143 Fun Facts About Music History

Which composer wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament in 1802, a despairing letter to his brothers that he never sent?

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote it in despair at his growing deafness, then hid it; the letter was found among his papers after his death in 1827, after 25 more years of composing.

What city is widely considered the birthplace of jazz music?

New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz partly because enslaved Africans there were allowed to gather on Sundays in Congo Square, where they kept their drumming and dance traditions alive.

Which 1950s star told reporters in 1969 that Fats Domino was the real king of rock and roll?

Elvis Presley, called 'The King' by a journalist at a Las Vegas press conference, gestured to Fats Domino in the room and said 'that's the real king of rock and roll'.

Which August 1969 festival became a defining moment of the counterculture era?

Woodstock was not held in Woodstock: after the town of Wallkill blocked it a month before, it moved to Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, and drew over 400,000 people.

Which Detroit label, founded in 1959, launched The Supremes, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye?

Motown Records began in 1959 with $800 that Berry Gordy borrowed from his family's savings fund; he ran the label with the quality control he had learned on a car assembly line.

Many early jazz musicians played in which red-light district around Basin Street?

Storyville took its name from Sidney Story, the alderman who wrote the 1897 law confining vice to the district; in 1917 the US Navy, with men stationed nearby, had it shut down.

Which 1969 album's cover shows four musicians on a zebra crossing outside the London studio where it was recorded?

Abbey Road's cover took ten minutes: photographer Iain Macmillan stood on a stepladder in the street while a policeman held up the traffic, and shot just six frames.

What format, launched commercially in 1982, went on to replace vinyl records and cassettes as the main way to buy music?

The compact disc (CD), co-developed by Philips and Sony, outsold records and cassettes in the US by the early 1990s; the tale that its length was set to fit one long symphony is a myth, a Philips engineer says.

Which artist's 1982 album sent seven of its nine tracks into the US top 10 as singles?

Michael Jackson saw Thriller's sales surge after he unveiled the moonwalk on a 1983 TV special; Guinness lists it as the best-selling album ever, at over 67 million copies.

Which region of the United States is regarded as the cradle of the blues?

The Mississippi Delta is not the river's mouth but a cotton floodplain in northwest Mississippi, between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, where Delta blues took shape.

Which group's 1982 single 'The Message' was an early rap hit about inner-city poverty?

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five put their name to it, but only one member, Melle Mel, raps on it; he traded verses with co-writer Duke Bootee after the group balked at the song.

Which song opened MTV's very first broadcast on August 1, 1981?

Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles went out at 12:01 a.m., a pointed choice of title for a channel built on music videos.

Which 1985 benefit concert ran on the same day in London and Philadelphia to raise money for Ethiopian famine relief?

Live Aid let Phil Collins play both shows: after his Wembley set he took a helicopter to Heathrow, crossed the Atlantic on Concorde and was on stage in Philadelphia the same day.

What DJ technique, born in the 1970s Bronx, involves moving a vinyl record back and forth under the needle?

Scratching is credited to Grand Wizzard Theodore, who by his own account found the sound in 1975 when he held a record still to hear his mother telling him to turn the music down.

Which 1991 Nirvana album brought grunge into the mainstream?

Nevermind was expected by its label to sell about 250,000 copies, matching Sonic Youth's Goo; by the time it hit No. 1 in January 1992 it was selling around 300,000 a week.

Which 2001 music player was launched with the promise of '1,000 songs in your pocket'?

The iPod was named by copywriter Vinnie Chieco: seeing the white prototype, he thought of the line 'Open the pod bay doors, Hal' from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Which composer wrote "The Four Seasons," a set of four violin concertos published in 1725?

Antonio Vivaldi published The Four Seasons with a sonnet for each concerto, possibly his own, spelling out what the music paints: birdsong, a shepherd's barking dog, buzzing flies and storms.

Which Chicago club, where Frankie Knuckles was resident DJ from 1977, is said to have given a dance genre its name?

The Warehouse gave house music its name, the usual story goes: a record shop used 'house' as shorthand for what Knuckles played there. He left in late 1982 and soon opened his own club, the Power Plant.

