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Anton Bruckner!

Absolutely! You are correct Matt, it was Anton Bruckner! And in honor of this thread and your answer I am playing this Bruckner 9:



I called probably my most famous piece, "a piece for orchestra without music." It is a seventeen-minute crescendo without development, but with fantastic orchestration! I said "Once the idea for using only one theme was discovered, any conservatory student could have done as well."

Who am I?

Maurice Ravel

Yes Chris, it is Maurice Ravel, and Bolero!

I was one of my century's greatest pianists. In one of my performances in a cowboy town in the Old West, an hour before the performance a worker stuck his head in my dressing room and asked, "Don't you think, boss, it's about time to have your face blacked?"

Who am I?

I give up, gryph! [img]http://tinypic.com/2jcozq[/img]

More clues, please!!

d

Bump, and a few more clues.

I founded the Imperial Conservatory in St. Petersburg. I wowed my audiences by performing 140 major works without music, from memory, a feat that has never since been attempted.

(Maybe this thread is dead).

I know, I know!!!

but i cant remember. Starts with an R. His grandnephew was a famous pianist here in the states. (thats the name I can't remember, even though I know it.... the OTHER guys name, though it is the same, I never really knew.

Its not Oscar Peterson cause that doesn't start with an "R" RUBINSTEIN! thats it, isn't it? Anton?

Yes! It was Anton Rubinstein, one of Russia's greatest pianists!

I was surely one of the fastest composers in history. My finest masterpieces seldom took more than a week to compose. When the conductor Sir Charles Halle asked me whether it was true that Rossini wrote The Barber of Seville in two weeks, I replied, "I quite believe it, he has always been such a lazy fellow." When a theater manager was let down by another composer, he asked me to help him out. He needed an opera in two weeks and asked me to rework an older one. I shot back, "Are you making fun of me? I am not accustomed to patching up my old operas, let alone another composer's. I'll give you a new opera in foruteen days." The result is often called my greatest work.

Who am I?

Donizetti?

d

Yes, it was Gaetano Donizetti! Who, when asked which of his operas he thought was the best, answered, "How can I say which? A father always has a preference for a crippled child, and I have so many."

I spent most of my short life destitute and struggling. My parents were penniless and I never received a thorough musical education, but I composed hundreds of pieces, dozens which are considered standard repertoire today. I went to bed with my glasses on so I could began working as soon as I awoke. To a friend who saw my room littered with manuscripts, I said, "When I finish one piece, I begin another." Mired in poverty, I wrote in my diary, "It sometimes seems to me as if I did not belong to this world at all."

Who am I?

Franz Schubert. I guess he broke quite a few glasses during his lifetime.

Yes, it was Franz Schubert! Time for a real hard one, and an alternate easier one.

Hard one:

As a young man my friend and I visited the celebrated violin master Eugene Ysaye. When we arrived, Ysaye was practicing from memory Lalo's Violin Concerto in F. Knowing this composition very well, I noticed Ysaye playing different notes than the composer had written. When he finished, Ysaye asked me, "Well? What do you think?" I was afraid to contradict him, but I told him it was marvelous, only not quite right. It wasn't accurate. "What? Rene, did you hear that? Rene, this pig has the effrontery to tell me that it wasn't right!" Ysaye then thrust his violin at me and yelled, "Rene, now you are going to see something! This pig is going to play the Concerto in F of Lalo for me!" I was paralyzed with fear, and no amount of apology would satisfy Ysaye, so I began to play. When I finished the first movement, the old master admitted, "He is right. I must look at the score after lunch." He gave me a slap on the back and said, "He is brave. He has talent. We will have lunch together."

Who am I?

Easier one:

When one of my operettas premiered, a powerful critic wrote that he loathed the work! He attacked my work with so great an enmity in the newspaper that it had the opposite effect from what the critic desired. Everyone had to see what had prompted such outrageous criticism, and soon the performance was sold out. The public loved it, and this incident made me rich and famous.

Who am I?

[img]http://tinypic.com/2krbps[/img]
d

Hard answer: Arthur Hartman
Easier answer: Jaques Offenbach (and the operetta was Orpheus in the Underground)

When I wrote a popular song of mine I was truly crying out for help. I was very fat, very insecure. I am singing about when I was so much younger than all the rest, looking back on how easy it was. I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for help.

Who am I?

gryph,

BOTH of the last ones were tough -- thanks for FINALLY giving the answers!

As for the current mystery composer... would he have been John Lennon ( Help! )?

d

Yes, it is John Lennon and Help.

My daughter and I tried unsuccessfully to break into the music business for years. We created a good demo tape, but no label was interested, so I went back to work doing what I was trained as, a nurse. I was working in ER one day when a girl was admitted who had been in an automobile accident. She also happened to be the daughter of a top RCA record producer. During her recovery I gave her a copy of our demo. A few weeks later we were asked to sing for RCA, and soon we had a contract.

Who am I?

Naomi Judd?

Yes, justme, it is Naomi Judd!

I'm not dead yet!

I wish to speak of my death. This sad event took place in Santiago three months prior. I was carried off in three days by a frightful attack of black vomit. It is the newspaper of Savana la grande who tells it. But the Revue de Villa Clara, without a doubt better informed, makes me succumb to an aneurism of the heart--which I much prefer, the aneurism being much more poetical than the vomit. I wrote to these gentlemen, assuring them that I was still alive, and requested them to publish my letter when it reached them.

I was also known for my monster concerts, so named because they used as many as 14 pianos and 28 pianists simultaneously!

Who am I?

You're NOT who you think you are!