London in Music Quiz | Geography in Songs

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Let's start with the Renaissance: during the reign of which English king did the composers Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Weelkes and Richard Deering - among others - write musical arrangements of London street cries for voices and stringed instruments?

Answer: James I

Sociologically, as well as musically, interesting,these rather brilliant "Cries of London" pieces seem to reproduce accurately the characteristic "tunes" of the assorted street-vendors, chimney-sweeps, tinkers and so on who thronged the streets of Jacobean London in an era before shops, as we know them, had been invented.

2. "Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's". Which one of the following lines from the old children's song is not quite right?

Answer: "You owe me three farthings," say the bells of St Martin's

It should be five farthings, not three. A tidy bit of pocket money in Restoration England, when this song is believed to have originated, perhaps making it contemporary with "London's Burning".

3. Fast-forwarding to the early 1900s, what title did the Australian-born composer Percy Grainger give to his rumbustious, London-inspired work for massed pianos and orchestra?

Answer: Handel in the Strand

If Grainger ever wrote a dull piece of music, I have not yet heard it. Dr Percy Scholes, writing about this composer in the "Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music", comments rather sniffily that the "general character of his temperament and production might be characterised as 'breezy'".

4. Which one of the following English-born composers wrote "A London Symphony"?

Answer: Ralph Vaughan Williams

"The noise and hurry of London, with its always underlying calm", "Bloomsbury Square on a November afternoon", "Westminster Embankment at night" - VW mapped out the programmatic episodes of his symphony to help the listener along. Personally I prefer to listen to the work without the help of these "verismo" promptings, although it is impossible to miss the distant chimes of Big Ben towards the end. Two episodes in particular echo in my memory: the slow movement includes a snatch of a lavender-seller's song that the composer had heard in Russell Square before the war, and the third movement Trio includes a simulated Cockney mouth-organ tune.

5. Which London suburb did the Cheltenham-born composer Gustav Holst honour with an orchestral piece incorporating a Prelude and a Scherzo?

Answer: Hammersmith

River-culture and street-culture meet in this atmospheric piece, one of the composer's last works. I'm grateful to the youtube blogger Dorm2003 for the information that Holst, apparently, never heard this dynamic display of melodic, harmonic and contrapuntal invention himself - "except in his head of course" - because it was too modern for the British Military Band, for whom it was originally written.

It's true that its insistent dissonances and episodes of raucous din still put some listeners off even today.

6. Which one of these English composers wrote "A London Overture"?

Answer: John Ireland

This delicately-scored overture is perhaps the closest the musically restrained Ireland ever got to downright flamboyance in his music. One particularly jaunty theme is apparently inspired by a bus conductor's cry of "'Dilly! Piccadilly!" If you don't know this piece, I recommend it without reservation.

7. What was the name of the 1930s musical in which the famous walking dance "The Lambeth Walk" first saw the light of day?

Answer: Me and My Girl

I think the Lambeth Walk is an absolutely brilliant dance - popular culture at its most rip-roaring. To get an idea of what can be done with it, look up Robert Lindsay and his troupe on youtube performing it in one of the London theatres. This video clip is so good that it almost (but not quite) makes me wish I was a Londoner myself!

8. Twentieth-century nightingales could often think of better places than Central London in which to burst into song, I suppose. But in which London square, according to a song reportedly written in a French village bar and first published in England in 1940, did a nightingale start singing one memorable night?

Answer: Berkeley Square

"I may be right, I may be wrong,
But I'm perfectly willing to swear
That as we kissed and said goodnight
A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square."

This rather ghastly saccharine piece became a great favourite among people possessed of more sentimentality than musical judgment.

9. Not enough songs have been written about London Tube stations. Which band had a Top Twenty hit in 1967 with a number called "Finchley Central"?

Answer: The New Vaudeville Band

What these individuals lacked in talent they certainly made up for in chutzpah. They were not, I have heard, best friends with the musically more gifted (but at that time commercially less successful) Bonzo Dogs, who reportedly accused them of being Johnny-come-lately upstarts who had stolen some of the Bonzos' ideas.

The Vaudeville's lead singer, Alan Klein (who sang the final chorus of "Finchley Central" through a railway megaphone) liked to call himself "Tristram, Seventh Earl of Cricklewood" - not a title that can easily be found in the pages of "Burke's Peerage", I imagine.

10. Finally, another concession to pop: in which song of the 1960s do Terry and Julie cross over the River Thames to "where they feel safe and sound"?

Answer: Waterloo Sunset

The lyrics of this Kinks song, like those of most pop songs, give every impression - it has to be said - of having been put together by a not-very-bright chimpanzee. In spite of this, however, it is difficult for many people who grew up in England in the 1960s not to feel a little frisson of nostalgia whenever they hear the song played.

Source: Author londoneye98

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor kyleisalive before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

London in Music Trivia Quiz

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