Good ways to get familiar with Fine Arts/Literature?

[EasyBakeOven]

Hi, I'm from Lexington High School and my team is new to the Quiz Bowl scene. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get familiar with Fine Arts and Literature ? We read the You Gotta Know lists and have read questions, but we are still having trouble getting a strong grasp on those topics. Are there any resources that other people have found helpful for studying these two topics?

[Mewto55555]

Make a list of composers/artists/authors that come up enough that they're worth knowing and look up their major works (or, even better if you have the time, listen/look at/read them).

[Beevor Feevor]

A notebook to keep track of all of the ones you hear of would be helpful. Later on, after the competition or practice, go online and research the ones you missed or didnt get quickly enough, taking notes on them for review as well. That might help (although I'm not a wonderful lit player, mind you).

[Eddie]

Spotify's been surprisingly helpful for music - by searching up an artist/composer, I can see what their best-known works are and listen to them on-the-go.

[nedsanger]

ACE has a pretty in-depth guide for learning composers that can be found here: http://acequizbowlcamp.com/wp-content/u ... posers.pdf
That guide should be helpful for getting questions on composers, but to learn clues about pieces of music that get tossed up (e.g. The Messiah, Carnival of the Animals, Pictures at an Exhibition, The Four Seasons, etc.) your best bet is probably to go on Wikipedia and read about some of the famous movements in that piece (especially what that movement is depicting). For opera just go online, read the plots, and learn the names of some arias (a good webpage for this is http://www.opera-opera.com.au/plotind.htm).

For Visual arts, you can learn about most of the sculptors and architects that come up from their respective NAQT guides (http://naqt.com/YouGottaKnow/sculptors.html and http://naqt.com/YouGottaKnow/architects.html). I haven't seen any general guide to painters so I'd recommend just downloading packets and writing down clues from the visual tossups/bonuses. If you want to go a little more in-depth than that you can go to quizbowldb.com and use the search function to quickly find more tossups on whoever/whatever it is you're learning about, which you can then use to look for clues that come up often. Lastly, though I can't give a specific explanation on how to do this, try to learn to fraud some of the paintings that get tossed up frequently, because when it sounds like The Ambassadors, it usually is.

[vinteuil]

To learn clues about pieces of music that get tossed up (e.g. The Messiah, Carnival of the Animals, Pictures at an Exhibition, The Four Seasons, etc.) your best bet is probably to go on Wikipedia and read about some of the famous movements in that piece (especially what that movement is depicting). For opera just go online, read the plots, and learn the names of some arias (a good webpage for this is http://www.opera-opera.com.au/plotind.htm).

This is especially important considering that so many music tossups get written at least majorly from wikipedia, which, I hasten to add, generally has decent overviews of operas as well.