Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)

Subject: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: mack/misophist
Date: 20 Nov 04 - 09:46 PM

Quite a few people here know quite a lot about music theory. This quiz was sent by a perverted friend of mine. Let us know how you do. I understood about a dozen of the questions. And I thought #27 was funny.

PS, 'But Gesualdo did it' is not a good excuse.

You might be a [music] theory geek if . . .

1. you whistle in style brisé.
2. your favorite pickup line is, "What's your favorite augmented sixth chord?"
3. your second favorite pickup line is, "Would you like to raise my
leading tone?"
4. you have ever played the how-many-episodes-is-too-many-episodes fugue game.
5. you have a poster of Allen Forte in your room.
6. you know who Allen Forte is.
7. you dream in four parts.
8. your biological clock follows a non-retrogradable isorhythm.
9. you can improvise 16th-century counterpoint with no trouble, but
you frequently forget how to tie your shoes.
10. you will look at a piece by Bach and say, "You know, I think he
could have gotten a better effect this way . . ."
11. you expected something quite different out of The Matrix.
12. you can answer your phone with a tonal or a real answer.
13. you like to tease your friends and loved ones with deceptive cadences.
14. you know how large a major 23rd is without having to count.
15. you only drink fifths, and then you laugh at the pun.
16. you feel the need to end Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony with a
picardy third.
17. your favorite characteristic of Brahms's music is the subcutaneous
motivic play.
18. instead of counting sheep, you count sequences.
19. you find free counterpoint too liberal.
20. Moussorgsky's "Hopak" gives you nightmares.
21. you wonder what a Danish sixth would sound like.
22. you long for the good old days of movable G-clefs.
23. the Corelli Clash gives you goosebumps. Every time.
24. you can hear an enharmonic modulation coming a mile away.
25. you can hear Berg's lover's dog coming a mile away.
26. you have had to be forced to stop labeling motives.
27. you confuse fishsticks with ground bass.
28. you found No. 27 funny.
29. you have ever quoted Walter Piston.
30. you like to march to the rhythm of L'histoire du soldat.
31. your license plate says: PNTONL.
32. you have ever defended yourself with, "But Gesualdo did it!"
33. you have ever tried to do a Schenkerian analysis on "Three Blind Mice."
34. you have ever tried to do a Schenkerian analysis on 4'33''.
35. you have ever had a gebrauchsmusik party.
36. you have ever tried to hop onto the omnibus.
37. you like to wake up to a Petrushkated version of "Reveille."
38. you lament the decline of serialism.
39. you know what the ninth overtone of the harmonic series is off the
top of your head.
40. you keep the writings of Boethius on the coffee table.
41. you have ever dressed up as counterpoint for Halloween.
42. you have ever written a musical palindrome and given it a witty title.
43. you can name ten of Palestrina's contemporaries.
44. you have ever found a typographical error in a score by Ives,
Nancarrow, or Babbitt.
45. you have ever heard a wrong note in a performance of a composition
by Ives, Nancarrow, or Babbitt.
46. you already sensed that if this list had been written by Bartók,
this would be the funniest item.
47. you enjoy the tang of a tritone whenever you can.
48. you've let the rule of the octave determine how you go from one
event of the day to the next.
49. you have ever played through your music as if the fingering
markings were figured bass symbols.
50. you suspiciously check all the music you play for dangling sevenths.
51. you have devised your own tuning method.
52. you keep a notebook of useful diminutions.
53. you have composed variations on a theme by Anton Webern.
54. you know the difference between a Courante and a Corrente.
55. you have trained your dog to jump through a flaming circle of fifths.
56. you have ever used the word fortspinnung in polite conversation.
57. you feel cheated by evaded cadences.
58. you organize phone numbers based on their prime form.
59. you find it amusing to refer to your ear-training course sections
as your "pitch classes."
60. every now and again you like to kick back and play a tune in
hypophrygian mode.
61. you wonder why there aren't more types of seventh chords.
62. you wish you had twelve fingers.
63. you like polytonal music because, hey, the more keys the merrier.
64. you abbreviate your shopping list using figured bass symbols.
65. you always make sure to invert your counterpoint, just in case.
66. you have ever told a joke with a punchline of: because it was polyphonic!
67. you have ever named a pet, instrument, boat, gun or child after Zarlino.
68. you have an <0 1 4> tattoo.
69. your lips may say, "perfect fourth," but in your heart it will
always be "diatessaron."
70. you have ever said, "Yes, didn't Scriabin use that sonority in . . ."
71. you know dirty acronyms for the order of sharps.
72. you can name relatives of the "Grandmother Chord."
73. you're still wondering why I haven't included the
"must-resolve-the- dominant-seventh-before-going-to-bed" indicator.
74. you can not only identify any one of Bach's 371 Harmonized
Chorales by ear, but you also know what page it is on in the
Riemenschneider edition and how many suspensions it has in the first
four bars.
75. you got more than half of the jokes on this list.

