The music round is the one people most often lose on material they genuinely
know, because it is asked in a format they have not practised. Recognising a
song is not the same skill as naming its artist under time pressure, and neither
is the same as knowing which year it charted.
Three rounds under one name
The intro round. Ten seconds of a track, name it and the artist. This
is pure recognition and it responds only to listening practice — reading about
music will not help you. Setters draw overwhelmingly from the sixties to the
nineties, with a handful of recent number ones.
The lyrics round. A line, name the song. The trap is that the famous
line is often not the title, which is exactly why it was chosen.
The facts round. Bands, real names, labels, chart records, who died
when, who played what. This is the part that can be revised, and the questions
below are mostly of this kind.
What setters reach for
The Beatles are asked about more than any other subject in British quizzing,
by a distance — the members, the instruments, the label, the last concert,
the Decca audition they failed. After
them: Elvis, Queen, Abba, Bowie, Madonna, and whoever is currently breaking a
chart record.
Chart records themselves are a reliable seam, and so are the stories that
attach to them:
Bohemian Rhapsody and its two
Christmas number ones,
the copyright on Happy
Birthday,
Milli Vanilli's revoked Grammy,
the day the music died, and
the 27 Club, which is asked far more often
than the statistics behind it justify.
Classical music is asked narrowly — composers and their best-known works,
plus the Requiem Mozart did not
finish and Beethoven's deafness.
Learning twenty composer–work pairs covers nearly all of it.
T in the Park was the biggest music festival in which country?
Answer Scotland
The Beatles' record label (founded by them)?
Answer Apple
Coachella takes place in which US state?
Answer California
City where the Beatles formed?
Answer Liverpool
Who composed "The Marriage of Figaro" and "The Magic Flute"?
Answer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Which Ultravox single famously stalled at number 2 behind 'Shaddap You Face'?
Answer Vienna
Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody — UK Christmas #1 in which two years?
Answer 1975 and 1991
The four Beatles and their main instruments?
Answer John Lennon (rhythm guitar), Paul McCartney (bass), George Harrison (lead guitar), Ringo Starr (drums)
Woodstock festival — year?
Answer 1969
Which member left Take That in 1995, prompting newspapers to print helpline numbers?
Answer Robbie Williams
The two big Britpop rivals of 1995?
Answer Oasis and Blur
Who wrote "Rhapsody in Blue" and the opera "Porgy and Bess"?
Answer George Gershwin
Which composer wrote the Brandenburg Concertos and the St Matthew Passion?
Answer Johann Sebastian Bach
Which Irish boy band scored 14 UK number ones, including Flying Without Wings?
Answer Westlife
Whose four-opera Ring cycle includes "The Ride of the Valkyries"?
Answer Richard Wagner
Which opera contains the Habanera and the Toreador Song?
Answer Carmen
Who wrote "Messiah", with its Hallelujah chorus?
Answer George Frideric Handel
Who composed "The Four Seasons"?
Answer Antonio Vivaldi
Which composer wrote the Hungarian Dances and four symphonies, long called "Beethoven's heir"?
Answer Johannes Brahms
Which twin festivals run on the same August bank-holiday weekend with a shared line-up?
Answer Reading and Leeds
Who composed "Clair de lune" and "La Mer"?
Answer Claude Debussy
The 'King of Rock and Roll' and his home?
Answer Elvis Presley — Graceland, Memphis
Which German Romantic composer married the pianist Clara Wieck?
Answer Robert Schumann
Whose "Wedding March" is played as couples leave the church?
Answer Felix Mendelssohn
'Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?' opens which 1975 epic?
Answer Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen)
Which composer wrote almost exclusively for solo piano?
Answer Frédéric Chopin
Who composed "Boléro"?
Answer Maurice Ravel
Whose Symphony No. 8 is known as the "Unfinished"?
Answer Franz Schubert
Whose 1812 Overture is scored for cannon?
Answer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Which Hungarian virtuoso pianist and composer wrote the Hungarian Rhapsodies?
Answer Franz Liszt