2024年4月27日发(作者：)

2021年托福阅读PASSAGE 54

试题及答案

PASSAGE 54

Composers today use a wider variety of sounds than ever before, including many that

were once considered undesirable noises. Composer Edgard Varèse (1883-1965)

called thus the "liberation he right to make music with any and all sounds."

Electronic music, for example — made with the aid of computers, synthesizers, and

electronic instruments — may include sounds that in the past would not have been

considered musical. Environmental sounds, such as thunder, and electronically

generated hisses and blips can be recorded, manipulated, and then incorporated into

a musical composition. But composers also draw novel sounds from voices and

nonelectronic instruments. Singers may be asked to scream, laugh, groan, sneeze, or

to sing phonetic sounds rather than words. Wind and string players may lap or scrape

their instruments. A brass or woodwind player may hum while playing, to produce

two pitches at once; a pianist may reach inside the piano to pluck a string and then

run a metal blade along it. In the music of the Western world, the greatest expansion

and experimentation have involved percussion instruments, which outnumber strings

and winds in many recent compositions. Traditional percussion instruments are struck

with new types of beaters; and instruments that used to be couriered unconventional

in Western music — tom-toms, bongos, slapsticks, maracas—are widely used.

In the search for novel sounds, increased use has been made in Western music of

microtones.

Non-western music typically divides and interval between two pitches more finely

than western music does, thereby producing a greater number of distinct tones, or

microtones, within the same interval. Composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki create

sound that borders on electronic noise through tone clusters — closely spaced tones

played together and heard as a mass, block, or band of sound. The directional aspect

of sound has taken on new importance as well. Loudspeakers or groups of

instruments may be placed at opposite ends of the stage, in the balcony, or at the

back and sides of the auditorium.

Because standard music notation makes no provision for many of these innovations,

recent music scores may contain graphlike diagrams, new note shapes and symbols,

and novel ways of arranging notation on the page.

1. What does the passage mainly discuss?

(A) The use of nontraditional sounds in contemporary music

(B) How sounds are produced electronically

(C) How standard musical notation has been adapted for nontraditional sounds

(D) Several composers who have experimented with the electronic production of

sound

2. The word "wider" in one 1 is closest in meaning to more impressive

(A) more distinctive

(B) more controversial

(C) more extensive

(D) more impressive

3. The passage suggests that Edgard Varèse is an example of a composer who

(A) criticized electronic music as too noiselike

(B) modified sonic of the electronic instruments he used in his music

(C) believed that any sound could be used in music

(D) wrote music with environmental themes

4. The word "it" in line 12 refers to

(A) piano

(B) string

(C) blade

(D) music

5. According to the passage , which of the following types of instruments has

played a role in much of the innovation in western music?

(A) string

(B) percussion

(C) woodwind

(D) brass

6. The word "thereby" in line 20 is closest in meaning to

(A) in return for

(B) in spite of

(C) by the way

(D) by that means

7. According to the passage , Krzysztof Penderecki is known for which of the

following practices?

(A) Using tones that are clumped together

(B) Combining traditional and nontradinonal instruments

(C) Seating musicians in unusual areas of an auditorium

(D) Playing Western music for non-Western audiences

8. According to the passage , which of the following would be considered

traditional elements of Western music?

(A) Microtones

(B) tom-toms and bongos

(C) Pianos

(D) hisses