This music trivia quiz hops from Vienna concert halls to Australian hard rock and Jazz Age New York, with a few odd instruments along the way. You'll meet deaf composers, famous violin makers and the very first clip ever played on MTV. Ten questions, no lyrics to remember, and plenty of stories you can bring up at your next concert or dinner party.
Western classical music is usually split into broad eras that make handy memory anchors. The Baroque came first, roughly 1600 to 1750, followed by the Classical era to around 1820, and then the Romantic era, which ran through most of the 1800s. If you can place a composer in one of these periods, you can often rule out wrong answers fast.
Popular music has its own landmarks, many of them American. Billboard launched its Hot 100 singles chart on August 4, 1958, and the first Grammy Awards followed on May 4, 1959, with ceremonies held at the same time in Beverly Hills and New York City. Charts and awards like these give fans a shared timeline for every decade of pop, rock, soul and hip-hop.
Instruments make great trivia too, because each one has a backstory shaped by craftsmen, workshops and the technology of its day. Music is fun to quiz on because it connects to so much else: science, geography, history and the lives of the people who made it.