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Peace
Date: 20 Nov 04 - 09:51 PM

We only GOT one Nerd. He will likely get more than half the first time 'round. Me, I don't know what the hell yer talkin' about.

"21. you wonder what a Danish sixth would sound like."

Ah ha. I have eaten a Danish in NYC. They are great. Have no idea what they sound like.

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 20 Nov 04 - 10:09 PM

I take the fifth.

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Peace
Date: 20 Nov 04 - 11:16 PM

I found 28 funny even though I don't understand 27.

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Nerd
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 12:38 AM

27 WAS funny...but you have to be a pun aficionado as well as a nerd. I guess I qualify.

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 03:54 AM

Q, is that a perfect fifth ?

eric

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Ron Davies
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 12:13 PM

Great stuff! (I sure didn't get it all)

But, next time there's a crash and burn at rehearsal, I'll definitely tell 'em Gesualdo did it that way, and see what reaction I get.

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Ron Davies
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 12:25 PM

Also, Brahms does get under your skin--(I think 17 is real good)--but so do others.

Re: deceptive cadences--I don't tease people with them, but I've been caught many times by them--can't turn the radio off til I get to a real one---fortunately not a problem in folk music.

And I do tell people what one of my choir directors used to say when one popped up:
"Hey, it's Tommy Tritone".

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Leadfingers
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 12:32 PM

Funnily enough I HAVE heard of Three Blind Mice and I have heard OF though never HEARD 4.33 !!

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Juan P-B
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 05:34 PM

On a now-defunct classical music television 'quiz' programme, each week the presenter used to play a tune in the style of a particular composer and the panel had to guess a) the tune and b) the composer
Robin Ray correctly identified "Die Drei Blinde Mausen"(?) in the style of Schubert
I thought he was brill
JuanP-B

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 12:21 AM

These sounds like my brother!! I am going to print this off and quiz him with it!

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 05:42 AM

Um... that wsa scary.... I did get close to half of tem (I didn't count- I probably got more than half, since I got all of the first part and several of the later ones....)

Allison-the-nerd

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: MaineDog
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 09:28 AM

I was first introduced to 4'33" in the stacks of Paine library by a music teaching assistant who invited me to his apartment to listen to it. I declined the invite, and so my musical career went nearly inaubible.
MD

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: M.Ted
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 12:45 PM

Amusingly, Gesualdo and Zarlino are amongst the ten contemporaries of Palestrina(well, if you are a nerd, it's funny)--the Gesualdo remark is funny because Gesualdo had inherited wealth and political connections, so he didn't need a patron or an audience and could do whatever he wanted. He reputation for getting away with murder, figuratively, by using chromaticism and dissonance, and literally, by killing his wife and the Duke of somewhere or other when he caught them in flagrante delicto-

The Grandmother Chord was invented by Nicholas Slonimsky(who you may recall, used to play the piano with an orange on the Tonight Show from time to time) as kind of a musical joke(he also wrote and played musical palindromes, and may have even invented them) they included all twelve notes--which is why you'd want twelve fingers--

Funny also is the business about augmented sixth chords, which come as either German, French, or Italian, and are actually enharmonically, additional kinds of seventh chords--

Well, I think it's funny, though, if you aren't interested in counterpoint you might not give a Fux--

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Ron Davies
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 10:32 PM

A monograph I have, "Madrigals, Mystery and Murder", says that although Gesualdo did indeed catch his wife in flagrante, he himself committed a faux pas: he did not in fact kill her and her lover himself, but hired somebody else to do it--truly declasse in the eyes of the community.

