# Music Theory Quiz



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Classic FM has shocked the world by presenting a quiz that actually tests more than simply knowledge of trivia...of course there's some of that included as well.

http://www.classicfm.com/discover/music-quizzes/ultimate-music-theory/

I got 18/20. One I missed out of ignorance and the other out of carelessness.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I'll just say you'll have to look at _every little detail_ before getting as disgusted as I did with it.


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## Guest (Apr 4, 2016)

I have never studied music theory. 9/20.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

16 - 3 counts of carelessness and non-existent German accounted for my failures. I knew the trombone question, which seemed the most specialised


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

16/20 

I missed 4 because I read it as retrograde 12 instead of retrograde-inversion 2

I missed 6 because I don't know German that well

I missed 14 because I don't know Jazz music that well

I missed 19 because I didn't pay attention to the all of the above option.


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## Guest (Apr 4, 2016)

violadude said:


> I missed 14 because I don't know Jazz music that well


14 was one of the few I got (along with basic things like intervals, inversions, etc) because, although I've never studied music theory formally, I am proficient enough as a guitarist of rock and metal (as in, the kind of guitarist that doesn't even learn to read music but rather uses a combination of tablature notation and the ear), so I vaguely know my major, minor, pentatonic, diminished, blues, etc scales. Of course, when you learn guitar by tablature, the diminished scale (ascending) looks something like:

-----------------------------------5-6-8-
----------------------------5-7-8--------
---------------------5-6-8---------------
--------------5-7-8----------------------
-------6-7-9-----------------------------
-----9------------------------------------

[From memory...something like that]


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

I scored 16/20

I missed the RI2 (my knowledge of serial music theory is almost null), the Mahler (!!), the trombone and the Jazz.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

9/20 - some knowledge, some guesswork.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

10 for 20, guessing all the way.
Which means I did well, since a 25% would be the expected result when there are four answers, and I copped a 50%.
So I'm going to play the Lottery today (rather than, say, sign up for a Music Theory course).


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

17/20

I missed the Schenker (I haven't actually read Schenker and thought the Ursatz referred to the bass line, how embarrassing), the Mahler (careless misreading) and the trombone one (****ing trombones, how do they work?).

The jazz scale and the alto flute were lucky guesses, also, so really should be 15/20.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I made fewer errors than the person who made the quiz.  He got the key of the Beethoven Quartet wrong, the music he quoted was not in the Lydian mode, the Tristan chord cannot be interpreted as V/V or, with any intelligence, as a half diminished seventh. I made careless errors on two questions. The quiz maker had four blatant errors.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Beethoven thought it was in the Lydian mode, didn't he? Arguably a misunderstanding of how the Lydian mode was used, but still....

I notice that the "all of the above" answer for the Tristan chord appears in a different place every time you reload. When I saw it, it referred to the French sixth and the half-diminished seventh so I reasoned that was what they were after, even though half-diminished seventh is stupid.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> Beethoven thought it was in the Lydian mode, didn't he? Arguably a misunderstanding of how the Lydian mode was used, but still....
> 
> I notice that the "all of the above" answer for the Tristan chord appears in a different place every time you reload. When I saw it, it referred to the French sixth and the half-diminished seventh so I reasoned that was what they were after, even though half-diminished seventh is stupid.


I would bet they just forgot to "anchor" All of the Above at bottom of the list, and it is supposed to refer to all of the choices.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

isorhythm said:


> Beethoven thought it was in the Lydian mode, didn't he? Arguably a misunderstanding of how the Lydian mode was used, but still....


Interesting. Nothing I've read about Beethoven, even Kerman's book on the quartets, challenges Ludwig's understanding that the Heiliger Dankgesang is truly written in the Lydian mode. To my memory, anyway...


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> Beethoven thought it was in the Lydian mode, didn't he? Arguably a misunderstanding of how the Lydian mode was used, but still....
> 
> I notice that the "all of the above" answer for the Tristan chord appears in a different place every time you reload. When I saw it, it referred to the French sixth and the half-diminished seventh so I reasoned that was what they were after, even though half-diminished seventh is stupid.


I know what Beethoven thought. And there might be a part of the movement that is in the Lydian mode,* but if so, it isn't the part quoted. If one is going to ask the question, one ought to show at least one important passage with a cadence on F. Otherwise it isn't a theory question at all, but just a matter of whether or not one has memorized what Beethoven thought about the movement.

I knew what he was after with the Tristan question as well because I have heard all three interpretations before. The chord might be interpreted as a chromatically altered V7 of V with an appoggiatura, but writing "V/V" without qualification is just wrong.

*Edit: There is, in fact, but one has to go quite a few measures further to get there (m. 24)


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Interesting. Nothing I've read about Beethoven, even Kerman's book on the quartets, challenges Ludwig's understanding that the Heiliger Dankgesang is truly written in the Lydian mode.


