Found Sound托福听力原文翻译及问题答案

Found Sound托福听力原文翻译及问题答案

一、Found Sound 托福听力原文：

NARRATOR: Listen to part of a lecture in a music history class.

MALE PROFESSOR: So let's continue our discussion of twentieth century music. By the early twentieth century, some composers in Europe and the United States, composers of what's considered classical music, were already moving away from traditional forms and were experimenting with different ways of composing. In many cases, moving away from traditional western scales and tonalities.

But as the century progressed, some composers, composers of what was called avant-garde music, went further.Their experiments with musical composition were not always well accepted.  Quite the contrary, you see, many people felt avant-garde music was too radical and wasn't even legitimate art.

A case in point is the composer John Cage.Cage was probably the most famous composer of twentieth-century avant-garde music.  He didn't begin his music radical, but as time went on, his musical experiments led him there.

What caused the change?

Two experiences in particular entirely changed how he thought about music. First was his 1951 meeting with the avant-garde painter Robert Rauschenberg....

Now, avant-garde is a term that applies many different artistic genres.  Rauschenberg had created a series of famous paintings that consisted simply of white paint of different textures on canvas. That's all they were: white.

But the concept of these paintings actually wasn't so simple.

Rauschenberg was asking, in effect, how much could you leave out of an artwork and still have something? Because in fact, even on a purely white canvas, there's still plenty to see, shadows, dust, reflections....

For Cage, Rauschenberg's white paintings opened up a whole new way of understanding what art could be.

The second key experience in Cage's development came when he stepped in an anechoic chamber.An anechoic chamber is a room with special walls that absorb sound. Anechoic means without echoes. So an anechoic chamber was a room where, in theory, you can experience total silence. But Cage entered this room and he heard two sounds, one high and one low. The high sound, he was told, was his nervous system operating, and the low sound was his blood circulating.

Cage was profoundly affected. He realized that music doesn't need to be created intentionally.  We find it all around us. This idea came to be called found sound.  It's the sounds that are already there, traffic outside your window, or whatever. For Cage, they were just as musical as sounds made by musical instruments.These experiences led Cage to create a composition that would convey the idea of found sound.  That is, it would provide an opportunity for the audience to identify random sounds of the environment as music. So he composed a piece called 4 minutes 33 seconds, commonly known as the silent composition. And this composition was completely silent, literally.   When it was performed the first time, a pianist sat on stage at the piano and the only thing he did was raise and lower the lid of the keyboard to indicate the beginning or ending of a movement.   4 minutes 33 seconds had three movements, but not a note was played in any of them.

Well, the audience was outraged. Music critics called the piece ridiculous. But Cage saw no reason for the outrage. The fact that the audience was scandalized showed that they missed the whole point of his composition, which was that there's no such thing as silence, no such thing as a complete absence of sound, and whilst in fact during that first performance, the sound of wind and rain and people muttering.

Cage had a different understanding of silence. He defined silence as the absence of intended sounds. So to perceive 4 minutes 33 seconds as music, the audience needed to tune in to the sounds around them.

This was quite revolutionary. So we should probably be sympathetic to their reactions at the time. I mean, it's confounding people even today!Cage's silent composition is still performed all over the world, but I'm afraid to say, it's often misinterpreted. It's been choreographed, in dance performances for instance, in which case the sound was the beat of the dancers' feet against the stage floor. And it's been performed by people who made noises on purpose to call attention to the piece's silence. Can you see why we can consider these performances to be misinterpretations?

二、Found Sound 托福听力中文翻译：

旁白：在音乐史课上听一节课的一部分。

男教授：那么让我们继续讨论二十世纪的音乐。到了二十世纪初，欧洲和美国的一些作曲家，即古典音乐的作曲家，已经开始摆脱传统形式，尝试不同的作曲方式。在许多情况下，要摆脱传统的西方音阶和色调。

但随着世纪的发展，一些作曲家，所谓前卫音乐的作曲家，走得更远。他们的音乐创作实验并不总是被广泛接受。恰恰相反，你看，很多人觉得前卫音乐太激进了，甚至不是合法的艺术。

作曲家约翰·凯奇就是一个很好的例子。凯奇可能是二十世纪最着名的前卫音乐作曲家。他并没有开始他的音乐激进，但随着时间的推移，他的音乐实验将他带到了那里。

是什么导致了这种变化？

特别是两次经历彻底改变了他对音乐的看法。第一次是1951年与先锋派画家罗伯特·劳申伯格的会面。。。。

现在，先锋派这个词适用于许多不同的艺术流派。Rauschenberg创作了一系列着名的绘画作品，这些作品仅仅由画布上不同纹理的白色颜料组成。他们都是白人。

但这些画的概念其实并不那么简单。

Rauschenberg实际上是在问，你能从一件艺术品中留下多少东西，然后还能保留一些东西？因为事实上，即使在纯白色的画布上，仍然有很多东西可以看到，阴影、灰尘、反射。。。。

