Choir
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50 free Choir trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Choirs turn up everywhere: in cathedrals and village churches, on school stages under bright lights, behind rock bands in the studio, and on film and television. Few kinds of music-making have a longer history, and fewer still are as easy to join. This quiz covers the whole world of group singing. There are questions on voice parts and the terms singers meet in rehearsal, on church music, hymns and Christmas carols, on the great choral works and the composers behind them, on famous ensembles from several continents, and on show choir, from its real-life beginnings to its best-known television version. It is written for singers, directors and anyone planning a choir social or a party game after rehearsal. Most questions suit a mixed crowd, a handful are tough enough for seasoned choristers, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Queen hit builds its mock-opera choir from about 180 overdubs of just three band members' voices?
Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody took three weeks to record. Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor sang their parts again and again to build the sound of a full opera chorus.
Q 02Which choir voice part is named from the Latin for 'high', although sopranos now sing above it?
Alto
Alto comes from the Latin altus, meaning high. In early choral writing it was the line set above the tenor, whose own name comes from the Latin for to hold.
Q 03Which actress plays the lounge singer who hides in a convent and transforms its choir in Sister Act?
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg took the role after Bette Midler turned it down, fearing her fans would not want to see her play a nun.
Q 04Which hymn was published in 1779 by John Newton, an English clergyman who had been a slave trader?
Amazing Grace
Amazing Grace was written in late 1772 and was probably used for the first time at a meeting on 1 January 1773.
Q 05Which city is home to the sailor-suited boys' choir that traces its history to Emperor Maximilian I in 1498?
Vienna
Vienna owes the choir to a 1498 letter telling court officials to hire a singing master, two basses and six boys. The sailor suits replaced a cadet uniform that included a dagger.
Q 06What is the name of the William McKinley High School show choir at the centre of the TV series Glee?
New Directions
New Directions spends the first season on the competition circuit, winning at Sectionals before losing at Regionals.
Q 07Which Handel oratorio, first performed in Dublin in 1742, gave choirs the famous Hallelujah chorus?
Messiah
Messiah had its premiere at the Great Music Hall in Fishamble Street, and London had to wait a further year to hear it.
Q 08Which future opera star sang beside his father in the Modena choir that won a 1955 international festival?
Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti called the Corale Rossini's first prize at Llangollen his first singing success. He had sung with his father in a local church choir from about the age of nine.
Q 09Which Pink Floyd hit features a choir of pupils from Islington Green School, near the band's studio?
Another Brick in the Wall
Another Brick in the Wall got its children's voices when an engineer recorded pupils singing the verse. The school's singers were rewarded with concert tickets, an album and a single.
Q 10Which Beethoven symphony adds a choir and solo singers in its finale to sing Schiller's Ode to Joy?
The Ninth
The Ninth was the first example of a major composer scoring vocal parts in a symphony. An instrumental version of its chorus was later adopted as the Anthem of Europe.
Q 11Which composer died in 1791 leaving a Requiem unfinished, later completed by Franz Xaver Süssmayr?
Mozart
Mozart left the score incomplete, so Joseph Eybler and then Süssmayr filled in the rest, even imitating his musical handwriting on the copy that was delivered.
Q 12Which carol was first sung on Christmas Eve 1818 in Oberndorf, Austria, to a guitar accompaniment?
Silent Night
Silent Night set words by Father Joseph Mohr to a melody by Franz Xaver Gruber. Mohr asked for the guitar part after river flooding had possibly damaged the church organ.
Q 13Which country, traditionally called the 'land of song', is famous worldwide for its male voice choirs?
Wales
Q 21Which German composer wrote Carmina Burana, the cantata that opens and closes with the chorus O Fortuna?
Carl Orff
Carl Orff based the cantata on 24 poems from a medieval collection, and it was first performed by the Oper Frankfurt in June 1937.
