新标准大学英语综合教程3课文原文

1~7单元课文原文

We all listen to music according to our separate capacities.But, for the sake of analysis, the whole listening process may become clearer if we break it up into its component parts, so to speak.In certain sense we all listen to music on three separate planes.For lack of a better terminology, one might name these: 1) the sensuous plane, 2) the expressive plane, 3) the sheerly musical plane.The only advantage to be gained from mechanically splitting up the listening process into these hypothetical planes is the clearer view to be had of the way in which we listen.

The simplest way of listening to music is to listen for the sheer pleasure of the musical sound itself.That is the sensuous plane.It is the plane on which we hear music without thinking, without considering it in any way.One turns on the radio while doing something else andabsent-mindedly bathes in the sound.A kind of brainless but attractive state of mind is engendered by the mere sound appeal of the music.

The surprising thing is that many people who consider themselves qualified music lovers abuse that plane in listening.They go to concerts in order to lose themselves.They use music as a consolation or an escape.They enter an ideal world where one doesn’t have to think of the realities of everyday life.Of course they aren’t thinking about the music either.Music allows them to leave it, and they go off to a place to dream, dreaming because of and apropos of the music yet never quite listening to it.

Yes, the sound appeal of music is a potent and primitive force, but you must not allow it to usurp a disproportionate share of your interest.The sensuous plane is an important one in music, a very important one, but it does not constitute the whole story.

The second plane on which music exists is what I have called the expressive one.Here, immediately, we tread on posers have a way of shying away from any discussion of music’s expressive side.Did not Stravinsky himself proclaim that his music was an ―object‖, a ―thing‖, with a life of its own, and with no other meaning than its own purely musical existence?This intransigent attitude of Stravinsky’s may be due to the fact that so many people have tried to read different meanings into so many pieces.Heaven knows it is difficult enough to say preciselywhat it is that a piece of music means, to say it definitely to say it finally so that everyone is satisfied with yourexplanation.But that should not lead one to the other extreme of denying to music the right to be ―expressive‖.

Listen, if you can,to the 48 fugue themes of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavichore.Listen to each theme, one after another.You will soon realize that each theme mirrors a different world of feeling.You will also soon realize that the more beautiful a theme seems to you the harder it is to find any word that will describe it to your complete satisfaction.Yes, you will certainly know whether it is a gaytheme or a sad one.You will be able, on other words, in your own mind, to draw a frame of emotional feeling around your theme.Now study the sad one a little closer.

Try to pin down the exact quality of its sadness.Is it pessimistically sad or resignedly

sad; is it fatefully sad or smilingly sad?Let us suppose that you are fortunate and can describe to your own satisfactionin so many words the exact meaning of your chosen theme.There is still no guarantee that anyone else will be satisfied.Nor need they be.The important thing is that each one feels for himself the specific expressive quality of a theme or, similarly, an entire piece of music.And if it is a great work of art, don’t expect it to mean exactly the same thing to you each time you return to it.

The third plane on which music exists is the sheerly musical plane.Besides the pleasurable sound of music and the expressive feeling that it gives off, music does exist in terms of the notes themselves and of their manipulation.Most listeners are not sufficiently conscious of this third plane.

It is very important for all of us to become more alive to music on its sheerly musical plane.After all, an actual musical material is being used.The intelligent listener must be prepared to increase his awareness of the musical material and what happens to it.He must hear the melodies, the rhythms, the harmonies, the tone colors in a more conscious fashion.But above all he must, in order to follow the line of the composer’s thought, know something of the principles of musical form.Listening to all of these elements is listening to the sheerly musical plane.

Let me repeat that I have split up mechanically the three separate planes on whichwe listen merely for the sake of greater clarity. Actually, we never listenon one or the other of these planes.What we do is to correlate them—listening in all three ways at the same time.It takes no mental effort, for we do it instinctively

Perhaps an analogy with what happens to us when we visit the theater will makethis instinctive correlation clearer.In the theater, you are aware of the actors and actresses, costumes and sets, sounds and movements.All these give one the sense that the theater is a pleasant place to be in.They constitute the sensuous plane in our theatrical reactions.

The expressive plane in the theater would be derived from the feeling that you get from what is happening on the stage.You are moved to pity, excitement, or gaiety.It isthis general feeling, generated aside from the particular words being spoken, a certain emotional something which exists on the stage,that isanalogousto the expressive quality in music.

The plot and plot development is equivalent to our sheerly musical plane.The playwright creates and develops a character in just the same way that a composer creates and develops a theme.According to the degree of your awareness of the way in which the artist in either field handles his material …… 此处隐藏：6012字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……