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 23 Nov 04 - 07:42 PM

I do believe that the perfect 5th is a product of the distillery of Stolichnaya.

Let me raise a toast to that.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: GUEST,emily rain
Date: 23 Nov 04 - 08:42 PM

i thought i was a nerd with a capital N because when georgia asked me "why does that harmony sound weird?" i launched into a discussion of modes and major subdominants and minor seconds. but now i understand that i'm not even a nerd with a small N. :)

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Ron Davies
Date: 24 Nov 04 - 10:10 PM

Animaterra--

Since you got the first half and some of the others could you tell us about some of them?

For instance, I'm real interested in who Allen Forte is (especially since he was on 2 questions.) I thought it was a pun on pianoforte or just on the dynamic "forte".

And what about The Matrix?

And why would Hopak give you nightmares?

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 25 Nov 04 - 12:37 PM

Allen Forte is a music theory whiz at Yale. Linking his name with the musical term "forte" makes it even funnier!

The Hopak is just hard to play. And to my mind, somewhat over-done.

The term "matrix" in music theory is related to modern music and the 12-tone scale. "The matrix is a concise representation of all 48 possible row permutations in a 12x12 grid." Click here for more than you want to know.

I think the point is, for nerds like us, it's funny to see all these dumb little factoids that drove us crazy in music theory class, cast in a mildly amusing light. It's been 22 years since I suffered through most of this, and had to Google to remember what some of them meant!

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Ron Davies
Date: 25 Nov 04 - 11:18 PM

Not strictly speaking music theory, but the thread creep is not too bad, and I thought this was worthwhile, but perhaps not deserving its own thread:

Part of a list of basics any classical audiophile should own:


Berlioz: Harlots in Italy
Seraglio 1648
William Pimpnose, viola
Monmartre Philandermonique de Chambre

Gershwin: Rhapsody in Puce
Odium 288
MTV Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Sideburns, conductor

Offenbach: Orpheus In His Underwear
Erraatum BTU 77080
I Solisti di Zig Zagreb
Loren Maseltov, conductor

Orff: Carmina Piranha
Douche Gramphon 7201-75
Academy of St. Christopher on the Dashboard
Sir Neville Marinara, conductor

Sherbet: Unfurnished Symphony
Deutsche Gewuerztraminer Gazelleschaft 8988
New York Philanthropic Orchestra
Earnest Answer-Man, conductor

Stravinsky: The Firebug
Arson Nova 911
Manuel de Falla Society Orchestra
Krrysstof Paindernecki conductor--(I thought he was only a composer)

Tacobell: Cannon in D
Megaphon 3455 34
English Bedchamber Orchestra
Claudio Abbadabadoo, conductor


There's more--these are some of the best, I thought.

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: katlaughing
Date: 25 Nov 04 - 11:58 PM

LOL! Great addition to the thread, Ron!

I printed this out and gave it to my brother a day or two ago. He had a good laugh over some of them and said it's been so long since theory class, even though he composes all of the time, he'd have to get out his Oxford Dictionary of Music to remember the exact reference in a couple of these. Like Animaterra, he thought it was great fun. He's out of town til the weekend, but I expect when he gets back, he'll want to post a bit.

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: mack/misophist
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 10:05 AM

Dear Ron Davies,

If there are more, let us have them, by all means! I want to send them to the man who provided the quiz.

