Accordion Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
58 free Accordion trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The accordion has been mocked, banned from nothing, and quietly become the most-played instrument on Earth if you count China. This quiz takes the squeezebox seriously: where the name comes from, Buschmann and Berlin, Cyrill Demian's Vienna patent, Wheatstone's concertina, Tula's 700,000 instruments a year, and how bellows, reeds, bisonoric action and the Stradella bass system actually work. You will also travel with the instrument: Castelfidardo and Stradella, Hohner in Trossingen, the bandoneon in Buenos Aires, the bayan in Russia, melodeons and Steirische Harmonikas, forró's bellows shake, vallenato, merengue, zydeco's rubboard and Clifton Chenier, Flaco Jiménez, Lawrence Welk and the happy Norwegian, Alban Berg's Wozzeck, and Weird Al's parents' fateful choice. Easy questions suit any music fan; the expert tier asks for Finnish quarter-tone innovators and 1854 method books. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the accordion, its relatives and its players, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on musical instruments and on world music.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The accordion takes its name from a German word meaning what?
Musical chord
Musical chord is the meaning of the German Akkord: the Viennese maker who patented the name in 1829 was proudest that a single key could sound a complete chord.
Q 02The accordion belongs to which family of instruments?
Free reed aerophones
Free reed aerophones sound when air sets a thin tongue swinging through a slot, but only from one side, so an accordion carries two reeds for every note: one for the push and one for the pull.
Q 03Which author, later famous for 'Brokeback Mountain', wrote the 1996 novel Accordion Crimes?
Annie Proulx
Annie Proulx followed The Shipping News with the story of a single accordion: built by a Sicilian maker who sails for America, it passes from one immigrant owner to the next for a century.
Q 04Many credit a German teenager's 1822 'Handäoline' as the first accordion; in which city was it reputedly made?
Berlin
Berlin is the usual answer, though not one document of the time backs the claim for young Friedrich Buschmann, which is why others date the accordion from the 1829 patent that gave it its name.
Q 05Who patented an instrument called the accordion in Vienna in 1829?
Cyrill Demian
Cyrill Demian's first model had only five keys on one side: his patent argued that doubling it up for both hands would simply make the instrument heavier and more expensive.
Q 06What was the trade of the Viennese inventor who patented the accordion in 1829?
Organ and piano maker
Organ and piano maker was the family trade: he filed the patent with his sons Karl and Guido, pitching the little box at travellers as easy to carry and playable by an amateur.
Q 07Which rock band had a 1970s hit with 'Squeeze Box', a song named after a nickname for the accordion?
The Who
The Who's Pete Townshend wrote it after buying an accordion and learning to play it in a single afternoon; he meant it as a dirty joke and was amazed when it became a hit.
Q 08Which English inventor, a pioneer of the electric telegraph, patented the concertina in 1829?
Charles Wheatstone
Charles Wheatstone is best remembered for the Wheatstone bridge, a circuit he made famous but did not devise: it was the work of the mathematician Samuel Christie. The concertina was all his own.
Q 09Which Russian city, long famed for samovars and gunsmiths, made Russia's earliest known accordions around 1830?
Tula
Tula's craftsmen copied an accordion that had arrived from Germany, and the new trade took off so fast that the instrument became one of the town's signature products.
Q 10Which part of an accordion is the player's main means of expression, shaping every swell and fade?
The bellows
The bellows do what touch does on a piano: an accordion's keys sound no louder however hard they are struck, so every change of volume comes from the push and pull.
Q 11Accordion reeds are typically made from strips of which materials?
Brass or steel
Brass or steel tongues come in pairs, and beside each sits a small leather or plastic flap: it seals the idle reed so that no air leaks past it while its partner sounds.
Q 12On a 'bisonoric' accordion, what does each button do?
Changes note between push and pull
Changes note between push and pull, as a harmonica does between blow and draw: because every button does double duty, ten of them are enough for a range of more than two octaves.
Q 13What is the standard full-size accordion called, after its number of left-hand buttons?
120-bass
Q 21Which Russian chromatic button accordion is named after an 11th-century bard?
Bayan
Bayan honours Boyan, the bard hailed in the medieval Tale of Igor's Campaign; the name caught on in the early 1900s, when a star player toured with a St Petersburg craftsman's new chromatic model.
Q 22In Britain and Australia, a diatonic button accordion is commonly called what?
