39 facts, each with a source
Music facts
Music facts from the studio, the stage and the bell tower. A six-second drum break from 1969 became the backbone of hip-hop, a lyrebird can imitate a chainsaw, and we know what a castrato sounded like because one lived long enough to be recorded. Every fact links to its source.
Classical
- We know what a castrato sounded like because one lived long enough to be recorded.
- As his hearing failed, Beethoven clenched a rod against the piano and bit down on it.
- An organ piece in a German church began playing in 2001 and is scheduled to finish in 2640.
- One famous composition is four and a half minutes of silence.
- One composition is scored for 100 metronomes and nothing else.
- Handel wrote Messiah in 24 days.
- The riot at the premiere of The Rite of Spring was aimed largely at the dancing.
- Vivaldi died a pauper and was largely forgotten for two centuries.
Jazz
Rock
Pop
Instruments
- The man who invented the theremin later built a listening device with no batteries or wires.
- A perfectly tuned piano sounds out of tune.
- In blind tests, professional soloists could not reliably tell old Italian violins from new ones.
- The first electric guitar was nicknamed the frying pan.
- The inventor of the saxophone survived a fall from a third floor, swallowing a needle, a gunpowder explosion and sleeping in a room full of fresh varnish.
- An orchestra tunes to the oboe.
- A piano is under 20 tons of tension.
Music History
- A six-second drum break from a 1969 B-side became the backbone of hip-hop, jungle and drum and bass.
- Bell-ringers were killed trying to stop lightning.
- One musical interval was called the devil in music.
- The oldest written melody we can still play is about 3,400 years old.
- Happy Birthday to You was under copyright claim until 2016, earning around two million dollars a year.
- Mozart did not write the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
Sound Science
- The quietest room on Earth is unbearable to stand in.
- The loudest sound ever recorded circled the planet four times.
- A live audience's hearts beat in sync.
- About one person in twenty-five cannot hear a tune.
- A tone can appear to rise forever without ever getting higher.
- Your music taste stopped changing in your twenties.
- A record groove is a physical drawing of the sound.
- The chills a song gives you are a chemical reward.
- A song stuck in your head is your brain trying to finish it.