Congratulations to the winners and runners-up, including more than one 100% correct answers. We'll be notifying you in the next few days.

1. Which composer died as a result of stabbing himself in the foot:

Jean-Baptiste Lully. In Lully's time (he died in 1687), conductors would beat time by tapping a walking stick or cane on the floor. While conducting a performance of a Te Deum, Lully stabbed his foot with his cane and died of the subsequent infection. Soon afterwards, possibly with this story in mind, the usage changed to the conductor's baton with which we are familiar today.

2. Which composer was refused entry to the Paris Conservatoire because he broke a window with a ball on the day of his entrance exam:

Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909), a child prodigy who first performed the piano at the age of four. The incident occurred at age seven.

3. In which famous opera do all the major events in the plot take place off-stage during the gaps between acts:

Verdi's Il Trovatore. Two executions, a duel and two battles happen off-stage, and we hear about them in descriptions sung to each other by the various characters.

4. What name links the work of Aaron Copland, Bob Dylan and John Bon Jovi:

Billy the Kid (real name William Bonney) is the title of Copland's 1938 ballet as well as being the subject of the Bon Jovi song “Billy Get Your Gun” and Dylan's 1973 film soundtrack album “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”.

5. Which composer received a letter from his father to explain his change of name, including the words “There can no more be a Christian ----- than there can be a Jewish Confucius":

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), whose full name was changed to Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy upon his baptism in 1816.

6. Which composer used to conduct the café bands in St Mark's Square in Venice:

Richard Wagner, who lived in Venice for the last years of his life. (The story may be apocryphal, coming as it does from a Venetian tour guide; see our blog entry about music in venice for details).

7. A portion of a waltz by this guitar composer is probably the world's most frequently heard melody of the last few years. Who is he (and, for a bonus point, why is the melody so frequently heard):

Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909), considered one of the fathers of modern classical guitar. The “Nokia Ring Tone” is taken from bars 14-17 of Tárrega's “Gran Vals”.

8. Which composer wrote a ballet featuring a collection of kitchen utensils as its characters:

Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959). His ballet “Kuchyňská revue” (“Kitchen Revue” or “La Revue de Cuisine”) features the unstable marriage of Pot and Lid, together with Twirling Stick, Broom and Dishcloth.

9. Which composer's head was severed from his body at burial, to be reunited after an absence of 145 years:

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), whose head was stolen by phrenologists who wished to study the association of genius with the shape of the cranium. After a macabre series of mishaps, it spent over a century in the Musikverein at Vienna (where Brahms would occasionally take it out and gaze at it for inspiration) before being returned to Haydn's grave in 1954.

10. If you were to drink a “Caipirinha” cocktail, with which composer's work might you find a connection:

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), whose “Little Train of the Caipira” (part of the Bachianas Brasileiras no.2) vividly depicts a train journey through the “Caipira” regions of Brazil.

11. “It is not possible, even in this licentious age, to publish one of -----'s more lecherous examples without running the risk of imprisonment for obscenity...” is quoted from a 1935 sleeve note featuring the work of which composer:

Henry Purcell (1659-1695), the author of many “catches”, a form of canon popular in Restoration England in which the words sung by each part combine to produce lewd or politically subversive results. The quote was found from this link.

12. Which composer joined a sea-captain and a painter to set up an institution for the “education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children":

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), whose immense generosity combined with that of the painter William Hogarth and the sea captain John Coram to set up the Foundling Hospital in London. Read our article about Handel and the Foundling Hospital here.

Happy new year to everyone.