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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Walter Gieseking played piano at what age?
(a) 5.
(b) 7.
(c) 9.
(d) 4.

2. What album by Glenn Gould is described as combining personality, ideas, bouncing rhythm and fast tempos?
(a) "Rhapsody in Blue."
(b) "Goldberg Sonata in D Minor."
(c) "Moonlight Sonata."
(d) "Goldberg Variations."

3. What contemporary pianist of Teresa Carreno called her a "goddess" despite her lack of discipline?
(a) Percy Grainger.
(b) Alfred Grunfeld.
(c) Vassily Sapellnikoff.
(d) Claudio Arrau.

4. Whose powerful opening made orchestra conductor Eugen Pabst leave the podium to watch his hands and the "audience went wild"?
(a) Arthur Rubinstein.
(b) Claude Debussy.
(c) David Tudor.
(d) Vladimir Horowitz.

5. When did Josef Hofmann make his Hamburg debut?
(a) 1894.
(b) 1915.
(c) 1902.
(d) 1870.

6. What nickname did the pianist Leopold Godowsky go by?
(a) "The Little Giant."
(b) "Brahma of the Keyboard."
(c) "Chopinzee."
(d) "The Piano God."

7. Whose austere Russian appearance produced organized, impeccably delivered serious sonorities with musical elegance and exquisitely finished phrases?
(a) Josef Lhevinne's.
(b) Paderewski's.
(c) Isadora Duncan's.
(d) Sergei Rachmaninoff's.

8. Under whom did Leopold Godowsky study for three years?
(a) Percy Grainger.
(b) Moriz Rosenthal.
(c) Saint-Saens.
(d) Alfred Grunfeld.

9. At what age did Isaac Albeniz hide on a ship crossing the Atlantic to Puerto Rico and play in his French musketeer costume for passengers?
(a) 12.
(b) 13.
(c) 14.
(d) 15.

10. Ernest Hutcheson became president of what school of music?
(a) Juilliard School of Music.
(b) Carnegie Mellon School of Music.
(c) Vienna School of Music.
(d) New York University School of Music.

11. What nickname did the pianist Vladimir de Pachmann acquire?
(a) "The Maestro."
(b) "Chopinzee."
(c) "Brahma of the Keyboard."
(d) "The Little Giant."

12. Where was the pianist Ernest Hutcheson from?
(a) Germany.
(b) Australia.
(c) Russia.
(d) Canada.

13. In Chapter XXXVI, Bach a la Mode, the author comments on a trend that was unfashionable to play Bach on piano since whose resurgent harpsichord playing?
(a) Chopin's.
(b) Beethoven's.
(c) Landowska's.
(d) Glenn Gould's.

14. When did Harold Bauer make his American debut?
(a) 1885.
(b) 1900.
(c) 1910.
(d) 1799.

15. Vladimir de Pachmann dressed in a smelly, old gown he claimed was whose?
(a) Emil von Sauer's.
(b) Beethoven's.
(c) Chopin's.
(d) Bach's.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where was the pianist Claudio Arrau from?

2. What Russian composer and pianist initially developed a highly lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin?

3. Where was Rudolf Serkin sent to study at the age of nine?

4. Who was world exponent of ultra-avant-garde pianism because he could read the new printed notes that required playing simultaneously piano keyboard, sounding board and strings, tape recorder and kazoo?

5. With whom did Arthur Rubinstein share an uneasy friendship but recognized each other's strengths?

(see the answer keys)

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