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Ron Davies
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 10:36 PM

Here is the rest of the Basic Classical Music Collection:

Beethoven: Erotica Symphony
Telefon [phone]
Amsterdam Concertgeboom Orchestra
Bernard Hijinks, conductor

Beethoven: Infidelio
Endive 647876
Chorus and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera for the Criminally Insane
Kari Rictus, conductor

Bloch: Schlemiel
Epic 1-989
Mischa Mainsqueeze
Cantspell Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Ashcanausea, conductor

Debussy: La Merde
Nosuch II 455
Academy of Prince Albert in the Can
Sir Colin Divot, conductor

Liszt: Les Quaaludes
Angle DS 847569
L'Orchestre de la Swiss Cheese
Karl Boom,, conductor

Mendelssohn: Accidental Music to "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Capitalist 3777
Bathroom Festival Orchestra
Daniel Barenbomb, conductor

Mendelstotter: Peace March of the Priests
Deutsche Gestalt Gemuetlichkeit 3330-676f
Stuttgart Chamber of Commerce Orchestra
Raymond Leper, conductor

Mozart: The Magic Schoolbus
Argyle ML 34277
Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covert Garden
Sir Adrian Dolt, conductor

Mozart: Symphony Disconcertante
Enigma 67580
Anne-Soapy Mutter, violin; Pamela McCuddles-Edelweiss, viola
The Fitzwilliam Hippocampus Consortium of Miami University
Akira Nintendo, conductor

Purcell: Trumpet Involuntary
Seriograph S 64749
Winton Veal Marsala, trumpet
Disneyland Wind Ensemble
Wilhelm Fahrtwangler, conductor

Respighi: The Mountains of Chrome
Turnover TVA 64784
Eastman Kodak Symphony Orchestra
Howard Handsome, conductor

Respighijklmnoops:   The Pines of Sol
Archaic DT 9477356
Halley's Comet Orchestra
Sir John Barbarian, conductor

Rimsky-of-Korsakov: Le Coq au Vin
Turnoff TWA 503472
Vienna Volkswagon Orchestra
Richard Boingg, conductor

Shostakovitch: Concerto #1 for Piano and Strumpet
Decadence 95648
Zoltan Coccyx, piano; William Hips, strumpeter
Bidetfest Symphony Orchestra
Wetold Loutaslapstick, conductor

Smetena: The Battered Broad
Argot ZPG 746
Barbarian Radio Orchestra
Hanns Upp, conductor

Tchaikovsky: Tobacco Variations
Panatela 4655
Bert Phillips-Morris, cello
The Philadelphia Tabernacle Strings
Eugene Mormondy, conductor

Tchaikovsky: Marche Slob
His Master's Vice ARSE 8574
London Pandemonic Orchestra
Michael Teeter-Totter, conductor

The titles, conductors, soloists orchestras, and record labels are fairly straightforward. What I'm trying to figure out is if the numbers of the records have a special significance.

One is direct: Telefon [phone] (any 900 number). But why, for instance Panatela 4655 ( not Panatela 7822 or any other number)?

Any guesses?

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Gypsy
Date: 27 Nov 04 - 10:10 PM

After struggling thru a music theory class last summer (the WRONG time of year for me to add ANYTHING) love this thread. Sent forward to my teacher........wonder if she'll use it in class?

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Benjamin
Date: 28 Nov 04 - 04:11 AM

For 33, I'm told that Schenkerian analysis concludes that every song breaks down to three blind mice. I'll study it more someday.
As for 44, I really have found typographical errors in Ives' music. Honest.
So, is being a "Nerd" a good thing?

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 28 Nov 04 - 04:16 AM

The really sad thing is I had to do Schenkerian analysis of 3 Blind mice and many other larger works for my degree!!

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 28 Nov 04 - 06:30 AM

Here's a Guide to Shenkerian Analysis!

Allison

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: Moonunit
Date: 28 Nov 04 - 03:35 PM

Oh good grief... It's been a while since I gave a piece of music the Shenkerian once over... personally, I always preferred semiotics.

Thanks for that mack/misophist.

Shameless geek-unit signing out.

Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only)
From: M.Ted
Date: 29 Nov 04 - 12:51 AM

I was wondering if someone would post the Shenkerian site---his ideas account for what happens in music in about as simple and straightforward a way as anyone has yet come up with--at least for the kind of music we play(it is a stretch to analyze 4'33, though)

Guitar is an instrument that plays counterpoint even when you don't want it to, and if you understand a bit of Shenker, it can help you to figure out what you've been doing, and what you need to do to get it right--

Or maybe if you've been playing guitar long enough, it helps you to understand Shenker--