bach.

She died tragically and unexpectedly in July 1720.

The following year, Bach married an accomplished young singer named Anna Magdalena. She was twenty and he was thirty-six.

They had thirteen children together. Their youngest child, a daughter named Regina Susanna, was only eight years old when he died.   

Which composer wrote music for virtuoso orchestra of women who had been abandoned as babies?

Antonio Vivaldi!

He was a teacher at a facility known as the Ospedale della Pietà, which took care of orphaned or abandoned children.

As children, the most musically talented girls were chosen to perform in the figlie di coro, or daughters of the choir. They would both sing and play instruments.

Vivaldi wrote many of his works for them.   

Which composer had a dream that the devil played violin for him – and then woke up and wrote it down?

Giuseppe Tartini!

Giuseppe Tartini wrote in Jérôme Lalande’s Voyage d’un François en Italie:

One night, in the year 1713 I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul. Everything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted: my breath failed me, and I awoke. I immediately grasped my violin in order to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream.

Even so, Tartini insisted that the work was not nearly as impressive as the one he’d dreamed.   

Which composer was fired by an archbishop and kicked on the behind?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart!

In 1781, Mozart was aiming to ingratiate himself with Emperor Joseph II, while still remaining employed with Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo in his hometown of Salzburg.

Unfortunately, Colloredo kept Mozart from making lucrative appearances, and acrimony grew between them.

Mozart tried to resign, but Colloredo refused to accept the resignation.

Meanwhile, Mozart’s father was horrified at his son’s behavior and was encouraging him to make nice with the archbishop.

The following month, Colloredo finally accepted the resignation…but not before having his steward kick Mozart on the behind.

Mozart decided to make a go at freelancing in Vienna. The decision would change his life and career and music forever.   

Which composer was also one of the best swordsmen in Europe?

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges!

Bologne was the illegitimate son of a white planter named Georges and an enslaved Black woman named Nanon.

When he was seven, he was brought to France to be educated. At thirteen, he enrolled in a fencing academy. He soon proved to be a talented student.

A fencing master derided him by labeling him an “upstart mulatto.” Bologne beat that fencing master in a match, to the intense pride of his father.

Bologne also studied music as a teenager and became a great violinist and composer as an adult.    

Which composer had his skull stolen out of his coffin?

Joseph Haydn!

Haydn died in 1809 in Vienna and was buried. Soon after, the gravedigger was bribed by two men named Joseph Carl Rosenbaum and Johann Nepomuk Peter.

They wanted to examine Haydn’s skull because they were interested in phrenology, the pseudo-science then in vogue of associating character traits or talents with physical features.

Haydn’s skull ended up in Rosenbaum’s possession, and a series of darkly zany misadventures occurred.

Haydn’s skull and body were only reunited in the twentieth century, when a descendent of Haydn’s employer built a tomb for him.  

Which composer went deaf and had to be turned around to see the audience at the premiere of his ninth symphony?

Ludwig van Beethoven!

Beethoven was only in his mid-twenties in the 1790s when he first started noticing that his hearing was deteriorating.

By the time of the premiere of his ninth symphony in 1824, he had been completely deaf for a decade.

After the work’s first performance was over, he didn’t realize how the audience was applauding, and so singer Caroline Unger turned him around so he could see.  

Which composer and pianist were kept from marrying by the pianist’s father?

Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck!

Clara Wieck was born in 1819 and her music teacher father was insistent on molding her into a great musician.

Between his strict teaching regimen, his daughter’s astonishing inborn talent, and a little luck, Clara became one of the greatest pianists in Europe.

Another older piano student named Robert Schumann was rooming with the Wiecks. To Wieck’s horror, Robert and Clara fell in love. Robert proposed when she was eighteen, and she accepted.

Robert and Clara actually went to court to bypass Wieck. The court battle was bruising, but they were married in September 1840, the day before Clara’s 21st birthday.

Their love affair has since become one of the best-known love stories in the history of classical music.

Which composer and violinist did people think had made a deal with the devil?

Niccolò Paganini!

The violin has always had a bit of a demonic connotation (see the Devil’s Trill sonata!). This may have started because portable violin-like instruments were popular in dances during the Renaissance and had connections with physical love.

Violinist Niccolò Paganini was born in Italy in 1782, and he was so good at playing the instrument that audiences struggled to believe his talent had a natural explanation.

His appearance contributed to the myth. He was pale and vampiric, and looked like a cadaver.

He was also said to be a dangerous womanizer, which didn’t help his reputation!  

Which composer almost carried out a mass shooting – but didn’t because he was a composer?

Hector Berlioz!

Berlioz was a promising young composer when he became involved with pianist Marie Moke, sometimes known as Camille Moke. They became engaged when she was nineteen.