对于凯奇来说，劳申伯格的白色绘画开辟了一种全新的理解艺术的方式。

凯奇成长过程中的第二个关键经验是他走进了一个电波暗室。消声室是一个有特殊墙壁的房间，可以吸收声音。无回声指无回声。所以消声室是一个房间，理论上，你可以体验到完全的寂静。但凯奇走进这个房间，听到两个声音，一个高一个低。他被告知，高音是他的神经系统在运转，低音是他的血液在循环。

凯奇深受影响。他意识到音乐不需要刻意创作。我们发现它无处不在。这个想法后来被称为“发现声音”。这是已经存在的声音，窗外的交通，或者其他什么。对于凯奇来说，它们就像乐器发出的声音一样悦耳。这些经历促使凯奇创作了一部作品，表达了“发现声音”的理念。也就是说，它将为观众提供一个将环境中的随机声音识别为音乐的机会。因此，他创作了一首名为“4分33秒”的作品，俗称无声作品。从字面上看，这篇作文是完全无声的。第一次演奏时，一位钢琴家坐在钢琴前的舞台上，他所做的唯一一件事就是升降键盘盖，以指示乐章的开始或结束。4分33秒有三个动作，但其中没有一个音符。

观众很愤怒。音乐评论家称这首曲子荒谬可笑。但凯奇认为没有理由愤怒。观众感到震惊的事实表明，他们错过了他的作文的全部要点，那就是没有沉默，没有完全没有声音，而事实上，在第一场演出中，风和雨的声音以及人们的咕哝声。

凯奇对沉默有不同的理解。他把沉默定义为没有预期的声音。因此，要将4分33秒视为音乐，观众需要收听周围的声音。

这是相当革命性的。因此，我们可能应该同情他们当时的反应。我的意思是，即使在今天，这也让人困惑！凯奇的无声作品仍然在全世界演出，但我恐怕要说的是，它经常被曲解。它是经过编排的，比如在舞蹈表演中，声音是舞者的脚在舞台上的拍打。这是由故意制造噪音的人表演的，目的是让人们注意到这首曲子的沉默。你能理解为什么我们会认为这些表现是误解吗？

三、Found Sound 托福听力问题：

Q1:1.What does the professor mainly discuss?

A. The influence of avant-garde music on twentieth-century painting.

B. Critical reactions to twentieth-century experimental art forms.

C. The concepts behind a piece by an avant-garde composer.

D. The traditional elements in a famous piece of avant-garde music.

Q2:2.According to the professor, how was John Cage influenced by Rauschenberg's White Paintings?

A. They made him understand that artists should not be concerned with their audience.

B. They showed him that an artwork with little content could still be rich in meaning.

C. They demonstrated the importance of collaborating with artists in other fields.

D. They inspired him to compose music that created visual impressions in listeners.

Q3:3.Why was his visit to the anechoic chamber a profound experience for Cage?

A. He discovered that he could still hear sounds inside the chamber.

B. He discovered that echoes could be eliminated from a musical piece.

C. He recognized the possibility of recording his body's natural sounds.

D. He realized that music did not need to be composed in silence.

Q4:4.What was Cage's attitude toward found sound?

A. He considered found sound to be a theoretical concept with no practical use.

B. He believed any noises could be musical if arranged carefully.

C. He believed that unintentional noises could serve as replacements for musical instruments.

D. He believed that compositions with random noises could be interpreted in different ways.

Q5:5.What does the professor imply when he discusses the audience at the first performance of 4'33"?

A. He believes that outside noise might have distracted the audience.

B. He thinks that music critics appreciated the piece more than the general audience did.

C. He suspects that the audience did not want to offend the composer.

D. He thinks that the audience's response to the piece was understandable.

Q6:6.Why does the professor consider many of today's performance of 4'33" to be misinterpretations?

A. They take place outdoors

B. They contain sounds that are intentional.

C. The last longer than 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

D. They do not include an actual piano.

四、Found Sound 托福听力答案：

A1:正确答案：C

A2:正确答案：B

A3:正确答案：A

A4:正确答案：C

A5:正确答案：D

A6:正确答案：B