Final Jeopardy: Russian Composers (5-15-19)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (5/15/2019) in the category “Russian Composers” was:
A 1913 piece by him was conceived of as the symphonic equivalent of a pagan ritual, to be titled “Great Sacrifice”
In the last semi-final of the 2019 Teachers Tournament, we have Conor Quinn, a world history teacher from Albany, NY; Dave Rowswell, an art teacher from Cheyenne, WY; and Matthew Bunch, a civics and world history teacher from Miami, FL.
Click here to leave well wishes and prayers for Alex Trebek. There’s also a link to where you can make a donation to pancreatic cancer research in his honor.
Round 1 Categories: Recent Politics – More Than 1 Meaning – Food Stuff – Geographic Sevens – As Described in the Patent – Teachers in Song
Dave found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Described in the Patent” under the $1,000 clue on the 15th pick of the round. He was in third place with $200, $3,600 less than Matthew’s lead. He made his boss happy by saying “I’m all in, Alex” and he was RIGHT.
1893: “automatically engaging or disengaging an entire series of clasps by a single continuous movement” show
Matthew finished in the lead with $5,200. Conor was second with $5,000 and Dave was last with $4,800.
Round 2 Categories: Ancient Battles – Classic Foreign Films – Women Authors – Studying for the Test – Add Some Consonants – Math, Teachers
Dave went DD hunting and found the first Daily Double in “Classic Foreign Films” under the $1,600 clue on the second pick. He was in third place with $3,600 now, $1,600 less than Matthew’s lead. He made it a true Daily Double and he was RIGHT.
In Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”, a disillusioned knight plays a game of chess with this opponent. show
Conor found the last Daily Double in “Ancient Battles” under the $1,200 clue on the 12th pick. In second place with $7,800, he had $2,200 less than Dave’s lead. He bet $3,500 and he was RIGHT.
Horses were terrified of these war beasts, which routed Roman cavalry at the 280 B.C. Battle of Heraclea. show
Dave finished in the lead with $15,200. Conor was next with $12,500 and Matthew was in third place with $9,600.
Only ONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
ClassicFM.com has an article with comments from Stravinsky himself about the riot at the 1913 premiere of The Rite of Spring. It says the composer believed the crowd “came for Scheherazade or Cleopatra, and they saw the Sacre du Printemps” (the French title)…. The curtain opened on a group of knock-kneed and long-braided lolitas, jumping up and down. The storm broke. I went out, I said ‘go to hell’….”
From 1990: CLASSICAL MUSIC ($600) Many date the birth of modern music to the riotous 1913 premiere of this composer’s “The Rite of Spring”
Matthew thought it was Tchaikovsky. He lost his $300 bet and finished with $9,300.
Conor got it right. His $6,701 bet brought him up to $19,201.
Dave was going for Rachmaninoff but kinda left a syllable out with “Rachmonov.” He lost $9,801, dropping him down to $5,399. So we will be seeing Conor Quinn, Francois Barcomb and Sara DelVillano in the finals for the next two days.
2 triple stumpers from the last round:
CLASSIC FOREIGN FILMS ($1200) The 1989 action film “The Killer” was a thrill ride from this Hong Kong director
WOMEN AUTHORS ($1600) How about those Gilbert sisters– memoirist Elizabeth & this author of kids’ books like “Heaven is Paved with Oreos”
2 years ago: TWO of the players got this FJ in “Eras in U.S. History ”
On April 11, 1865 Abraham Lincoln spoke of “the mode, manner, and means of” this, which he would not live to see. show
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So, tomorrow will be the beginning of a two-day final, with the winner earning a spot in the 2019 ToC. And, I’m very nervous about the second semifinal of Eurovision 2019 because if Romania, Sweden, and “North” Macedonia qualify, it would be disastrous. I hope it won’t happen like in the first semifinal which saw the qualification of San Marino, one of my worst entries.
Well, Dave was certainly enjoying this game. He looked so happy even after he knew he was wrong in FJ, I thought he had it and was gonna win. Kudos to Conor for the lone solve.
Matthew would not get out of that Math category and go to the 3 clues in Women Authors! omg! Could they know anything less about Women Authors than they did in Math? I think not but no one could get control of the board away from him until Dave got the $200 clue. Then the buzzer went off!
LINK: 14 more clues from the game
Wow,on the math category not even the writers cuteness saved one more clue—” Math-minded cows might graze over this…”
yeah, Cece, but it was the only one that saved me. lol !! My brain doesn’t like math 😮
That is so funny, VJ!! At least your brain used common sense to work that one out 🙂
uh no, it wasn’t common sense….
it was “home, home on the range” 🎸
It just popped in my head. I honestly don’t even try to answer most math and science clues unless the answer pops up like that
That is something; of all songs! (Loved the little guitar.)
I really hope that one of the finalists hopefully Sara will win the two day final. I mean this question was pretty easy if the other two guys knew about Stravinsky Violin concerto and so forth. Tchaikovsky did the nutcracker and Swan Lake so it wasn’t a bad guess, but dave’s guess was not even close. By the way VJ, you listened to plenty of classical music if I am not mistaken what was your favorite Stravinsky music?
@Lou, sorry, classical music is not my thing
I hope she’ll win.
Hey, at least Rachmaninoff was alive in 1913! Tchaikovsky had been dead for 22 years… 🙂
Interestingly (indulge me here: the semester is over so I’m now a musicologist with time on her hands), rumors of a Rite riot have been greatly exaggerated. Certainly people laughed and made noise at the premiere, though that was due at least as much to Nijinsky’s jerky, ungraceful choreography and Roerich’s primitivist sets and costumes as it was to Stravinsky’s music. But a riot? Not so much. My fellow musicologist (and former Jeopardy! contestant!) Linda Shaver-Gleason does a great job of exploding that myth on her blog.
By the way, the quotation you included is Peak Stravinsky, VJ: keen to paint himself as a tradition-busting modernist, he very often overrated audiences’ shock at hearing his music and underrated his debts to other composers (particularly his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov). Here, with his dig at a bourgeois crowd who “came for Scheherazade” (by the very same Rimsky-Korsakov!), he manages to do both at once! 🙂
My favorite piece by Stravinsky is Petrushka. I find it so incredibly charming!
@AM, thanks so much for the additional information! Much appreciated. I enjoyed reading Linda’s blog post. It makes perfect sense that what happened would get blown up in the retelling.
P.S. I found that Stravinsky quote from Classical FM most amusing. 😃
None of these players are a Holzhauer, and Holzhauer’s first game aired two days after this week of shows taped.
This is not gonna be an easy 2 game final. Francois, Conor, and Sara? Sara and Conor won’t be able to catch up with Francois on Friday and tomorrow.
I don’t think so, Richard. Sara or Conor could challenge Francois. If Francois wins the TT, he will be posing a threat on James Holzhauer.
Ooh. Actually, James Holzhauer will easily beat him after he gets to the $2,000,000 mark.