I think it's fine to say it's in the Lydian mode. But in the 16th century and earlier, Lydian pieces were either written with a flat signature or with a "transposed final" on C, i.e., they were just what we'd call major.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

The supposedly Lydian movement never sounded Lydian to my ears.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> I know what Beethoven thought. And there might be a part of the movement that is in the Lydian mode, but if so, it isn't the part quoted. If one is going to ask the question, one ought to show at least one important passage with a cadence on F. Otherwise it isn't a theory question at all, but just a matter of whether or not one has memorized what Beethoven thought about the movement.


Ah I see. I'm not sure I agree that the passage isn't in the Lydian mode - lots of 16th century pieces don't have a cadence on the final for a long time - but I guess you couldn't know from the quoted excerpt (or from any excerpt except the very end). It's certainly the most plausible of the multiple choices given.


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## R3PL4Y (Jan 21, 2016)

The trombone one is actually incorrect. You could glissando from F# in trigger 7 to B natural in trigger 2


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> I know what Beethoven thought. And there might be a part of the movement that is in the Lydian mode,* but if so, it isn't the part quoted.


Very possible indeed. I believe the parts in the Lydian mode are the initial chorale and its two more-complex variants in parts 3 and 5, separated by the more optimistic and non-Lydian music in parts 2 and 4 (as I hear it anyway). I didn't look to see what was quoted.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Interesting. Nothing I've read about Beethoven, even Kerman's book on the quartets, challenges Ludwig's understanding that the Heiliger Dankgesang is truly written in the Lydian mode. To my memory, anyway...


I'm not disputing the mode of the movement as a whole but only that of the music provided. To ask a theoretical question about the mode of a piece of music without providing an excerpt in which there is evidence of the answer one wants, is an error on the part of the quiz master. It suggests either that he doesn't understand what defines the modes or that he is dressing up a trivia question as a theory question.


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## ldiat (Jan 27, 2016)

ok i flunked i just like to listen:cheers:


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

I got eight right

but I knew the answers to *none* of the questions - not a single one

I recognise this display of rampant ignorance may harm any slither of credibility I might have acquired in the two years I have been a member, but I am always honest (well, almost always :lol: )


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> Ah I see. I'm not sure I agree that the passage isn't in the Lydian mode - lots of 16th century pieces don't have a cadence on the final for a long time - but I guess you couldn't know from the quoted excerpt (or from any excerpt except the very end). It's certainly the most plausible of the multiple choices given.


Perhaps Lydian is the most plausible of the choices given, although there is a cadence (of sorts) on D! The clearest cadence in the quiz excerpt by far, however, is on C. With that in mind, the fact that the author included Aeolian as a choice for a Church mode raises some issues. One could assume either that Aeolian is a red herring, since it isn't one of the original church modes but one added to the system by Heinrich Glarean in the mid 16thc, or one could assume the author is accepting the additions in Glarean's _Dodecachordon_ as valid modes in the church system. If the latter, then the mode of the excerpt is unequivocally mode XI, the Ionian. If one assumes Aeolian is a red herring and he is sticking to the original eight church modes, then the best interpretation would be that it is transposed Lydian on C with the fourth tone of the mode flatted!

My assumption is the author wasn't asking a theory question at all, but rather an historical trivia question about the Beethoven movement. Otherwise he would have included the cadence in m. 24, which is the first place one gets a clear indication of the mode Beethoven intended.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Yeah, I didn't think about any of this and I suspect no one else did either - it was indeed a trivia question.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> I made fewer errors than the person who made the quiz.  He got the key of the Beethoven Quartet wrong, the music he quoted was not in the Lydian mode, the Tristan chord cannot be interpreted as V/V or, with any intelligence, as a half diminished seventh. I made careless errors on two questions. The quiz maker had four blatant errors.


It's hardly an error on the part of the writer to say it "could be interpreted as" such and such when it in fact has by trained analysts. The differences are in terms of notation and resolution, anyway, and doesn't Wagner interpret the sonority differently in different parts of the work?



Dim7 said:


> The supposedly Lydian movement never sounded Lydian to my ears.


Schoenberg agrees with you. He doesn't see the few non-flattened fourths as particularly significant to the sonority of the movement.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

To me that movement sounds like C major that lingers on/around the subdominant a lot.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> It's hardly an error on the part of the writer to say it "could be interpreted as" such and such when it in fact has by trained analysts. The differences are in terms of notation and resolution, anyway, and doesn't Wagner interpret the sonority differently in different parts of the work?
> 
> Schoenberg agrees with you. He doesn't see the few non-flattened fourths as particularly significant to the sonority of the movement.


Given the evidence in the example provided, which is all one can expect the quiz taker to consider, there is no basis for interpreting the chord as "V/V" unless that statement is highly qualified, including mention of the nonharmonic tone G#, the fact that the chord would contain a 7th, and the flatted 5th. No reputable theorist would describe it that way, and as the quizmaster stated it, the choice is simply wrong on several grounds. Therefore, since one answer is unequivocally wrong, the "all of the above" option is necessarily incorrect. The half diminished interpretation isn't quite as wrong, although the only way it comes out as a half diminished 7 is by a tortured spelling (F - Ab - Cb - Eb) that makes no sense in the context of A minor.

