- Debussy
Liszt
Stravinsky
Beethoven
Bach
Schubert
Mozart
Gershwin
2) The premiere of his impressionistic "Rites of Spring" presented the audience with much more dissonance than they had been accustomed. They hated it and thought it was crap. They demanded their money back, and when they didn't get that, they decided to take out their outrage on the composer. Fortunately, he had fled via the back door, escaping a lynching.
3) His impressionist piece about a baby deer also presented a baffled audience with a "strange new musical style". But rather than being angered, the audience was intrigued, and asked him to play the piece a second time so they could become more familiar with it,
4) His father taught him to play violin at a young age, and he became a child prodigy who, by the age of 6, was performing for all the kings and queens of europe.
5) He wanted to study music with a renowned french composer, but that composer refused, insisting that formal training would likely ruin the would-be student's natural talent for mixing classical music with popular music,
6) He had 13 children. A few of them became musicians, and although they made a living at it, and occasionally their music is still played today, none of the kids achieved the historical renown that their dad did.
7) His last symphony was "unfinished" because he died before he could complete it.
8) He was renowned as an accomplished pianist, and made his living primarily by giving concerts. He was also one of the first "rockstar showmen". During a particularly fast and powerful passage, he would collapse from the piano bench and fake fainting in exhaustion, to get the attention and interest of the young women in the audience.