GLOSSARY. Anathema: something regarded with strong dislike or disapproval.

Anathema: something regarded with strong dislike or disapproval.

Eschew: avoid.

Hallmark: symbol.

Out of joint: out of place.

Pervasive soundbite culture: continual hunger for music.

Puts noses out of joint: displeased, angered.

Salami job: cutting and editing of music or literature, as if it had been done by a butcher.

Trickle-down mentality: idea of bringing information and culture to a wide group of people.

Writ: an official legal action.

 

Ex. 14. Explain the items. Give Russian/Belarusian equivalents.

Delve into, succumb to smth, interminable sections, tuneful compilation, to sell like hot cakes, take liberties with smth, to savour a work (of music), the dominance of catchy compilations in the best-seller charts, the decline in concert-going, introduce smb to classical music, appease popular taste, full-scale recording, elevated status.

 

Ex. 15. Say what is meant by the following.

1. …the great composers’ works are reduced to mere lifestyle accessories…

2. …Mahler, Vivaldi and Beethoven succumbed to our pervasive soundbite culture…

3. …DG…effectively performs a salami job on four Mahler symphonies…

4. The greatest danger is a trickle-down mentality which makes concert organizers appease popular taste and eschew risks.

Ex. 16. Translate into English. Write the sentences down.

1. Патриция не хотела поддаваться искушению отложить бумаги, чтобы включить любимую симфонию Бетховена. 2. К сожалению, сейчас и в нашей стране можно говорить о снижении посещаемости концертов классической музыки. 3. Нужно очень рано знакомить детей с классической музыкой и учить её слушать. 4. Настоящий ценитель музыки отличает интерпретации различных оркестров и наслаждается малейшими оттенками звука. 5. Песня должна быть легко запоминающийся и мелодичной, чтобы завоевать популярность. 6. Вы не можете позволить себе так небрежно относиться к классическим композиторам. 7. Новый диск с мелодичными собраниями песен быстро распродается.

 

Ex. 17. Answer the questions.

1. Why did Claudio Abbado file a suit against his recording company?

2. What questions clamoured when the conductor brought a lawsuit?

3. How does the recording company treat classics?

4. What are the maestro’s considerations concerning the problem?

5. What are the two camps of the classical world?

6. Do people listen to or merely hear classics?

7. What is more profitable to record: full-scale sections or compilations?

8. What do people going to concerts want?

9. Why does the compilation disc revolution anger the traditionalists?

10. Do you like to listen to compilations of classics?

11. Who can savour a piece of classical music? Is special preparation needed?

12. Should full-scale recording give way to compilations?

 

Ex. 18. Summarize the text.

Ex. 19. Can jazz be called classical music? Explain your point of view.

Jazz

From “Steppenwolf” by Hermann Hesse

When passing a restaurant with a dancing floor, I was enveloped in a wave of feverish jazz, hot and coarse, like a steam exuded by raw meat. I stopped: though I rejected music of that sort, it always had a secret appeal for me. Jazz repelled me, and yet it was incomparably dearer to me than all modern academic music; its hilarious rough savagery deeply appealed to my instincts as well; it breathed honest naïve sensuality.

I stood for a minute smelling the shrill sanguinary music. I was greedily and furiously absorbing the atmosphere of the halls flooded by it. Half of this music, the lyrical half, was sweetish, luscious, sentimental through and through; the other half was violent, wayward, forceful; yet both halves merged peacefully and naively, and produced something integral. It was a music of ruin; this kind of music must have existed in the Rome of the last emperors. Certainly, in comparison with Bach, Mozart and genuine music, it was beastliness, but wasn’t all our art, our intellectual life, all our fake culture an equal kind of beastliness in comparison with genuine culture? Also, this music had the advantage of great sincerity, of the dear Negro open-heartedness, of childish high spirits. It had something of a Negro and something of an American about it, and an American always impresses us, Europeans, by his strength, but, also, by his boyish freshness and childishness. Is Europe going the same way? Probably we, the old connoisseurs and worshippers of past Europe, of past genuine music, of past genuine poetry, are just a silly minority of pretentious neurotics who will be ridiculed and forgotten tomorrow. Probably what we call “culture”, spirit, soul, what we regard as beautiful and sacred, is only a ghost, was dead and buried long ago and seems real and living only to us, a small group of fool. Has it ever been real and living? Aren’t we, fools, being so painfully concerned about a mere illusion?

NOTES

Hesse H. Steppenwolf. – Berlin, 1947. – P. 53.