I'm not sure about whether Wagner reinterprets the sonority differently elsewhere. I don't have a score handy. Schoenberg was a smart tonal theorist (whose harmony book I quite enjoyed.) Not surprised he got this one right!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> Given the evidence in the example provided, which is all one can expect the quiz taker to consider, there is no basis for interpreting the chord as "V/V" unless that statement is highly qualified, including mention of the nonharmonic tone G#, the fact that the chord would contain a 7th, and the flatted 5th. No reputable theorist would describe it that way, and as the quizmaster stated it, the choice is simply wrong on several grounds. Therefore, since one answer is unequivocally wrong, the "all of the above" option is necessarily incorrect. The half diminished interpretation isn't quite as wrong, although the only way it comes out as a half diminished 7 is by a tortured spelling (F - Ab - Cb - Eb) that makes no sense in the context of A minor.


Wikipedia cites Ergo, Kurth, and Distler in favor of an interpretation as V/V, "as a seventh chord with lowered fifth," and D'Indy in favor of an interpretation on IV(!).

The point remains that you can't say it's a mistake on the part of the author to claim that it can be interpreted that way if, in fact, it has been interpreted that way.

Wagner reuses the notes of the chord in the context of B major at the end of the opera, as it appears, over a pedal on B, spelled as before, F-B-D#-G#. Given the orchestration and the importance given to it, it is clear that despite the different musical function, it is taken to refer to the same motif.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Wikipedia cites Ergo, Kurth, and Distler in favor of an interpretation as V/V, "as a seventh chord with lowered fifth," and D'Indy in favor of an interpretation on IV(!).
> 
> The point remains that you can't say it's a mistake on the part of the author to claim that it can be interpreted that way if, in fact, it has been interpreted that way.


He didn't say it could be interpreted that way, that is, as a seventh chord with a flatted fifth and an appoggiatura! He said it could be interpreted as V/V. What is V/V in A minor? It consists of precisely three notes: B-D#-F#- no G#, no A, no F natural! If what he actually meant was "an altered V7 of V in second inversion with an appoggiatura," he should have written that as one of his choices (or, at the very least, "an altered secondary dominant"). Assuming those taking the quiz would be as careless with their Roman numeral designations and thinking as he was in making the quiz was a mistake. Once again, and as with the Beethoven Op. 132/iii question, he was relying on book knowledge and faulting the quiz taker for not having read (or misread!) the same books. In both cases the options he gave for answers were wrong for the passages he cited. In both cases actual theoretical knowledge or analytic skill was penalized in favor of being able to regurgitate something he read in a book.

By the way, in case it wasn't clear, I got both questions "right" (that is right according to what he wanted but wrong in reality) because I was familiar with the book knowledge on which he was basing the questions.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

16/20 I'm quite proud of my score.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Was expecting 0, but some weren't really theory questions, or could be worked out easily without knowing theory, so I got 4.

If anyone here still needed to be convinced that I have never studied music, there you go.


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## Guest (Apr 6, 2016)

Crudblud said:


> Was expecting 0, but some weren't really theory questions, or could be worked out easily without knowing theory, so I got 4.
> 
> If anyone here still needed to be convinced that I have never studied music, there you go.


You obviously know your notation well enough, though


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## Guest (Apr 6, 2016)

I don't know why I even looked at the questions!

I'd struggle to get zero.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

nathanb said:


> You obviously know your notation well enough, though


Actually, I can't read music at all. I mean, I can listen to a piece of music and follow the score by trying to match images with sounds, but I can't look at a score on its own and understand what is going on, even if I know the music.


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

Oops, in question #6 they have misspelt Winterreise... unfortunate in a question testing knowledge of German.


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## Guest (Apr 6, 2016)

Crudblud said:


> Actually, I can't read music at all. I mean, I can listen to a piece of music and follow the score by trying to match images with sounds, but I can't look at a score on its own and understand what is going on, even if I know the music.


Oh ok. I thought you used Finale for some reason. I'm in a somewhat similar boat in that I know enough to "figure out" a basic score. But I can't work quickly with it. I'm still thinking "Uh, let's see...Every...Good...Boy..Does...Fine...ah, ok, that's an F". I prefer to work with pure midi as well.


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## Autocrat (Nov 14, 2014)

I learnt some theory in my teens (a really long time ago!!!) but it was all pretty basic. I am really, really good at guessing though.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

nathanb said:


> Oh ok. I thought you used Finale for some reason. I'm in a somewhat similar boat in that I know enough to "figure out" a basic score. But I can't work quickly with it. I'm still thinking "Uh, let's see...Every...Good...Boy..Does...Fine...ah, ok, that's an F". I prefer to work with pure midi as well.


I've always been a piano roll kind of guy, really. There's nothing wrong with scorewriters like Finale, but if you're writing for the computer specifically it just seems like an unnecessary addition to the process.


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