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20 Nov 04 - 09:46 PM (#1334120) Subject: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: mack/misophist 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. |
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20 Nov 04 - 09:51 PM (#1334122) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Peace 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. |
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20 Nov 04 - 10:09 PM (#1334139) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Q (Frank Staplin) I take the fifth. |
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20 Nov 04 - 11:16 PM (#1334171) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Peace I found 28 funny even though I don't understand 27. |
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21 Nov 04 - 12:38 AM (#1334200) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Nerd 27 WAS funny...but you have to be a pun aficionado as well as a nerd. I guess I qualify. |
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21 Nov 04 - 03:54 AM (#1334253) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Dave Hanson Q, is that a perfect fifth ? eric |
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21 Nov 04 - 12:13 PM (#1334487) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Ron Davies 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. |
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21 Nov 04 - 12:25 PM (#1334494) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Ron Davies 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". |
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21 Nov 04 - 12:32 PM (#1334498) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Leadfingers Funnily enough I HAVE heard of Three Blind Mice and I have heard OF though never HEARD 4.33 !! |
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21 Nov 04 - 05:34 PM (#1334687) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Juan P-B 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 |
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22 Nov 04 - 12:21 AM (#1334946) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: katlaughing These sounds like my brother!! I am going to print this off and quiz him with it! |
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22 Nov 04 - 05:42 AM (#1335094) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: AllisonA(Animaterra) 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 |
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22 Nov 04 - 09:28 AM (#1335227) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: MaineDog 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 |
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22 Nov 04 - 12:45 PM (#1335384) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: M.Ted 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-- |
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22 Nov 04 - 10:32 PM (#1336024) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Ron Davies 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. |
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23 Nov 04 - 07:42 PM (#1337065) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Bill Hahn//\\ I do believe that the perfect 5th is a product of the distillery of Stolichnaya. Let me raise a toast to that. Bill Hahn |
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23 Nov 04 - 08:42 PM (#1337137) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: GUEST,emily rain 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. :) |
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24 Nov 04 - 10:10 PM (#1338353) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Ron Davies 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? |
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25 Nov 04 - 12:37 PM (#1338907) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: AllisonA(Animaterra) 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! |
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25 Nov 04 - 11:18 PM (#1339345) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Ron Davies 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. |
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25 Nov 04 - 11:58 PM (#1339347) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: katlaughing 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. |
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26 Nov 04 - 10:05 AM (#1339696) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: mack/misophist 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. |
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26 Nov 04 - 10:36 PM (#1340239) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Ron Davies Here is the rest of the Basic Classical Music Collection: Beethoven: Erotica Symphony Telefon 1-900-453-5656 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 1-900-453-5656 (any 900 number). But why, for instance Panatela 4655 ( not Panatela 7822 or any other number)? Any guesses? |
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27 Nov 04 - 10:10 PM (#1340891) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Gypsy 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? |
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28 Nov 04 - 04:11 AM (#1340981) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Benjamin 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? |
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28 Nov 04 - 04:16 AM (#1340984) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Catherine Jayne The really sad thing is I had to do Schenkerian analysis of 3 Blind mice and many other larger works for my degree!! |
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28 Nov 04 - 06:30 AM (#1341025) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: AllisonA(Animaterra) Here's a Guide to Shenkerian Analysis! Allison |
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28 Nov 04 - 03:35 PM (#1341324) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: Moonunit 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. |
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29 Nov 04 - 12:51 AM (#1341702) Subject: RE: Music Theory Quiz (Nerds Only) From: M.Ted 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-- |