Malcolm Arnold wrote a march celebrating the launch of a new lifeboat in the late 1960s, during which piece we hear the boat's siren (deliberately off-key from the music) and a plucky 'development' section ~ with lots of anguished chords and surging scales ~ depicting the boat butting its gallant way through a stormy sea. What is the title of the piece?

The obvious upbeat nature of a march makes it an ear-catching piece for other purposes such as signature tunes and commercial soundtracks. The British TV series used a March for String Orchestra (not a very practical piece as such, when you consider it for a moment: how would the double-basses cope?) ... by which composer, from his of 1937?

In terms of having descriptive pieces of music written for or about them, which of these is the odd one out?

Gilbert and Sullivan's (1889) is ~ predictably enough ~ set in Venice, yet pulls in plentiful references from elsewhere around the shores of the Mediterranean, such as a character called the Duke of Plaza-Toro (cod-Spanish for 'bullring'). The rumbustious finale combines the titles of three Spanish dances: which are they?

There are various ceremonial marches within the operas of Richard Wagner, such as the solemn Bridal Chorus from and pieces within 'The Mastersingers', but it was an unrelated composer by the same common surname, Josef Franz Wagner (Wagner = 'Carter'), who wrote ~ among 'scores' of others ~ a characteristic march in honour of the armorial emblem of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. What is the title of the march?

In terms of time-signature, which of these dances is the odd one out?

Which Spanish composer created, in 1915, the in his ballet ?

Francois Chopin ~ 'the poet of the piano' ~ brought several traditional European dance forms into the salon, writing and playing examples of the music for them as pieces to be listened to in their own right, rather than as a means to a social end for dancing and pairing-off. Which of the following categories of his piano pieces, often published as such in separate sets or volumes, is NOT based on a dance form?

In his , a splendidly characterful and generally light-hearted work, Camille Saint-Saens sets his 'tortoises' to a vastly slow-motion, lower-register version of a then-recent up-tempo dance. What was the original work?

Not all dances need to be frenetically brisk or energetic. Erik Satie, in the closing years of the 19th century, wrote a series of three for piano (later beautifully and understatedly orchestrated by Debussy) in slow three-time. To what form of rhythmic exercise does their title allude?