Which 1999 file-sharing service disrupted the music industry and drew copyright lawsuits?

Napster, created by Shawn Fanning, allowed users to share MP3 files peer-to-peer and was sued by the RIAA and Metallica before being shut down in 2001.

Who was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Aretha Franklin entered the Hall in 1987, its second year; her signature 'Respect' was Otis Redding's song, which she remade by adding the spelled-out R-E-S-P-E-C-T hook.

Which futuristic electronic music genre originated in Detroit in the mid-1980s?

Techno was built by three school friends from Belleville, a small town outside Detroit: Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, later known as the Belleville Three.

Which 1973 Pink Floyd album led the US chart for one week yet has spent over 900 weeks on it?

The Dark Side of the Moon was briefly retitled Eclipse because the band Medicine Head had just used the name; when that record flopped, Pink Floyd took their title back.

The Grammys grew out of plans for which landmark?

The Hollywood Walk of Fame committee's record executives saw that many leading music figures would never qualify for a star, so they founded an academy to honour them with awards instead.

Ska and rocksteady were 1960s dance styles from which Caribbean country?

Jamaica's ska slowed into rocksteady and then reggae; Toots and the Maytals' 1968 single 'Do the Reggay' was the first popular song to use the word and is credited with naming the genre.

Where in Memphis did Sam Phillips record 'Rocket 88', reputedly the first rock and roll single?

Sun Studio, then Sam Phillips's Memphis Recording Service, gave 'Rocket 88' its fuzzy guitar by accident: legend has it the amp was damaged on the drive up and stuffed with newspaper, and Phillips liked the sound.

Which Swedish group shot to fame by winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton?

ABBA won with 'Waterloo' even though the host country's jury gave the song no points at all, which Björn Ulvaeus later suggested may have been tactical.

Which music streaming service launched in Sweden in October 2008?

Spotify was Daniel Ek's answer to piracy: he said laws could never stop file-sharing, so the only fix was a legal service that was better than the pirate sites.

Which blues guitarist named his guitars 'Lucille' after a dance-hall fire?

B.B. King named his guitars Lucille after a 1949 dance-hall fire in Twist, Arkansas, started when two men fighting over a woman named Lucille knocked over a barrel of burning kerosene; he ran back in to save his guitar.

Which rap group from Compton released "Straight Outta Compton" in 1988, helping define gangsta rap?

N.W.A drew a warning letter from the FBI to their label over one track on the album, and the notoriety only helped: they billed themselves as the world's most dangerous group.

What instrument did Frédéric Chopin primarily compose for throughout his career?

Chopin's works all feature the piano, yet the celebrated virtuoso gave only about 30 public performances after settling in Paris, preferring the intimacy of the salon.

Which guitar, first sold in 1950 as the Broadcaster, was the first mass-produced solid-body electric?

The Fender Telecaster got its name in 1951 after Gretsch objected that it sold Broadkaster drums; in between, Fender simply snipped the name off the decals, creating the collectors' 'Nocasters'.

Whose 2016 album Lemonade was released exclusively on Tidal and addressed infidelity and Black womanhood?

Beyoncé's "Lemonade" was both a visual album and a cultural event, debuting as an HBO special before becoming available on Tidal. It won the Peabody Award for its cultural significance.

What is the set of five horizontal lines on which Western music is written called?

Staff notation (also called standard notation) evolved from neumes used in medieval chant. The five-line staff became standard by the 13th century and remains the primary system for written music.

Which band's final live performance was an impromptu rooftop concert atop its own company's London building on January 30, 1969?

The Beatles played for 42 minutes on the roof of their Apple Corps building before police arrived and told them to turn it down; the audio was finally released for streaming in 2022.

Which act released the first commercially successful rap single, "Rapper's Delight"?

The Sugarhill Gang did not exist before the record: producer Sylvia Robinson assembled the trio for it, and Big Bank Hank is said to have auditioned outside the pizza parlor where he worked.

Whose "The Ring of the Nibelung" runs to four operas and some 15 hours?

