Viola
Q: What is a chord?
A: Three violists playing in unison.
Q: What is the best recording of the Walton viola concerto?
A: Music Minus One.
Q: What is the difference between a viola and a trampoline?
A: You take off your shoes before you jump on the trampoline.
Q: What is the difference between the first and last desk of a viola section?
A: Half a measure.
Q: What is the difference between grapes and a viola?
A: You take off your shoes to stamp on grapes.
Conductor: Again from measure 5, if you please.
Voice from viola section: But Maestro, we have no measure numbers.
Q: What is the difference between a chainsaw and a viola?
A: If you absolutely had to, you could use a chainsaw in a string quartet.
Q: What do you call a person who plays the viola?
A: A violator.
Q: What is the difference between the first and last desk of a viola section?
A: A semi-tone.
Q: Why are violas
A: It is an optical illusion. It’s not that the violas are large, just that the viola player’s heads are so small.
Q: What do you call the folks who hang around the musicians at conservatories?
A: Violists.
Q: What is the difference between a dog and a viola?
A: The dog knows when to stop scratching.
Q: Why can’t you hear a viola on a digital recording?
A: Recording technology has reached such an advanced level of development that all extraneous noise is eliminated.
Q: What is the definition of a major seventh?
A: A violist playing octaves.
Q: How is lightning like a violist’s fingers?
A: Neither one strikes in the same place twice.
Q: Which positions does a violist use?
A: First, third, and emergency.
Q: Why are orchestra intermissions only twenty minutes long?
A: So the violists don’t need to be retrained.
Q: When a 16-inch viola and a 17-inch viola are dropped simultaneously from a 30-story building, which one hits the pavement first?
A: Who cares!
Q: How do you get a viola section to play spiccato?
A: Write a whole note with “solo” above it.