Ron Chaplin wrote:

>The other night, I happened to tune into the TV show "Who wants to be a
>millionaire," not one of my favorites.
>
>There was a question about who wrote the the Wedding March: Mozart, Wagner,
>Strauss and Handel.  The "correct" answere was Wagner!

This whole scene was Exhibit A in the trial against music literacy in the
USA.

First of all, the moderator Regis Philbin continually pronounced the name
"Wagner", like "the dog wagged his tail", as opposed to "Vahgner", when
listing the possible answers.

The participant was stumped.  To fill in those not familiar with the show,
each person gets three "lifelines", which they can call on as needed when
unsure of the answer.  One is a poll of the audience, another is to narrow
the choices from four to two, and the third is to phone a friend for
assistance.  These can be used in any sequence.

Our hero first asked for a poll of the audience.  IIRC, the most popular
answer was Mozart.  Still not sure, the panelist chose to narrow the
choices and this left us with Strauss and Wagner.  Apparently, there was
no perceived need to specify *which* Strauss!

Finally the panelist phoned a friend, who corrected the pronunciation of
Wagner after it was read it to him incorrectly but guessed Strauss, saying
that Wagner was too heavy for a wedding march.

The panelist tried this answer but was rudely eliminated.  At least Regis
pronounced Wagner correctly on his last try.

Tim Dickinson
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http://www.tdware.com