A melodeon
A melodeon means any button box in Britain, but in Ireland the word is kept for the one-row instrument, and in America it once meant something else entirely: a small reed organ.
Q 23Which Alpine button accordion is particular to Slovenia, Austria, Bavaria and South Tyrol?
Steirische Harmonika
120-bass means six rows of twenty buttons, none of which the player can see while playing, which is why a few of them are dimpled or studded for the fingers to steer by.
Q 14The standard Stradella bass system arranges its columns of buttons according to what?
The circle of fifths
The circle of fifths puts the three chords a tune leans on most, those built on the first, fourth and fifth notes of its key, in neighbouring columns, so the left hand barely has to move.
Q 15The accordion's Stradella bass system is named after what?
A town in Lombardy
A town in Lombardy: Mariano Dallapè began making accordions in Stradella in the 1870s, and other craftsmen followed his example until the town was a major centre of the trade.
Q 16Which Italian town, home of the pioneer Paolo Soprani, is known as the world capital of accordion making?
Castelfidardo
Castelfidardo's trade began, legend has it, when a pilgrim bound for the shrine at Loreto showed young Paolo Soprani an accordion: he studied how it worked and went into production with his brothers.
Q 17Bal-musette, the accordion music of French dance halls, takes its name from which instrument?
A small bagpipe
A small bagpipe, the musette, led the dancing in the Paris cafés of migrants from Auvergne until Italian accordionists moved in around 1880; the two camps came to blows, and the accordion won.
Q 18Which German company, founded in 1857 in Trossingen, became a giant of harmonica and accordion making?
Hohner
Hohner was founded by a clockmaker rather than a musician: Matthias Hohner began making harmonicas by hand in his own house in 1857, and the home workshop grew into a world name.
Q 19What is the bandoneon, the signature instrument of tango?
A type of concertina
A type of concertina, and a German one: the dealer Heinrich Band gave it his name, and it is thought that emigrants and sailors carried it to the River Plate, where tango adopted it.
Q 20Which Nirvana member played accordion on one song of the band's MTV Unplugged set?
Krist Novoselic
Krist Novoselic, the bassist, played it on 'Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam' and never put it away: in 2011 Dave Grohl brought him in for bass and accordion on a Foo Fighters album.
Steirische Harmonika players get their booming bass from oversized reeds that sound like a helicon tuba, which is why its bass notes are called helicon basses.
Q 24Which dance music of Brazil's northeast is traditionally played by a trio of accordion, triangle and zabumba drum?
Forró
Forró was carried from the dry northeast to the rest of Brazil by the accordionist Luiz Gonzaga, whose 1947 hit 'Asa Branca' sings of a drought that drives a man from his land.
Q 25Which Colombian musical tradition, built around the accordion, did UNESCO list in 2015 as in need of urgent safeguarding?
Vallenato
Vallenato grew out of the songs of cattle herders in Colombia's north; UNESCO judged the traditional style at risk from armed conflict and from a slick new wave of the music that pushes it aside.
Q 26Zydeco pairs the accordion with which percussion instrument?
The rubboard
The rubboard, or frottoir, began as a real washboard: in 1946 a metalworker at a Texas refinery made the first one built purely as an instrument, a ribbed metal vest hung from the shoulders.
Q 27Which Louisiana musician was the original 'King of Zydeco'?
Clifton Chenier
Clifton Chenier, a sharecropper's son, was the unofficial but all but undisputed king; only after his death in 1987 was another accordionist, Boozoo Chavis, formally crowned.
Q 28Which San Antonio-born accordionist played conjunto and Tejano music with the Texas Tornados?
Flaco Jiménez
Flaco Jiménez inherited his nickname, 'Skinny', from his accordionist father and carried the conjunto sound worldwide, recording with Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder and the Rolling Stones.
Q 29Which accordion-playing bandleader hosted a TV show from 1951 to 1982 known for its 'champagne music'?
Lawrence Welk
Lawrence Welk grew up in a German-speaking hamlet in North Dakota and did not learn English until he was 21, which left him with the accent that became part of his homespun appeal.
Q 30Which TV 'champagne music' accordionist of three decades was known as 'the Happy Norwegian'?
Myron Floren
Myron Floren was a guest at a St. Louis ballroom in 1950 when the bandleader called him up to play; the crowd's response was so strong that he was offered a job with the band.