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Exercise 2. How does the author of this text understand the purpose of music? What is your view about the main goal of music?
Exercise 3. Explain the grammar constructions of the phrases in bold.
Understanding music
Music, like language, is a living, moving thing. In early times organized music belonged to the church; later it became the property of the privileged few. Noble families took the best composers and the most talented performers into their service.
While the status of professional musicians advanced, amateur musicians found in music a satisfying means of self-expression, and that form of expression broadened in scope to embrace forms and styles more readily digested by the masses.
It is noteworthy that operas at first were performed privately; that the first “commercial” operatic venture took place early in the seventeenth century, this leading to the opening of opera houses for the general public in many cities.
(c.138-139).
Exercise 4. What was new for you? What information was known?
Music
Answer the following questions
1. What musical genres do you know and what role does folk music play in all of them?
2. What is meant by the terms classical or serious music?
3. Do you think, the different musical genres are strictly separated or do they overlap in some ways?
4. What genre do you prefer?
5. What role does music play in your life?
6. Do you think that at school music should be given the same emphasis as subjects such as maths, literature, etc.?
7. Do you like opera?
8. How can you account for the large scale popularity of rock? Is it only an entertainment to young people or does rock music represent their values? What values?
9. Why are some rock fans less interested in the music of the past?
10. Do you want music just to make you happy or does the music that you prefer vary with your mood?
Discuss these statements.
1. There is only one way to come to understand music by learning to play a musical instrument whether an external one like the piano or flute or by training the human voice to become an instrument.
2. However good recorded music might be, it can never really take the place of a live performance. To be present at an actual performance is half the employment of music.
3. I find I have to defend jazz to those who say it is low class. As a matter of fact all music has low class origin, since it comes from folk music, which is necessarily earthly. After all Haydn minuets are only a refinement of simple, rustic German dances, and so are Beethoven scherzos. An aria from a Verdi opera can often be traced back to the simplest Neapolitan fisherman.
Read and translate this text
Pop music is a music genre that developed from the mid-1950s as a softer alternative to rock 'n' roll and later to rock music. It has a focus on commercial recording, often orientate d towards a youth market, usually through the medium of relatively short and simple love songs. While these basic elements of the genre have remained fairly constant, pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, particularly borrowing from the development of rock music, and utilizing key technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.
The term "pop song" is first recorded as being used in 1926 in the sense of a piece of music "having popular appeal". Starting in the 1950s the term "pop music" has been used to describe a distinct genre, aimed at a youth market, often characterized as a softer alternative to rock and roll. In the aftermath of the British Invasion, from about 1967, it was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock music, to describe a form that was more commercial, ephemeral and accessible. Although pop music is often seen as oriented towards the singles charts, as a genre it is not the sum of all chart music, which have always contained songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs, while pop music as a genre is usually seen as existing and developing separately.
Musicologists often identify the following characteristics as typical of the pop music genre: a focus on the individual song or singles, rather than on extended works or albums
- an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology
- an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal "artistic" qualities
- an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, over live performance
- a tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments
The main medium of pop music is the song, often between two and a half and three and a half minutes in length, generally marked by a consistent and noticeable rhythmic element, a mainstream style and a simple traditional structure. Common variants include the verse-chorus form and the thirty-two-bar form, with a focus on melodies and catchy hooks, and a chorus that contrasts melodically, rhythmically and harmonically with the verse. The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment. The lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions.
According to Simon Frith pop music is produced "as a matter of enterprise not art...is designed to appeal to everyone" and "doesn't come from any particular place or mark off any particular taste." It is "not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward...and, in musical terms, it is essentially conservative." It is "provided from on high (by record companies, radio programmers and concert promoters) rather than being made from below...Pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged."
Throughout its development, pop music has absorbed influences from most other genres of popular music. Early pop music drew on the sentimental ballad for its form, gained its use of vocal harmonies from gospel and soul music, instrumentation from jazz and rock music, orchestration from classical music, tempo from dance music, backing from electronic music and has recently appropriated spoken passages from rap. It has also made use of technological innovation, being itself made possible by the invention of the electronic microphone and the vinyl record, and adopting multi-track recording and digital sampling as methods for the creation and elaboration of pop music. Pop music was also communicated largely through the mass media, including radio, film, TV and, particularly since the 1980s, video. Pop music has been dominated by the American (and from the mid-1960s British) music industries, whose influence has made pop music something of an international monoculture, but most regions and countries have their own form of pop music, sometimes producing local versions of wider trends, and lending them local characteristics. Some of these trends (for example Europop) have had a significant impact of the development of the genre.
Explain underlined phrases. Was this information known for you or was it new?