Richard Wagner spent about 26 years on the Ring and had his own theatre built at Bayreuth to stage it; the house opened with the first complete cycle in August 1876.

Which band topped both the UK and US charts with 'Come On Eileen', released in 1982?

Dexys Midnight Runners, led by Kevin Rowland, topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic with this Celtic soul track but never repeated the success in America.

Which analog synthesizer, introduced in 1970, helped legitimise electronic music as art?

The Minimoog Model D was the first widely available portable synthesizer. It was used by artists from Stevie Wonder to Keith Emerson, making electronic sounds accessible to mainstream musicians.

Which jazz musician's 1959 album 'Kind of Blue' was recorded in two sessions with almost no rehearsal?

Miles Davis called for almost no rehearsal and handed his players only sketches of scales and melodies to improvise on; the album was certified five times platinum in the US in 2019.

What genre emerged from Kingston's late-1970s sound system culture, with heavy bass and sparse syncopated drums?

Dancehall grew out of reggae as a rawer, DJ-led style, and after Wayne Smith's 1985 hit "(Under Me) Sleng Teng" it went fully digital with electronic riddims and toasters chatting over the beat.

Which left-handed guitarist mainly played right-handed guitars turned upside down and restrung?

Jimi Hendrix's upside-down Stratocasters reversed the slant of the bridge pickup, so his lowest string rang brighter and his highest darker, the opposite of Fender's design.

Which German band, formed in 1970, made 'Autobahn' and 'Trans-Europe Express'?

Kraftwerk, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider's Düsseldorf group, reached far beyond rock: Afrika Bambaataa's 1982 'Planet Rock' borrowed the melody of Trans-Europe Express for a hip-hop landmark.

Which producer opened Studio One in Kingston in 1963 and auditioned Bob Marley's Wailers there?

Clement "Coxsone" Dodd held Sunday-evening auditions at Studio One, the island's first Black-owned studio; schoolmates nicknamed him after Yorkshire cricketer Alec Coxon for his own skill at the game.

Which 1980 drum machine became foundational to hip-hop and pop despite flopping commercially at launch?

The TR-808 flopped because producers wanted more realistic drums; cheap on the used market, it was then taken up by underground musicians, who made its booming bass drum a signature.

Which singer-songwriter released the 1971 album "Blue"?

Joni Mitchell made Blue in the aftermath of her breakup with Graham Nash, setting her songs to sparse guitar, piano and Appalachian dulcimer; Rolling Stone's 2020 list ranked it third of all time.

Who became the first performer to win the Album of the Year Grammy four times, in 2024?

Taylor Swift's fourth win, for Midnights, passed Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon on three each; earlier that night she used another acceptance speech to announce her next album.

What term describes the ornate musical period of roughly 1600 to 1750, home to Bach, Handel and Telemann?

Baroque is usually traced, via French, to the Portuguese barroco, a misshapen pearl, and it began as a put-down: a 1734 review used it for an opera the critic found lacking in coherent melody.

Which artist played 'The Kid' in a 1984 film shot in Minneapolis whose soundtrack topped the US chart for 24 weeks?

Prince recorded the title song of Purple Rain live at a 1983 benefit concert at the Minneapolis club First Avenue, the same venue where the film's concert scenes were shot.

Which 1977 Donna Summer single, produced by Giorgio Moroder, pioneered an almost fully synthesized disco sound?

'I Feel Love' so struck Brian Eno that, David Bowie recalled, he came running into their Berlin studio saying he had heard the sound of the future.

Which band left its 1971 fourth album officially untitled, identifying it only with four symbols?

Led Zeppelin's four symbols were chosen one by each member; the record, usually just called Led Zeppelin IV, holds 'Stairway to Heaven' and is one of the best-selling albums in history.

Which producer built the "Wall of Sound" at Gold Star Studios in the early 1960s?

Phil Spector layered large ensembles through Gold Star's echo chambers into a dense, saturated Wall of Sound, heard on The Ronettes' 1963 hit 'Be My Baby'.

Whose 1968 concert for the inmates of Folsom Prison became a hit live album and revived his career?

Johnny Cash never served a prison sentence, despite the outlaw image; he wrote 'Folsom Prison Blues' in the Air Force in West Germany after watching a film about the jail.

Whose 1998 solo debut became hip-hop's first Album of the Year Grammy winner?

Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill won five Grammys in one night, yet as of 2025 it remains the only solo studio album she has ever released.

Which classical composer wrote over 600 works for voice and piano known as "lieder" (art songs)?

Franz Schubert died at 31 having written over 600 lieder, about 140 of them in 1815 alone, the year the teenager set Goethe's 'Erlkönig'.

What was the "British Invasion" of the 1960s?

The British Invasion was UK rock acts topping US charts: it began in early 1964 when the Beatles' 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' hit No. 1, opening the door for the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and dozens more.

Which band topped charts worldwide in 1997 with "MMMBop"?

Hanson, three brothers from Tulsa, Oklahoma aged 11, 14 and 16, took "MMMBop" to No. 1 in the US, UK and Australia in spring 1997 but never matched that success.

Which New York jazz club, opened on Broadway in 1949, took its name from Charlie Parker's nickname?

Birdland borrowed the nickname of Charlie 'Yardbird' Parker to cash in on his fame; a liquor-licence delay pushed its opening from September to 15 December 1949.

Which Sony product, launched in July 1979, was the world's first low-cost personal stereo?

The first Walkman, the TPS-L2, was adapted from the Pressman, a small cassette recorder Sony made for journalists, and turned listening into a private, mobile experience.

The oldest surviving notated song, a Hurrian hymn from Syria, was written on what?

A clay tablet from Ugarit carries the hymn in cuneiform from about 1400 BCE; scholars read its musical signs so differently that several rival versions of the melody exist.

The Seikilos epitaph, the oldest complete notated song, is in Greek but was found near Aydın in which modern country?

Found in western Turkey in 1883, the Seikilos stone later had its base sawn flat so its owner's wife could stand her flowerpots on it, which destroyed a line of the text.

Which Frenchman's 1857 phonautograph recorded sound two decades before Edison but could not play it back?

Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's 1860 trace of 'Au clair de la lune' was first heard in 2008, at twice the right speed; corrected, it proved to be a man, possibly Scott himself, singing very slowly.

Which composer's unfinished Requiem was completed by Franz Xaver Süssmayr after the composer died in 1791?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem was ordered by Count Walsegg, an amateur who liked to pass off commissioned works as his own; the finished score was delivered to him after Mozart's death.

Who composed L'Orfeo (1607), the oldest opera in the regular repertoire?

Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo premiered at the Mantuan court in 1607, went unperformed for many years after his death and was largely forgotten until a revival in 1904 led to modern stagings.

Ancient Greeks tied the aulos to Dionysus and which instrument to Apollo?

The lyre beat the aulos, a double pipe, in a famous myth: the satyr Marsyas challenged Apollo to a music contest, lost, and was flayed alive.

What are the oldest undisputed musical instruments, found in German caves and made at least 35,000 years ago?

Bone flutes from Hohle Fels and nearby caves were carved from bird bones such as a vulture's wing, alongside others in mammoth ivory, by the makers of some of the oldest known figurative art.

Which medieval music teacher devised the ut–re–mi–fa–sol–la syllables for teaching singers?

Guido of Arezzo, an 11th-century Benedictine monk, took the syllables from the hymn 'Ut queant laxis', whose phrases each start one step higher; 'ut' was later swapped for 'do'.

Which nursery rhyme did Thomas Edison recite to test his first phonograph in 1877?

Edison recited 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' into his tinfoil phonograph in December 1877; that recording was never preserved, and he re-enacted it for the phonograph's 50th anniversary in 1927.

Emile Berliner's gramophone, patented in 1887, played recordings stored on what instead of Edison's cylinders?

Flat discs were stamped out as replicas of one etched zinc master, so a single recording could be copied in bulk; Berliner's first ones were sold with a toy gramophone in Germany.

Which pianist-composer wrote the 'Maple Leaf Rag', published in Sedalia, Missouri in 1899?

Scott Joplin's contract with publisher John Stark paid him a royalty on every copy sold, and the rag's long sales gave him a steady income for the rest of his life.

Whose ballet score was met with uproar in the audience at its Paris premiere in May 1913?

Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring drew such noise at its premiere that, he recalled, it drowned out the voice of choreographer Nijinsky calling the steps to his dancers.

Which 1927 film was the first feature with synchronized songs and spoken dialogue?

The Jazz Singer, released by Warner Bros. in October 1927, talks only in a few sequences, but its success effectively ended the silent era within a couple of years.

Which teen star of TV's 'The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet' scored the first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 in 1958?

Ricky Nelson objected to 'Poor Little Fool' coming out as a single; he had approval over picture-sleeve art and refused to choose a photo, so the first Hot 100 chart-topper shipped in a plain sleeve.

Where did Bob Dylan first perform a concert with electric instruments, in July 1965?

At the Newport Folk Festival Dylan played just three electric songs, to boos and cheers alike, then came back alone with an acoustic guitar; he did not return to Newport for 37 years.

Which star, killed with Ritchie Valens in a 1959 plane crash, is mourned in 'American Pie'?

Buddy Holly chartered the plane to escape a freezing tour bus; his bassist Waylon Jennings gave up his seat to the Big Bopper, and Don McLean later called it the day the music died.

Which motorcycle club was used as security at the violent 1969 Altamont Free Concert?

The Hells Angels were reportedly paid with $500 of beer to guard the stage at Altamont on 6 December 1969; the concert was marred by the killing of Meredith Hunter near the stage.

Handel lived in London, but in which other city did his 'Messiah' have its premiere in 1742?

Dublin heard Messiah first, in the music hall on Fishamble Street; to fit in the largest possible audience, gentlemen were asked to leave off their swords and ladies their hoops.

Antonio Stradivari's prized violins were made in which Italian city?

Stradivari worked in Cremona because the craft was born there: Andrea Amati is credited with building the first instruments of the modern violin family in the town a century earlier.

Which electronic instrument is played without the performer touching it?

The theremin was a by-product of Soviet government research into proximity sensors; physicist Leon Theremin invented it in 1920, and its two antennas sense how near the player's hands are.

Which 1998 Cher single pioneered the blatant use of Auto-Tune to warp vocals?

'Believe' (1998) made Auto-Tune a hook: the software was meant to nudge flat notes discreetly, but producer Mark Taylor cranked its settings until the warble became the song's signature.

Which country hosted and won the first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956?

Switzerland hosted seven countries in Lugano and won with Lys Assia's 'Refrain'; uniquely, every country sang two songs that year, and the voting was held in secret.

Which British festival began in 1970 on Michael Eavis's dairy farm?

Glastonbury drew about 1,500 people that first year, at £1 a ticket with free milk from the farm; Tyrannosaurus Rex replaced the billed headliners, the Kinks, at short notice.

Guinness World Records lists whose 'White Christmas' as the best-selling single of all time?

Bing Crosby's 1942 master was worn out by repeated pressings, so the version usually heard today is a re-recording he made in 1947; sales are put at over 50 million copies.

Who was the first African-American woman to win a Grammy, at the awards' inaugural show?

Ella Fitzgerald got her start at 17 at the Apollo's amateur night: she planned to dance, lost her nerve after a rival dance act, sang instead and won first prize.

Which country's pop music was reshaped in 1992 when Seo Taiji and Boys rapped on a TV talent show?

South Korea's TV jury gave 'Nan Arayo' the lowest score of the night, yet the song became a huge hit and its mix of rap, dance and pop choruses set the template for K-pop.

Disco Demolition Night, when a crate of disco records was blown up in 1979, took place at which Chicago ballpark?

Comiskey Park hosted it on July 12, 1979, between games of a White Sox–Tigers doubleheader; fans stormed the field and the second game was forfeited to Detroit.

Which composer, the jealous rival in the film 'Amadeus', wrote the opera that opened Milan's La Scala in 1778?

Antonio Salieri's Europa riconosciuta opened La Scala on 3 August 1778 and was then not staged again until 7 December 2004, when it reopened the restored house.

The 1927 sessions called the 'Big Bang of country music' were held not in Nashville but in which city?

In Bristol, Tennessee, Ralph Peer set up a makeshift studio upstairs at a hat company on State Street, which runs along the Virginia line, and recorded both the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.

Under what name did the Grand Ole Opry begin on Nashville radio in 1925?

The WSM Barn Dance got its famous name in 1927, when host George D. Hay, following a network programme of grand opera, told listeners they would now hear the 'Grand Ole Opry'.

Which jazz label did German-Jewish emigrant Alfred Lion co-found in New York in 1939?

Blue Note began after Alfred Lion heard the From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall: shortly afterwards he rented a studio for a day and recorded pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis.

Which song's video was the first on YouTube to reach one billion views, in 2012?

'Gangnam Style' passed a billion views on 21 December 2012 and later outran YouTube's 32-bit view counter, forcing an upgrade so it could count beyond 2,147,483,647.

Which Nigerian musician is regarded as the principal innovator of Afrobeat?

Fela Kuti declared his Lagos commune, the Kalakuta Republic, independent of military rule; after his album Zombie mocked Nigeria's soldiers, about 1,000 of them stormed and burned it.

Who composed the music for the 1962 bossa nova hit 'The Girl from Ipanema'?

Antônio Carlos Jobim and lyricist Vinícius de Moraes were inspired by a 17-year-old who strolled past the Veloso bar in Ipanema each day; Astrud Gilberto, who sang the English hit, had never sung professionally.

Les Paul built his early solid-body prototype around a plain length of 4x4 timber, earning it which nickname?

The Log only looked like a guitar because Les Paul sawed an Epiphone hollow body lengthwise and attached the halves either side of it; the solid core ended the feedback that troubled hollow electrics.

Which English king wrote the song Pastime with Good Company, also known as The King's Ballad?

Henry VIII was schooled from boyhood in singing, playing and composing, and his contemporaries thought him a talented composer and poet.

Which medieval string instrument is sounded by a hand-cranked rosined wheel that rubs the strings like a bow?

The hurdy-gurdy's earliest form, the organistrum, was so large that it took two people to play: one turned the crank while the other worked the keys.

Which reggae star died in a Miami hospital on May 11, 1981, while travelling home from treatment in Germany?

Bob Marley had rejected advice to have a cancerous toe amputated four years earlier, citing his religious beliefs and the harm it would do to his performing.

Which English ballad tune, first registered in London in 1580, later carried the Christmas carol What Child Is This?

Greensleeves is often credited to a Tudor king, but it follows an Italian style of composition that reached England only after his death.

Which American composer wrote 4′33″, a three-movement piece in which the performers make no deliberate sound?

John Cage came to chance-controlled music in 1951 after studying Zen Buddhism and Indian philosophy, and the silent piece followed a year later.

The sackbut, played in the Renaissance and for long after, was an early form of which modern brass instrument?

Trombone, the Italian name, took over in England when the instrument came back into fashion around 1800; sackbut was the French term used there before it fell out of use.

Which tradition of unaccompanied Latin church song takes its name from a pope whom legend credits with inventing it?

Gregorian chant mostly took shape in the 9th and 10th centuries, long after Pope Gregory I, who scholars think at most ordered a compilation of melodies.

Which Russian composer of the 19th century wrote Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and the 1812 Overture?

Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant, because Russia then offered little opportunity for a life in music.

Which medieval manuscript of poems and songs, found in a Bavarian monastery in 1803, did Carl Orff set to music?

Carmina Burana means Songs from Benediktbeuern, and most of its verses are the work of Goliards, clergy and students who satirized the Church.

Which instrumental album by Mike Oldfield, born on May 15, 1953, became the first release on Virgin Records?

Tubular Bells came out on 25 May 1973 and sold slowly until that December, when its opening motif was used in the horror film The Exorcist.

Chopin, Brahms and Verdi belong to which period of music, which prized emotion over restraint?

Romantic composers wanted music to be individual, emotional and dramatic, in step with the poets, painters and philosophers of their day.

Which European city was the hub of the Classical period, home to its three most celebrated composers?

Vienna drew so many leading composers in the late 1700s that the period is sometimes called the era of Viennese Classicism.

Which keyboard instrument, its strings plucked rather than struck, was a standard part of ensembles before 1750?

The harpsichord gradually disappeared from concert life in the late 18th century, then made a comeback in the 20th for performances of older music.

Debussy and Ravel are the leading figures of which musical style, named after a movement in French painting?

Impressionism was a label Debussy himself rejected, grumbling in a 1908 letter that critics were misusing the term.

Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley pioneered which American style built on repeating patterns and steady pulses?

Minimalism took shape around San Francisco Bay about 1960, where La Monte Young, Riley and Reich were all living and studying.

Which Austrian composer arrived at his twelve-tone technique by 1923, abandoning the system of keys used for centuries?

Arnold Schoenberg later emigrated to the United States, where he taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 1936 to 1944.

Exposition, development and recapitulation are the main sections of which structure, central to the Classical period?

Sonata form became the most common design for the first movement of symphonies and string quartets, which is why it is also called first-movement form.

Which set of six instrumental works did Johann Sebastian Bach present to a German margrave in 1721?

The Brandenburg Concertos were probably composed earlier, and Bach wrote out the presentation copy almost entirely in his own hand rather than leaving it to a copyist.

Bob Dylan walked off which CBS variety program on May 12, 1963, after his song choice was refused?

The Ed Sullivan Show's network feared a defamation suit over his satirical song about the John Birch Society, though the host himself supported it.

In which French Riviera resort did Mick Jagger marry Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias on May 12, 1971?

Saint-Tropez hosted a Catholic ceremony for the Rolling Stones singer and his Nicaraguan-born bride, and their daughter Jade was born that October.

Which songwriter, born on May 12, 1928, wrote Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head with lyricist Hal David?

Burt Bacharach and David tailored most of their songs for one singer, Dionne Warwick, between 1961 and 1972.

Which English band issued its debut single, A Whiter Shade of Pale, on May 12, 1967?

Procol Harum built the song on an organ melody that follows Bach's Air on the G String for a bar or two before veering off, as its composer Gary Brooker put it.

Which former Roxy Music keyboardist, born on May 15, 1948, pioneered ambient music with Music for Airports?

Brian Eno went on to work on David Bowie's Berlin albums and to produce U2's The Joshua Tree with Daniel Lanois.

Which English band's singer, Ian Curtis, died on May 18, 1980, on the eve of its first North American tour?

Joy Division's three surviving members regrouped soon afterwards under a new name, New Order.

Which Beach Boys album, released on May 16, 1966, did Brian Wilson fill with layered harmonies and unusual instruments?

Pet Sounds was Wilson's answer to a rival band's album with no filler tracks, and he told his wife he would make the greatest rock album ever.

Which Manhattan concert venue officially opened on May 5, 1891, with a famous Russian composer as guest conductor?

Carnegie Hall exists because the conductor Walter Damrosch talked Andrew Carnegie, at first uninterested, into paying for a music venue.

Which 12th-century German abbess and visionary composed Ordo Virtutum, arguably the oldest surviving morality play?

Hildegard of Bingen was named a Doctor of the Church in 2012, more than 800 years after her death.

What name was given to the poet-composers of 12th-century southern France who sang of courtly love in Old Occitan?

Troubadours first appeared in Occitania in the late 11th century, and their art soon spread to the Italian and Iberian peninsulas.

Which French poet-composer wrote the Messe de Nostre Dame, the earliest complete Mass setting by a single composer?

Guillaume de Machaut left an unprecedented amount of surviving music, partly because he oversaw the making of his own manuscripts.

What are the early notation signs called that showed singers only a melody's general shape, not its exact notes?

Neumes began as inflective marks without exact pitches or rhythms, and over the centuries they evolved into modern musical notation.

What term names the medieval practice of adding one or more voices to a plainchant melody to enrich the harmony?

Organum at first simply doubled the melody a fourth or fifth away, and only later did composers write added parts that made true polyphony.

