Q.1
Which of these musical forms is the odd one out?
  • Round
  • Rondo
  • Fugue
  • Canon
Q.2
What is the correct term for music created spontaneously when a player, most typically of a keyboard or other harmonic instrument (maybe the harp or guitar), 'fills in' by making it up as they go along?
  • Impromptu
  • Arabesque
  • Extemporisation
  • Rhapsody
Q.3
Which instrument comes in variants including the concert, Celtic, cross-strung and chromatic?
  • Piano
  • Guitar
  • Harp
  • Lute
Q.4
Paul von Janko, in the 1880s, proposed a technical standardisation that could make life far simpler for vast numbers of musicians, but it did not gain popularity. What was it?
  • A piano keyboard with multiple rows of keys (almost more typewriter-style) each arranged in whole-tone scales, so all tonal keys would feel the same shape under the player's hands (and no more all-different scale fingerings, for instance)
  • Music staves running down the page instead of across, so that the 'rhythm axis' ran vertically and the 'pitch axis' left-to-right in keeping with the keys on a piano. The system was named Klavarskribo ('keyboard script'), and publicised, using the then-also-new planned international language, Esperanto
  • Janko realised it was somewhat perverse that in standard Western musical notation, the shorter a note lasts, the more ink is required to indicate this (a demi-semi-quaver has three tails; a semibreve, lasting over 30 times as long, doesn't even have a stem). He accordingly proposed an inverse scheme which would make music less cluttered on the eye while also saving space and expense for publishers, buyers and players alike
  • He invented the letter-notation system known as Tonic Sol-Fa
Q.5
Those sad souls who only recognise one organ piece, probably know this one as (and if they remember all of that right, they probably congratulate themselves on their erudition): it is of course that iconic pre-Gothic work which was arrestingly (if somewhat incongruously) used as the theme tune to the film , the one 'that goes: 'Da-da-dah ... ... ... da-da-da - dum - dum - DUM' ( )'. Which of the following points is still regarded as true about the origins of this piece?
  • There is an autograph score (i.e. a fair-copy in the composer's original manuscript) confirming this is one of Bach's own works
  • The title Toccata and Fugue is known to be genuine
  • The piece was indeed originated in the key of D minor, and for performance on the organ
  • (Pick this Answer only if you believe NONE of the above to be true)
Q.6
Fairly closely related to the Impromptu is the Humoresque (a work title which seems something of a hostage to fortune: 'Buy this and play it, but you can't claim your money back if your audience fails to smile or laugh'!).Who wrote the widely-familiar example of this genre, which also became fairly widely wedded to a set of semi-scurrilous lyrics from the world of railway travel (a world with which the composer himself was reportedly obsessed), and which began as follows: ?
  • Aaron Copland
  • Antonin Dvorak
  • Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
  • Aleksandr Borodin
Q.7
Many respected composers were nurtured on, or later absorbed and used, the folksongs of their native lands: Bela Bartok in Hungary, Ralph Vaughan Williams and several others in Britain; Canteloube with his enchanting and atmospheric , for instance. One of the pioneer activists in the British folksong movement was a man with a most splendidly appropriate name for this role: who was he?
  • Cedric Fidler
  • Joseph Singer
  • Cecil Sharp
  • Samuel Tunesmith
Q.8
Composers have always felt entitled to 'help themselves' from music happening around them in nature, the weather and human activity ~ birdsong, Chopin with his raindrops, Kenneth Alford with his March (reputedly starting with the two-tone whistle of this military gentleman before he took any shot on the golf course). Eric Coates in the 1930s wrote two Suites, the first of which starts with a movement depicting Covent Garden market, and which in turn incorporates a catchy, whistleable tune from an old London street-cry. Which is the title or catchphrase of this 'open-air commercial'?
  • A Pear for a Penny
  • Lavenders Blue
  • Who will buy my fresh red roses?
  • Cherry Ripe
Q.9
Standard modern concert pitch is such that the A above middle C represents a frequency of 440Hz (cycles per second); Baroque pitch has been (at least retrospectively) standardised to equate with A♭ in this tuning. What, therefore, is the frequency of Concert A at Baroque pitch?
  • 415Hz
  • 423Hz
  • 432Hz
  • 466Hz
Q.10
At the end of a musical event, British (and other English-speaking) audiences may request an from the artist/s: a piece performed again, or maybe something else appropriate to conclude the concert and bring everyone 'back down to earth' from whatever cultural and/or emotional heights they had been scaling together. Presumably it is felt duly sophisticated to use a foreign term to express this request. The French themselves do not use this term; what do they do or say instead, in the and elsewhere?
  • They call out 'Bis!' ( = 'twice' ; 'give us another'!)
  • They switch from irregular 'white-noise' applause into a long slow handclap
  • They stamp on the floor, slowly at first and then gradually accelerating until their request is acceded to
  • They stand up and clap above their heads
0 h : 0 m : 1 s