Composers today use a wider variety of sounds than ever before, including many that were once considered undesirable noises. Composer Edgard Varese (1883-1965) called thus the “liberation of sound…the 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.
Enviromental 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 non-electronic 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 persussion 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 intervals between two pitches more finely than Western music does, thereby producing a greater number of distinct tones or micro tones, 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 graph like diagrams, new note shapes and symbols, and novel ways of arranging notation on the page.
The passage suggests that Edgard Varese is an example of a composer who ________ .
A. criticized electronic music as too noise like
B. modified sonic of the electronic instrumets he used in his music
C. believed that any sound could be used in music
D. wrote music with enviromental themes
Đáp án C.
Key words: Edgard Varese, composer.
Clue: “Composer Edgard Varese (1883-1965) called thus the “liveration of sound….the right to make music with any and all sounds”: Nhà soạn nhạc Edgard Varese (1883-1965), vì vậy gọi là “sự giải phóng âm thanh…cái quyền để tạo nên âm nhạc với bất cứ loại âm thanh nào”.
A. criticized electronic music as too noiselike: Chỉ trích nhạc điện tử là thứ giống như tiếng ồn. Sai vì không có thông tin trong bài nói về việc ông chỉ trích nhạc điện tử.
B. modified sonic of the electronic instruments he used in his music: giảm nhẹ âm thanh của thiết bị điện tử ông dùng trong âm nhạc. Sai vì không có thông tin trong bài.
C. believed that any sound could be used in music: Tin rằng bất cứ âm thanh nào cũng có thể được dùng trong âm nhạc. Đúng, tham khảo clue.
D. wrote music with enviromental themes: Viết nhạc dựa trên nền tự nhiên. Sai vì không có thông tin trong bài nói về nguồn gốc các bài nhạc của ông.