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November 7, 2011

To the Manor appointed

Categories: Fun — Tags: ,

Whether England still swings like a pendulum do, as Roger Miller sang in the sixties, we don’t know, but it definitely marches to a different drummer. And that leads us to today’s new question for TriviaPark.com, which concerns a high-falutin’ and quintessentially English…

Job search

Every now and then someone applies for the post of ‘steward and bailiff of the Manor of Northstead’ in Yorkshire, England. Why would they do so?

  1. In order to get out of doing something else
  2. In order to join Mind Your Manors, a British reality TV show
  3. In order to qualify for membership in the House of Lords
  4. In order to set the decrepit Manor to rights at last

Answer

November 6, 2011

An instrument for Erik

Categories: Fun — Tags: , , ,

Carrying on today with question 6 of what will ultimately be a 10-question music theory quiz for TriviaPark.com and AheadWithMusic.com, we look at a delightful and enigmatic French composer, and ask:

What do you play Satie on?

The French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) is well-known for the humorous and eccentric style of many of his compositions, which are chiefly for which instrument?

  1. Glockenspiel
  2. Piano
  3. Violin
  4. Voice

Answer

November 4, 2011

The concertmaster

Categories: Fun — Tags: , , ,

We finish the week half-way through our 10-question music theory quiz, now in preparation for TriviaPark.com and AheadWithMusic.com. Unlike some of the more technical questions in this quiz, today’s should fall within the general knowledge of many non-musicians, as we enquire about:

The concertmaster’s instrument

In every symphony orchestra there is one musician, second in rank only to the conductor, known as the concertmaster (or, in England, the leader). The concertmaster rank always belongs to the orchestra’s principal player of a particular instrument. Which one?

  1. Clarinet
  2. Oboe
  3. Piano
  4. Violin

Answer

November 2, 2011

The beautiful tongue

Categories: Fun — Tags: , , ,

Question 4 in our developing TriviaPark.com and AheadWithMusic.com music theory quiz concerns the use of the Italian language for expression markings and other musical terms. Fats Waller’s arrangement of the jazz standard Stardust is said to feature the tongue-in-cheek instruction tempo di sturb de neighbors, but our tone is a little more serious as we discuss:

Dying away

The Italian language has given us a widely-used lexicon for indicating expression in music. For example, the usual terms for ‘soft’ and ‘loud’ are the Italian words piano and forte. Sometimes Italian offers almost too much choice. The directions espirando, morendo and perdendosi all roughly mean ‘dying away’ — slowing down and fading out. Three of the words below also mean ‘dying away’. Which one is the exception?

  1. Calando
  2. Incalzando
  3. Mancando
  4. Smorzando

Answer

November 1, 2011

The grandest staff

Categories: Fun — Tags: , , ,

After yesterday’s excursion to the 1950s and Big Blue, now we’re back to facing the music quiz that’s currently in preparation for TriviaPark.com and AheadWithMusic.com. Today’s question, the third in the set, also includes a little physics. Specifically, we want to know:

How many lines can you hear?

An ordinary 5-line musical staff covers a musical interval of one octave and two notes (counting from its bottom line to the space just above, inclusive). How many lines would be required if the staff were to cover the entire range of human hearing (roughly 20 through 20,000 vibrations per second)?

  1. 36
  2. 54
  3. 80
  4. 128

Answer

Latest and greatest

Categories: Fun — Tags: ,

Although we’re currently concentrating on our first music education quiz for TriviaPark.com, concentration has never been our strongest point. For those of you who wouldn’t know which end of a treble clef to stir your coffee with, here’s a question in a quite different key.

It concerns the changing face of technology

In 1956, a new type of computer peripheral appeared on the market for the first time. What was the IBM 550?

  1. A disk drive
  2. A modem
  3. A printer
  4. A video display

Answer

October 31, 2011

Good old Bach

Categories: Fun — Tags: , , ,

Today we continue with the second question of our slowly ripening music quiz for TriviaPark.com, which is starting to look as though it will come out on the challenging side, particularly if you don’t happen to be some kind of music student. Don’t worry, however, because…

We’ve got your Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), the composer one generally means when speaking of ‘Bach’ without qualification, was but the most outstanding member of an exceptionally musical family. Indeed, several of the other Bachs retain some renown as composers to this day. All four listed here are in that category. Three are J.S. Bach’s own sons. The fourth was a grandson. Which?

  1. Johann Christian Bach
  2. Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach
  3. Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
  4. Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach

Answer

October 27, 2011

Listen to the mirlitons

Categories: Fun — Tags: , , ,

Although AHA! has been doing both trivia and music software for some time now, it’s only in the Mozart Quiz on TriviaPark.com that they have significantly overlapped. As a result, the music quiz that we are now compiling could be regarded as somewhat overdue. Facing the choice of doing it late or doing it never, we have consulted a book of proverbs and decided that now is probably the right time, so here goes.

We begin with an instrument

Musical instruments, the tools of musical expression, have been around more or less as long as human culture. One venerable and widespread instrument type is the mirliton, although it is usually called by another name. Which?

  1. Didgeridoo
  2. Drum
  3. Kazoo
  4. Xylophone

Answer

October 24, 2011

Cutting back

Categories: Fun — Tags: ,

New knowledge is often hard-won, to be gained only by protracted effort on the part of multiple workers, each responsible for some small advance. Occasionally, but importantly for those who compile trivia, the progress can be reported as a simple numeric value.

A case in point:

In 1981, Morwen Thistlethwaite proved that 52 were enough. Hans Kloosterman showed in 1992 that, actually, 42 would do. By 2010 it was known that in fact one can get by with as few as 20. What are they?

  1. Dietary nutrients needed for optimum health
  2. Gannet breeding pairs needed to establish a colony
  3. Moves needed to solve Rubik’s cube
  4. Syllables needed to communicate intelligibly

Answer

October 23, 2011

Grandmasterville

Categories: Fun — Tags: ,

Life is full of strange or suggestive coincidences that may sometimes make us stop and think. Some coincidences are so striking that they become famous. These are one of nature’s leading sources of trivia questions. In the fullness of geologic time, many of them turn up on TriviaPark.com.

For example:

A few years ago, in 2005, one national capital city could boast of a unique record: that its inhabitants included the largest concentration ever of chess grandmasters. Which city was home to this remarkable abundance of chess talent?

  1. Copenhagen, Denmark
  2. Kiev, Ukraine
  3. Reykjavik, Iceland
  4. Ottawa, Canada

Answer

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