Passage 1
Music which is original is individual and personal. That is to say, it can be identified as belonging to a particular composer. It has particular qualities, or a style, which are not copied from another. If you can recognize the style of a composer, you will probably be able to tell that a certain composition belongs to him or her even though you have never heard it before. A basket—maker has the skill of weaving and interweaving his materials to create colorful patterns, and an expert carpenter (木匠) has the skill of joining together different shapes and sizes of wood to make a beautiful piece of furniture. These skills may be referred to as “workmanship” (技艺). Similarly, in music a composer organizes his melodies (旋律) and rhythms and combines sounds to create harmony. A composer may be capable of thinking up very good, original tunes, yet if tunes are poorly organized, that is, if the workmanship is poor, the final result will not be to standard.
Good music expresses feelings in a way that is suitable to those feelings. There may be joy, sorrow, fear, love, anger, or whatever. Bad music, on the other hand, may confuse unrelated feelings, it may not express any important feeling at all, or it may exaggerate some feelings and make them vulgar, that is, cheap and ugly.
Good music will stand the test of time. It will not go out of fashion but will continue to be enjoyed and respected long after it is first introduced. It will gain a kind of permanent status while bad music will disappear and be forgotten quickly. In pop music, where the general rule seems to be “the newer the better”, the test of time is the hardest test of all to pass.
31. A piece of original music _______.
A. has a personal style
B. sounds very familiar to our ears
C. is one whose style you cannot recognize
D. cannot be recognized as belonging to any composer
32. We can see good workmanship in _______.
A. different shapes and size of furniture
B. materials for creating colourful patterns
C. a piece of music with its melodies and rhythms organized in harmony
D. a piece of music with very good, original tunes mixed together
33. A piece of music can be said to be good if _______.
A. it helps to while away the hours
B. it combines different rhythms and sounds
C. it makes people forget their sorrows and worries quickly
D. it expresses a certain feeling in a proper way
Passage 2
If we were asked exactly what we were doing a year ago, we should probably have to say that we could not remember. But if we had kept a book and had written in it an account of what we did each day, we should be able to give an answer to the question.
It is the same in history. Many things have been forgotten because we do not have any written account of them. Sometimes men did keep a record of the most important happenings in their country, but often it was destroyed by fire or in a war. Sometimes there was never any written record at all because the people of that time and place did not know how to write. For example, we know a good deal about the people who lived in China 4,000 years ago, because they could write and leave written records for those who lived after them. But we know almost nothing about the people who lived even 200 years ago in central Africa, because they had not learned to write.
Sometimes, of course, even if the people cannot write, they may know something of the past. For most people are proud to tell what their fathers did in the past. This we may call “remembered history”. Some of it has now been written down. It is not so exact or so valuable to us as written history is, because words are much more easily changed when used again and again in speech than when copied in writing. But where there are no written records, such spoken stories are often very helpful.
34. Which of the following ideas is not conveyed in the passage?
A. “Remembered history”, compared with written history, is less reliable.
B. Written records of the past plays a most important role in our learning of the human history.
C. A written account of our daily activities helps us to be able to answer any questions.
D. Where there are no written records, there is no history.
35. We know very little about the central Africa 200 years ago because_______.
A. there was nothing worth being written down at that time
B. the people there ignored the importance of keeping a record
C. the written records were perhaps destroyed by a fire
D. the people there had not known how to write
36. “Remembered history” refers to _______.
A. history based on a person’s imagination
B. stories of important happenings passed down from mouth to mouth
C. songs and dances about the most important events
D. both B and C