Berlioz traveled to Italy to compose. While there, he got news that she’d broken off the engagement and married an heir to a major piano making business by the name Camille Pleyel. (Yep: two Camilles in one marriage!)

Berlioz was so infuriated that he got on a carriage to go to Paris, carrying two pistols. He intended to shoot Moke, her mother, and then himself.

However, his rage eventually abated, and he decided not to go through with his violent plan, in part due to the music that the world would lose out on if he’d kill himself at the start of his career.

Beyond a doubt, it’s one of the most disturbing stories in classical music history.   

Which composer fell in love with Clara Schumann…but never married her?

Johannes Brahms!

Brahms was only twenty years old when he came to visit Robert and Clara Schumann in the autumn of 1853.

Both Robert and Clara were hugely impressed by the young man and took him under their wings. Robert even wrote a famous article in which he hailed Brahms as the savior of music.

In February 1854, Robert’s mental health issues came to a head, and he went to an asylum for treatment, leaving behind a distraught pregnant Clara and seven other young children.

Brahms tried to help Clara how he could, and, awkwardly, fell in love with her.

For a variety of reasons, even after Robert’s death, they never married. But they continued to love each other deeply and inspire one another creatively until Clara died in 1896.   

Which composer died after getting cholera from drinking unboiled water?

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky!

Tchaikovsky was feeling uncharacteristically optimistic after writing and premiering his famous sixth symphony – also known as the Pathetique – in October 1893.

However, his life was cut short just a few days later, when he went to a restaurant and drank a glass of unboiled water. There was a cholera outbreak in St. Petersburg at the time. Tchaikovsky came down with cholera and after an illness of just a few days’ duration, died.

Rumors have circulated that Tchaikovsky’s death was suicide or forced suicide. The New Grove Dictionary of Music reports, “We do not know how Tchaikovsky died. We may never find out.”  

Which composer and pianist had to get hypnotherapy to cure his writer’s block?

Sergei Rachmaninoff!

In 1897 composer Sergei Rachmaninoff suffered a humiliating premiere of his first symphony. The conductor may have been drunk, and the critics panned the work.

For three years, he couldn’t compose a thing, and he sank into a deep depression. After months of this, his aunt suggested that he seek help from a mental health professional, which he did.

He began working with a doctor named Nikolai Dahl, seeing him daily for four months in early 1900. He was composing again by the summer.

His next big work is perhaps his most famous – his second piano concerto. He dedicated the work to Dahl in appreciation.   

Which composer once claimed he only ate white food?

Erik Satie!

Satie wrote in his book, the amusingly titled Memoirs of an Amnesiac:

My only nourishment consists of food that is white: eggs, sugar, grated bones, the fat of dead animals, veal, salt, coconuts, chicken cooked in white water, fruit-mould, rice, turnips, camphorated sausages, pastry, cheese (white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (without their skin). I boil my wine and drink it cold mixed with the juice of the Fuchsia. I am a hearty eater, but never speak while eating, for fear of strangling.

This portion of the memoir is somewhat satirical, but it’s unclear exactly how much he was exaggerating.   

Which composer left his first wife, who later shot herself?

Claude Debussy!

Debussy met and married his first wife, Lilly Texier, in 1899.

Within four years, Debussy had grown bored of her. She wasn’t a sparkling intellect, and he felt she was too dull. She also never gave birth to a child, which disappointed Debussy.

Debussy’s solution to his marital troubles was to have an affair with a glamorous married singer named Emma Bardac.

The day before their fifth wedding anniversary, Lilly shot herself at the Place de la Concorde. She didn’t die, but the dramatic gesture didn’t save their marriage.

Debussy would eventually divorce Lilly and marry Bardac  .

Which composer never married and had a houseful of Siamese cats?

Maurice Ravel!

The perpetually single composer lived in a magical house called Belvedere outside Paris. Instead of a wife or lover or children, he filled Belvedere with various mechanical trinkets, Siamese cats, and music.

In his opera L’enfant et les sortilèges Ravel wrote an aria called Duo miaulé, or Meowed Duet. This work was clearly inspired by his cats.   

Which American composer died of a brain tumor in his late thirties?

George Gershwin!

In the mid-1930s, at the height of his creative powers, Gershwin began complaining about headaches, stomach aches, and other symptoms.

In 1937, while soloing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he had a brief seizure, followed by an olfactory hallucination of burning rubber.

He began deteriorating mentally, rubbing chocolate on his body and trying to shove a man out of a car. Doctors labeled him a hysteric.

However, when he went to the hospital for the last time, it was clear to doctors something was physically wrong. Gershwin was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died on the operating table   .

Conclusion

Classical music trivia is full of facts about generations of musicians and performers. We hope you enjoyed these twenty, and that they’re a good jumping off point to learn more!