Music Quiz

Answer: Chopin. The famous funeral march is the third movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2, completed in 1839 (the march itself dates from 1837). Its solemn slowness made it the funeral music par excellence, played at state funerals all over the world.

Answer: 7. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti: their names come from a Latin hymn to Saint John the Baptist in which each line began one note higher. In the 11th century the monk Guido of Arezzo took ‘ut, re, mi…’ from it; ‘ut’ later became ‘do’, easier to sing.

Answer: French horn. The French horn descends from the hunting horn used during royal hunts.

Answer: guitar. Carlos Santana blends rock, blues and Latin rhythms. Revealed by his set at the Woodstock festival in 1969, he made a triumphant comeback in 1999 with the album Supernatural, which won 8 Grammy Awards.

Answer: The staff. The 11th-century monk Guido of Arezzo is credited with using lines to fix the pitch of notes, which until then were passed on by memory. Gregorian chant used 4 lines; the 5-line staff later became the standard for all music.

Answer: Pink Floyd. The Wall (1979) tells the story of a rock star walling himself in his isolation. ‘Another Brick in the Wall’, with its children's choir, became a worldwide hit. Roger Waters performed the work in Berlin in 1990, where the Wall had just fallen.

Answer: Tchaikovsky. Premiered in Saint Petersburg in 1892, The Nutcracker became the Christmas ballet par excellence. In the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’, Tchaikovsky used the celesta, a brand-new instrument he had discovered in Paris and kept secret until the premiere.

Answer: Thriller. Released in 1982, Michael Jackson's Thriller is estimated to have sold about 70 million copies. Seven of its nine tracks were released as singles, and the video for ‘Thriller’, a 14-minute short film, revolutionised music videos.

Answer: Oasis. Written by Noel Gallagher and sung by his brother Liam, ‘Wonderwall’ appears on the 1995 album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. Its title is borrowed from an album by George Harrison of the Beatles, a major influence on the band.

Answer: Ben E. King. Released in 1961, ‘Stand by Me’ was inspired by a gospel song. It enjoyed a second life in 1986 thanks to Rob Reiner's film of the same name, and has been covered hundreds of times, from John Lennon to Florence + The Machine.

Answer: Carmen. First performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1875, Carmen shocked audiences with its free-spirited heroine and her death on stage. Bizet died three months later, never knowing the worldwide triumph of his work, now among the most performed operas.

Answer: Ravel. Maurice Ravel composed the Boléro in 1928 for dancer Ida Rubinstein.

Answer: Oberto. Oberto is Verdi's first opera, premiered in 1839.

Answer: Haydn. Joseph Haydn composed 104 symphonies and established their classical four-movement form. Nicknamed ‘Papa Haydn’, he was Mozart's friend and the young Beethoven's teacher. His ‘Surprise’ Symphony wakes listeners with a sudden, very loud chord.

Answer: Largo. Largo means 'broad' and indicates a very slow movement.

Answer: Leonard Cohen. Leonard Cohen is said to have written about 80 verses for ‘Hallelujah’, released in 1984 to little notice. Jeff Buckley's 1994 cover, then its use in the film Shrek, made it one of the most covered songs in the world.

Answer: Trumpet. Like the violin among the strings, the trumpet is the highest and brightest of the brass instruments, and it often carries the melody. Its three valves, used in combination, allow it to play every note in its range.

Answer: 3/4. The waltz is danced to three beats, the first one stressed: ‘ONE-two-three’. Coming from Austria, it triumphed in 19th-century Vienna with the Strauss family; ‘The Blue Danube’ (1867) is its most famous example. It was first considered indecent because the dancers held each other close.

Answer: Fleetwood Mac. Rumours was recorded amid chaos: one couple in the band divorcing, another breaking up… The songs are about these separations. The result sold more than 40 million copies, one of the biggest successes in rock history.

Answer: Koto. Brought from China around the 7th or 8th century, the koto is a long wooden zither, usually with 13 strings, laid on the floor. It is played with picks worn on three fingers, and movable bridges are used to tune it.