Funny Answers from Students on Music Exams

• The principal singer of nineteenth-century opera was called pre-Madonna.
• It is easy to teach anyone to play the maracas. Just grip the neck and shake him in rhythm.
• Gregorian chant has no music, just singers singing the same lines.
• Sherbet composed the Unfinished Symphony.
• All female parts were sung by castrati. We don't know exactly what they sounded like because there are no known descendants.
• Music sung by two people at the same time is called a duel; if they sing without music it is called Acapulco.
• A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals.
• Contralto is a low sort of music that only ladies sing.
• A harp is a nude piano.
• The main trouble with a French Horn is that it is too tangled up.
• An interval in music is the distance from one piano to the next.
• The correct way to find the key to a piece of music is to use a pitchfork.
• Agitato is a state of mind when one's finger slips in the middle of playing a piece.
• Refrain means don't do it. A refrain in music is the part you'd better not try to sing.
• I know what a sextet is but I'd rather not say.
• Most authorities agree that music of antiquity was written long ago.
• My favorite composer was Opus. Agnus Dei was a woman composer famous for her church music.
• Henry Purcell was a well-known composer few people have ever heard of.
• 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.