Sunday, May 13, 2012

Answers to "The Musical Contest"

Towards the end of last month I put up, just for fun, a little musical contest. But no-one wanted to submit answers! Which was the main reason I put it up. The other day I tried it out on a retired opera producer and he found it very difficult. So I guess it was fun for me, but not fun for you. You shoulda just said: fuggedaboudit!!

Anyway, here are the answers:
  1. Smetana, in 1874 at fifty years of age.
  2. Drums, bass, guitar, organ.
  3. Either none, one, two or three, depending on how you look at it. We have no complete concerto for cello by Mozart. There are two tiny fragments that might indicate lost concertos, or ones he did not complete. There is a concerto in D major for cello transcribed in the 1940s from a couple of oboe concertos by Mozart.
  4. Bass.
  5. Osvaldo Golijov.
  6. Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan (who also can't really play the harmonica).
  7. The viola.
  8. Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Mama Cass.
  9. Richard Wagner (and why is this not really surprising?).
  10. Shostakovich on a bet in either 1927 or 8.
  11. Spike, in the musical episode "Once More With Feeling" from season six.
  12. Mozart.

4 comments:

Joel Lo said...

actually I was thinking in funny answers but even for that, the questions were so hard, so I gave up hehehe.

Nathan Shirley said...

I knew most of the classical related ones (didn't remember hearing any Mozart cello concerti), but only one of the popular music questions. I'm not a big fan of tests, though the questions were entertaining to read!

forex robot said...

Thats very tough so i donot know the answer , sorry , otherwise i can give you the answers.

Bryan Townsend said...

So, a little bit fun, but not worth the effort.

This is what happens when you do too many doctoral seminars in musicology!