Q 22Which composer wrote the Bridal Chorus for his 1850 opera Lohengrin, now heard at countless weddings?
Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner also wrote the libretto. In the opera the women of the wedding party sing it after the ceremony, while most weddings now play it on the organ with no singing.
Q 23Which Latin plainsong of monastic choirs is named for a pope credited by legend with inventing it?
Gregorian
Wales saw its male voice choirs grow out of the tenor and bass sections of chapel choirs, singing outside church for recreation and fellowship.
Q 14Which US state is home to the Tabernacle Choir, whose weekly radio broadcast has aired since 1929?
Utah
Utah has been its home since 1847, when the choir was founded shortly after Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley. In 2018 it dropped Mormon from its name.
Q 15Which rapper founded the Sunday Service Choir, which released the gospel album Jesus Is Born in 2019?
Kanye West
Kanye West began the weekly gatherings in January 2019, with choir director Jason White conducting. The debut album arrived on Christmas Day.
Q 16Which band had the London Bach Choir open the 1969 track You Can't Always Get What You Want?
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones used the choir to open the song, colour it throughout and bring it to its conclusion. The choral opening is heard only on the album version.
Q 17Which Madonna single of 1989 features gospel backing vocals from Andraé Crouch and his choir?
Like a Prayer
Like a Prayer was recorded with the choir around September 1988, after Crouch studied the words to make sure they did not go against the singers' religious beliefs.
Q 18Which 2012 film follows the Barden Bellas, an all-female college singing group chasing a championship?
Pitch Perfect
Pitch Perfect is loosely based on a non-fiction book by Mickey Rapkin, a GQ editor who spent a season following competitive college vocal groups.
Q 19Which Journey rock anthem does Glee's show choir perform on stage in the 2009 pilot episode?
Don't Stop Believin'
Don't Stop Believin' was recorded by the Glee cast in 2009, and their cover went on to outperform the original internationally.
Q 20Which Handel anthem, sung at every British coronation since 1727, inspired the UEFA Champions League theme?
Zadok the Priest
Zadok the Priest was reworked in 1992 by the English composer Tony Britten, who said he pinched a rising string phrase from Handel and then wrote his own tune.
Gregorian chant is linked by legend to Pope Gregory I, but scholars believe he only ordered a compilation of melodies from across the Christian world.
Q 24Which Reformation leader wrote both words and tune of the hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God in the 1520s?
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a prolific hymnwriter, and this one has been called the Battle Hymn of the Reformation for the support it rallied to the Reformers' cause.
Q 25Which Old Testament book of 150 sacred songs has supplied church choirs with texts for centuries?
Psalms
Psalms is known in Hebrew as Tehillim, meaning praises, because it contains so many praises and supplications to God.
Q 26Which sight-singing system of do, re and mi grew from syllables Guido of Arezzo took from a Latin hymn?
Solfège
Solfège began in eleventh-century Italy with only six notes, each named after the first syllable of a line of a hymn to St John the Baptist. A seventh, si, was added later.
Q 27Which actress played Sue Sylvester, the tracksuit-wearing cheerleading coach in the show choir series Glee?
Jane Lynch
Jane Lynch won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the role, which she played from the pilot in 2009 through to the final episode in 2015.
Q 28Which unaccompanied American harmony style names its four voice parts tenor, lead, baritone and bass?
Barbershop
Barbershop gives the melody to the lead, while the tenor harmonises above it, the bass sings the lowest notes and the baritone completes the chord.
Q 29Which country's New Year song Shchedryk, by Mykola Leontovych, became the choir favourite Carol of the Bells?
Ukraine
Ukraine's song gained its English words in 1936 from the American composer Peter Wilhousky, years after Leontovych wrote the music between 1901 and 1916.
Q 30Show choirs, which blend choral singing with choreographed dance, were previously known by which other name?
Swing choir
Swing choir was the earlier label for these ensembles, whose routines are often built into a narrative story or an overarching theme.