2020-07-12
524
There is a tendency to think of each of the arts A_________________. Many artists, however, would testify to the fact that there has always been a warm relationship between the various spheres of human activity. For example, in the late nineteenth century the connection between music and painting were particularly close. Artists were commissioned to design costumes and sets for operas and ballet, but sometimes it was the musicians В_______________. Of the musical compositions С_________________, perhaps the most famous is Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Mussorgsky composed the piece in 1874 after the death, at the age of 39, of the artist Victor Hartmann. D _________________, Mussorgsky was shattered by Hartmann’s untimely death. The following year a critic, Vladimir Stasov, decided to hold an exhibition of Hartmann’s work. He suggested that Mussorgsky try to soothe his grief by writing something to commemorate Hartmann’s life and work. The exhibition served as Mussorgsky’s inspiration. The ten pieces that make up Pictures at an Exhibition are intended as symbols E______________________ Between each is a promenade, as the composer walks from one painting to another. The music is sometimes witty and playful, sometimes almost alarming and frightening, but always spellbinding. Through a range of startling contrasts, Mussorgsky managed to convey the spirit of the artist and his work. F_____________________, the composer Ravel, who had already managed to carry off successful adaptation of many works for solo instruments, wrote an orchestral version of Pictures at an Exhibition in 1922.
1. rather than representations of the paintings in the exhibition
2. although it was originally intended as a series of pieces for solo piano
3. as a separate area of activity
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4. as they were very close to each other in arts
5. though their friendship had not been a particularly long-standing one
6. that were conceived as responses to the visual arts
7. who were inspired by the work of contemporary painters
Text 2. Dancing.
Match the headings 1-8 and texts A-G. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use.
1. Dancing helps to overcome difficulties
2. Hip-Hop movement
3. Boy’s talents
4. Personal view of the film
5. Senseless Life
6. Youth’s life in Bronx
7. Youth’s hobbies in Belafonte’s film
8. Popularity of breakdance
A. These three young men belong to ‘Hip-Hop’. This movement developed during the seventies in the USA, especially in the New York Bronx. It includes rap-songs, graffiti paintings as well as breakdance. For young boys and girls this movement is becoming more and more a kind of expression. They see it as a way to achieve something. Here they can express their longing for admiration, their desires and their disappointments.
B. For too many young people in the USA - especially those living in slums such as the New York Bronx - life seems to be without sense. “Only living people are able to cry. People murder people. A world without sense.” This is their reaction sung in a rap-song.
C. The film isn’t a copy of usual breakdance films. Belafonte shows more. He shows the life of youth in the Bronx and their thrilling joy of life. And he demonstrates breakdance in nearly acrobatic pictures. Little Lee, whose feet seem to be of gum when the rhythm of breakdancing not only as a means of earning some cents. For him it is more than just dancing. In it he expresses his disappointments and his longing for something better.
D. Those young people - Black and White - create a world of their own - a wild, crazy, colourful world, and the rhythm of their music is their pulsation. For a short time they forget the cruelty of daily life in a world without illusions and without pity. The film tries to seize light and darkness of that life.
E. So it is understandable why little Black Lee is breakdancing in the streets of New York, why Ramon - an unemployed white boy who is painting the white trains of the New York subway - considers himself to be an artist. And Kenny, who is unemployed, too, as a disc jockey produces his own music, mixing it with the help of things like dropping watertaps or brushes, thus producing a truly fascinated music. The reaction of his audience speaks for itself.
F. My first impression was that the problem dealt with is not presented as cliches, everybody gets a lot background information. In an interview Harry Belafonte said: “I’ve followed break- development attentively. It is an outcry of a youth we all have forgotten. A shriek of a youth without future in reality, with true ‘no future’...”
G. Breakdance, graffiti-painting, rap-songs, Hip-Hops... - fascinating words, but what about their background? What make Black youth in the USA engage in such admittedly impressive hobbies? “Beat Street”, a film produced by Harry Belafonte, provides some information. There a lot of pros and cons about this film, a lot of different opinions about it.
Text 3. Natural history museums.
