Orchestra Trivia
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This orchestra trivia quiz has 98 free questions with answers and covers the whole ensemble, from the concertmaster's chair to the back row of the percussion. There are questions on the instruments (which one gives the tuning A, which is the only string tuned in fourths, what a Wagner tuba actually is), on conductors and how the baton came to be, on the great orchestras of Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, London and New York, and on the pieces that show the orchestra off, from Peter and the Wolf and The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra to Boléro, the 1812 Overture and Haydn's Farewell Symphony. It suits a music-school social, a classical radio quiz or a general trivia night that wants one round for the culture vultures. Difficulty runs from easy questions about the string family to expert ones about Mahler premieres and pitch standards. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia and cited on the question, so you can see where each fact comes from.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which New York concert hall did violinist Isaac Stern lead the campaign to save from demolition?
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall was set to be demolished once its main tenant planned a move to Lincoln Center, until Stern's campaign saved it; its largest auditorium now bears his name.
Q 02Which Richard Strauss piece opens Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Also sprach Zarathustra
Also sprach Zarathustra was one of Kubrick's temporary tracks; he dropped Alex North's commissioned score, and North only found out at a screening.
Q 03Which is the largest of an orchestra's four main sections?
The strings
The strings; orchestras field so many of them because massed string players give a fuller sound.
Q 04The word 'orchestra' comes from the Greek name for what?
The space where the chorus danced
The space where the chorus danced sat in front of the skené, a backdrop whose name gave English the word 'scene'.
Q 05What is the leader of the first violins, who sits to the conductor's left, called in the United States?
The concertmaster
The concertmaster also leads the tuning, and the conductor shakes the concertmaster's hand as a greeting to the whole orchestra.
Q 06Jean-François Paillard's recording revived which Baroque piece?
Pachelbel's Canon
Pachelbel's Canon went on to become one of the most popular pieces played at weddings.
Q 07Which composer added a chorus and vocal soloists to the finale of his Ninth Symphony?
Beethoven
Beethoven's Ninth ends with the 'Ode to Joy', whose theme the Council of Europe adopted as its anthem in 1972, and the EU later followed.
Q 08Which famous conductor gave up the baton and led orchestras with his bare hands?
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski made free-hand conducting a trademark, and the Bugs Bunny cartoon Long-Haired Hare spoofed it by having Bugs snap a baton in half.
Q 09Which Baroque composer died after striking his own foot with the heavy staff he used to beat time?
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully refused to have the injured toe amputated, and the wound spread until it killed him.
Q 10Before conductors took over, Baroque orchestras were often directed by a player at which keyboard instrument?
The harpsichord
The harpsichord player filled in the chords of the basso continuo while directing the tempo, a way of leading that some early-music ensembles still revive.
Q 11Which German court orchestra did English music historian Charles Burney praise as 'an army of generals'?
Mannheim
Mannheim's orchestra was famed for effects such as the 'Mannheim roller' crescendo, which later gave the Christmas band Mannheim Steamroller its name.
Q 12Which is the only modern bowed instrument in the orchestra tuned in fourths rather than fifths?
The double bass
The double bass is written higher than it sounds, and the electric bass guitar kept its same E-A-D-G tuning.
Q 13Which orchestral instrument's music is written mainly in the alto clef?
The viola
The viola reads mostly alto clef, which keeps its middle-range notes on the staff instead of piling up the ledger lines the treble clef would need.
Q 21The celesta stars in which dance from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker?
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy: Tchaikovsky had his publisher order the new instrument from Paris and tried it first in his symphonic ballad The Voyevoda.
Q 22In Peter and the Wolf, which instrument represents the wolf?
Three horns
Three horns play the wolf; theatre director Natalya Sats commissioned the piece to introduce children to the instruments of the orchestra.
Q 23In Peter and the Wolf, which instrument plays the duck?
The oboe
The oboe plays the duck, whom the wolf swallows whole, though Disney's 1946 cartoon reverses the ending and lets her escape.
Q 14The word 'cello' is short for violoncello, which in Italian means what?
Little big viol
Little big viol; Bach's cello suites stayed little known until Pablo Casals, who found an old copy in a second-hand music shop at 13, played and recorded them.
Q 15What retunes every C on a concert harp at once?
Pedal
Pedal: a concert harp has seven, one for each note name, and they let it play in any key.
Q 16Which instrument plays the famous Largo melody in Dvořák's New World Symphony?
The cor anglais
The cor anglais carries it, and the tune was only later fitted with words as 'Goin' Home', a song often mistaken for a traditional spiritual.
Q 17The contrabassoon sounds which interval below the ordinary bassoon?
An octave
An octave lower, because the contrabassoon's tube is about twice as long as the bassoon's.
Q 18The Wagner tuba, despite its name, is usually played by members of which section?
The horns
The horns: Wagner had it made to bridge the gap in sound between the horns and the trombones.
Q 19Which invention by Heinrich Stölzel transformed the brass section in the early 1800s?
The valve
The valve: a natural trumpet sounds only one harmonic series, so changing key had meant stopping to swap in a crook.
Q 20Timpani bowls are traditionally made of which metal?
Copper
Copper: the bowl's kettle-like shape is why timpani are also called kettledrums.
Q 24Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra is built on a theme by which composer?
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell supplied the theme, and Britten wrote the piece because he was asked to contribute to an educational film about the symphony orchestra.
Q 25Which instrument repeats one rhythm throughout Ravel's Boléro?
Snare drum
Snare drum; Nintendo meant to open The Legend of Zelda with Boléro until, just before release, it learned the piece was still under copyright.
Q 26Which dancer commissioned Ravel's Boléro in 1928 for a ballet she would star in herself?
Ida Rubinstein
Ida Rubinstein had first asked Ravel to orchestrate pieces from Albéniz's Iberia, but copyright got in the way, so he wrote Boléro instead.
Q 27Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture is best known for its climactic use of what?
Cannon fire
Cannon fire made it famous, yet Tchaikovsky called it 'very loud and noisy', without artistic merit and written without warmth or love.
Q 28Which song does Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture quote to represent Napoleon's invading army?
La Marseillaise
La Marseillaise stands for the French army, and Russian folk tunes chase it into retreat as the invaders are driven back.
Q 29In Haydn's Farewell Symphony, what do the players do one by one during the final adagio?
Snuff their candles and leave
Players snuff their candles and leave one by one, a musical hint to Prince Esterházy, though accounts differ on whether they wanted home leave or to save the orchestra.
Q 30Which Mahler symphony is nicknamed the 'Symphony of a Thousand'?
The Eighth
He conducted its 1910 Munich premiere himself, the last of his works premiered in his lifetime.