Skill-Testing Question

Back in music school they have things like listening tests, dictation, sight-singing and other little tests of your knowledge and abilities. Occasionally I have put up a little quiz here that has usually been received with horror and dismay. Today I am just going to put up a brief excerpt from a score. Here it is:

Looks simple enough, right? Ok, what piece is it? What composer? What century was it written? If you answer correctly you get a lifetime subscription to The Music Salon! With free comment privileges.

I will provide the answers in a couple of days. I don't think there is a way you can use Google Search to find the answer, but I could be wrong.

Good luck!

Answers to the quiz

Last Friday I put up these questions:

1. How many albums did the Sex Pistols release?
2. What is the difference between serialism and dodecaphonic composition?
3. Who, of these famous guitar players, is still alive? Eric Clapton, B. B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Francesco Corbetta.
4. How many different pitches comprise an Italian augmented sixth chord?
5. What does the title of Adele's latest album, 25, refer to?
6. What pitch is the highest string of a Renaissance lute tuned to? A Baroque lute?
7. How many tympani players are needed to perform Berlioz' Requiem?
8. If you were dancing a branle, what country would you likely be in?
9. In music theory, what is a pedal?
10. Also in music, what does "Sturm und Drang" refer to?

Just like the last time, I didn't get many answers! Here are the correct ones:

1. Although Wikipedia has details on a number of releases after the band broke up, there really was only one official, studio album released: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
2. These two terms refer to basically the same thing: music composed using a pre-determined "row" of all twelve pitches.
3. Just Eric Clapton.
4. Three. In C major they are A flat, C and F#.
5. Her age when she was writing the songs.
6. Nominally, a G. On a Baroque lute, an F.
7. Ten.
8. France.
9. A long, held note, over which the other voices move freely.
10. A period in the 1770s when Joseph Haydn, in particular, wrote a number of very emotional symphonies, often in minor keys. It is often linked to the literary movement with the same name.

As an envoi to this post, here is one of Haydn's Sturm und Drang symphonies, the Symphony No. 44 in E minor, nicknamed the Trauer Symphony ("Mourning"):

We have a winner! Answers to the quiz

You could find most of these just by Googling, but here are the questions:

1. What is a "tam-tam"?
2. How many strings on a mid-16th century lute?
3. On Sylvius Leopold Weiss' lute?
4. What is the order of instrumental solos on Archie Bell and the Drells' 1968 hit "Tighten Up"?
5. What is "automatic double-tracking"?
6. What does MIDI stand for?
7. How many cents in a semitone?
8. Who was Janáček's muse?
9. What solo instrument did Chopin write for other than the piano?
10. Who wrote the longest string quartet ever composed?

Answers:

1. A large, suspended gong.
2. Eleven: five doubled courses and one single.
3. The typical instrument would have 13 courses, all but one (or two) of which would be double, for a total of 25 strings. It was joked that a sixty-year-old Baroque lutenist had spent about twenty years tuning...
4. Drums, bass, guitar, organ.
5. A technique developed by the twenty-year-old engineer Ken Townsend to save time (around the time Revolver was being recorded). The Beatles had developed the technique of recording the lead vocal twice which gave it much more presence and intensity. This took up a lot of time so he developed a way of delaying the signal by microscopic amounts which gave the same final effect.
6. Musical Instrument Digital Interface (According to Wikipedia: "is a technical standard that describes a protocol, digital interface and connectors and allows a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers and other related devices to connect and communicate with one another.")
7. 100, duh!
8. Kamila Stösslová, whom he met when she was 26 and married and he was 63 (and also married, but separated). She was the inspiration for the late life burst of creativity that produced most of the pieces that he is famous for.
9. The cello.
10. Morton Feldman, about six hours duration.

If you got ten out of ten, then you might be eligible for a tenured position as professor of musicology somewhere.

Congratulations to Robin, who got seven out of ten with these answers:

1. A tam-tam is a large orchestral gong
2. I am going to guess 6 courses for 15 strings for that time period
3. and by Weiss, maybe 13 courses, so 25 strings
4.no idea
5.we used to do this in analogue recording, a second voice added to the original via tape delay
6. MIDI is musical instrument digital interface
7. 100
8. Kamila . . . . . cannot remember her last name
9. Voice?
10. Feldman

Chopin did write for the voice, but the question specified "instrument" and the only instrument he wrote solos for, other than the piano, was the cello. Here is the Cello Sonata in G minor, op. 65: