Howlers in Education

These are stories and test questions accumulated by music teachers in the state of Missouri...

• Agnus Dei was a woman composer famous for her church music.

• Refrain means don't do it. A refrain in music is the part you better not try to sing.

• A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals.

• John Sebastian Bach died from 1750 to the present.

• Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was rather large.

• Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling him. I guess he could not hear so good. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died from this.

• Henry Purcell is a well-known composer few people have ever heard of.

• Aaron Copland is one of your most famous contemporary composers. It is unusual to be contemporary. Most composers do not live until they are dead.

• An opera is a song of bigly size.

• In the last scene of Pagliacci, Canio stabs Nedda who is the one he really loves. Pretty soon Silvio also gets stabbed, and they all live happily ever after.

• When a singer sings, he stirs up the air and makes it hit any passing eardrums. But if he is good, he knows how to keep it from hurting.

• Music sung by two people at the same time is called a duel.

• I know what a sextet is but I had rather not say.

• Caruso was at first an Italian. Then someone heard his voice and said he would go a long way. And so he came to America.

• A good orchestra is always ready to play if the conductor steps on the odium.

• Morris dancing is a country survival from times when people were happy.

• Most authorities agree that music of antiquity was written long ago.

• Probably the most marvelous fugue was the one between the Hatfields and McCoys.

• My very best liked piece of music is the Bronze Lullaby.

• My favorite composer is Opus.

• A harp is a nude piano.

• A tuba is much larger than its name.

• Instruments come in many sizes, shapes and orchestras.

• You should always say celli when you mean there are two or more cellos.

• Another name for kettle drums is timpani. But I think I will just stick with the first name and learn it good.

• A trumpet is an instrument when it is not an elephant sound.

• While trombones have tubes, trumpets prefer to wear valves.

• The double bass is also called the bass viol, string bass, and bass fiddle. It has so many names because it is so huge.

• When electric currents go through them, guitars start making sounds. So would anybody.

• Question: What are kettle drums called?
  Answer: Kettle drums.

• Cymbals are round, metal CLANGS!

• A bassoon looks like nothing I have ever heard.

• Last month I found out how a clarinet works by taking it apart. I both found out and got in trouble.

• Question: Is the saxophone a brass or a woodwind instrument?
  Answer: Yes.

• The concertmaster of an orchestra is always the person who sits in the first chair of the first violins. This means that when a person is elected concertmaster, he has to hurry up and learn how to play a violin real good.

• For some reason, they always put a treble clef in front of every line of flute music. You just watch.

• I can't reach the brakes on this piano!

• The main trouble with a French horn is it's too tangled up.

• Anyone who can read all the instrument notes at the same time gets to be the conductor.

• Instrumentalist is a many-purposed word for many player-types.

• The flute is a skinny-high shape-sounded instrument.

• The most dangerous part about playing cymbals is near the nose.

• A contra-bassoon is like a bassoon, only more so.

• Tubas are a bit too much.

• Music instrument has a plural known as orchestra.

• I would like for you to teach me to play the cello. Would tomorrow or Friday be best?

• My favorite instrument is the bassoon. It is so hard to play people seldom play it. That is why I like the bassoon best.

• It is easy to teach anyone to play the maracas. Just grip the neck and shake him in rhythm.

• Just about any animal skin can be stretched over a frame to make a pleasant sound once the animal is removed.