Which mid-13th-century English round, also called the Cuckoo Song, is the oldest known piece in six-part polyphony?

Sumer is icumen in is also known as the Reading Rota, because its earliest copy was found at Reading Abbey, though it was probably not written there.

Which Latin sequence from the Requiem Mass has a medieval melody famously quoted in Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique?

Dies irae dates from the 13th century at the latest, and its tune is one of the most quoted in all music, turning up in symphonies and film scores alike.

Which blind organist and composer was the central figure of 14th-century Italian Trecento music?

Francesco Landini lost his sight to smallpox in childhood, yet he mastered many instruments and left 140 surviving ballate.

Which form of secular vocal music, usually unaccompanied and set to Italian verse, is most typical of the Renaissance?

The madrigal grew partly out of the lighter frottola and partly from composers' renewed interest in poetry written in everyday Italian.

Which plucked relative of the Near-Eastern oud was the Renaissance's most important instrument for secular music?

The lute and the oud share a common ancestor, and both names may come from the Arabic al-ʿoud, which literally means the wood.

Which king of Castile, nicknamed El Sabio, presided over the Cantigas de Santa Maria, 420 songs in Galician-Portuguese?

Alfonso X was long credited with writing every one of them, but scholars have since shown that his court poets and musicians composed most.

Which polyphonic vocal form, known since the 13th century, was one of the pre-eminent genres of Renaissance music?

Motet probably comes from an old French word meaning little word, and one 13th-century theorist thought the form too subtle for common people to enjoy.

Which Italian term describes music performed by a choir or a solo singer with no instrumental accompaniment at all?

A cappella literally means in the style of the chapel, yet some early pieces written for the Sistine Chapel were meant to have an organ doubling the voices.

Which church mode, with a name taken over from ancient Greek theory, matches the white notes from D to D?

Dorian was a Greek name, but medieval theorists modeled their system of modes on the Byzantine church's, starting in the 9th century.

What Latin term names a pre-existing melody that a composer uses as the basis of a new polyphonic work?

Cantus firmus means fixed melody, and the most widely set secular one was probably the French song L'homme armé.

Which Italian composer's Pope Marcellus Mass is said in legend to have stopped the Church from banning polyphony?

Palestrina wrote more than 105 masses, and his smooth style became the textbook model of counterpoint once Johann Joseph Fux codified it in 1725.

Which English composer wrote Spem in alium around 1570, a work for forty voices arranged in eight choirs?

Thomas Tallis served four Tudor monarchs in turn and changed his style to suit each one's demands, while steering clear of their religious controversies.

Which English composer of the melancholy song Flow my tears worked at the court of Christian IV of Denmark?

John Dowland reworked the song as Lachrimae, a set of seven pavans built on its theme that is probably his best-known instrumental work.

Which Italian nobleman, who killed his wife and her lover in 1590, wrote vocal music of startling chromatic daring?

Carlo Gesualdo held two noble titles but is better known as a composer, writing in a chromatic language that did not return until the late 19th century.

Which printer working in Venice produced the Odhecaton in 1501, the earliest known printed book of polyphonic music?

Ottaviano Petrucci printed from movable type, and by 1509 he had also issued 16 books of masses.

Which Protestant reformer wrote both the words and the tune of the hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God?

Martin Luther's hymn, written between 1527 and 1529, has been called the Battle Hymn of the Reformation for the support it rallied to the reformers' cause.

Which bowed, fretted string instrument, held upright between the legs, was a mainstay of Renaissance consort music?

The viol developed in Spain in the late 15th century, and its Italian name, viola da gamba, simply means leg viol.

Which Venetian church's opposing choir lofts suited the polychoral style that peaked under Giovanni Gabrieli?

St Mark's Basilica let composers post choirs in facing lofts and on specially built wooden platforms, so that phrases answered one another across the building.

Which Catholic priest, trained at Ávila's cathedral school, became the most famous Spanish composer of the Renaissance?

Tomás Luis de Victoria was also an accomplished organist and singer, and his career was divided between Spain and Italy.