Actual Answers from Students on Music Exams
  1. The principal singer of nineteenth century opera was called pre-Madonna.
  2. It is easy to teach anyone to play the maracas. Just grip the neck and shake him in rhythm.
  3. Gregorian chant has no music, just singers singing the same lines.
  4. Sherbet composed the Unfinished Symphony.
  5. All female parts were sung by castrati. We don't know exactly what they sounded like because there are no known descendants.
  6. Young scholars have expressed their rapture for the Bronze Lullaby, the Taco Bell Cannon, Beethoven's Erotica, Tchaikovsky Cracknutter Suite, and Gershwin's Rap City in Blue.
  7. Music sung by two people at the same time is called a duel; if they sing without music it is called Acapulco.
  8. A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals.
  9. Contralto is a low sort of music that only ladies sing.
  10. Diatonic is a low calorie Schweppes.
  11. Probably the most marvelous fugue was the one between the Hatfields and the McCoys.
  12. A harp is a nude piano.
  13. The main trouble with a French Horn is that it is too tangled up.
  14. An interval in music is the distance from one piano to the next.
  15. The correct way to find the key to a piece of music is to use a pitchfork.
  16. Agitato is a state of mind when one's finger slips in the middle of playing a piece.
  17. Refrain means don't do it. A refrain in music is the part you'd better not try to sing.
  18. I know what a sextet is but I'd rather not say.
  19. Most authorities agree that music of antiquity was written long ago.
  20. My favorite composer was Opus. Agnus Dei was a woman composer famous for her church music.
  21. Henry Purcell was a well-known composer few people have ever heard of.
  22. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic.
  23. Rock Monanoff was a famous post-romantic composer of piano concerti.