Hobbies and leisure-time occupations

From the old English word hobby meaning horse, came the modern word hobbyhorse. This is a dummy horse at­tached to a performer who pretended to be riding a horse in a play or a dance. Hobbyhorse has been shortened to hobby to describe any favourite leisure time occupation. This word has become rather common in modern usage.

Leisure time occupations, or hobbies, can be divided into four groups: doing things, making things, collecting things and learning things. Of these four groups, doing things is perhaps the most popular. It includes a wide range of activities, from gardening to sailing and from chess to foreign travel. Some of these hobbies require very little equipment while others require considerably more. There is also a choice between mental and physical activities, indoor and outdoor pursuits, etc.

Leisure time occupations can be more or less active. A real hobby is usaully defined as something creative and individual, sometimes even as something obsessive, unusual or eccentric.

Exercise 10. Translate the text:

Indoor activities or home interests

Doing things: reading; listening to records or tapes or to the radio; watching television; entertaining friends;

playing games (e.g. chess or cards); painting; mending things.

Making things: models, needlework (e.g. knitting, cro­cheting, sewing, weaving, making carpets, making lace), making music, i.e. singing or playing musical instruments (e.g. the piano, the guitar, the violin), cooking and baking, home decorating and repairing.

Collecting things: collectings stamps, postcards, maps, coins, beermats, bottles, tins, old china, autographs, books, butterflies, shells, crystals and other things.

Learning things: learning foreign languages, learning to play a musical instrument, studying music, art, literature or other subjects.

Even if one's hobby does not solely consist of the study of particular subjects, a real hobbyist wants to learn more about his chosen subject and its history, so that he can become a real expert at it.

Outdoor activities or activities outside the home

Sports activities: athletics, gymnastics, cycling, swim­ming, sailing, rowing, canoeing, racing, skiing, moun­taineering, climbing.

Playing games: football/soccer, handball, volley-ball, tennis, table tennis, basket-ball, baseball, water-polo, golf, badminton, bowling, judo, fencing, boxing and taking part in competitions.

Other activities: gardening, fishing, travelling (e.g. visiting the country-side/the seaside/museums/art ex­hibitions/historical buildings), walking, driving a car, car maintenance, visiting a choir, watching outdoor sports, betting on matches or races.

Topic 7. Art Text 1.Music

Speaking about art we first of all we think of music, painting, theatre and cinema. It is not an easy task to deal with all aspects of art. That is why we have decided to speak briefly about some of the most outstanding representatives of arts. We will start with a famous Russian composer, Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840— 1893). Almost everybody knows his "Nutcracker Suite" with its "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" and "Waltz of the Flowers". The "Nutcracker Suite" was written as a ballet, but many more people have heard the music than have seen the ballet. Tchai­kovsky wrote music of many kinds - operas, songs, symphonies, ballets and piano concerts. Not all his music is gay, some is sad. Some of his other compositions are almost, if not quite, as well-known as the "Nutcracker Suite". Among these are "Swan Lake" and "Sleeping Beauty" (ballets), "Romeo and Juliet" (an overture), "Eugene Onegin", "Mazzeppa", "The Queen of Spades" (operas), the "Piano Concerto in B-flat minor", and the Symphony No 6, called the "Pathetique".

Many of Tchaikovskiy's compositions are very tuneful. Se­veral popular songs have tunes borrowed from them. Two of Taras Shevchenko's poems were set to music by Tchaikovskiy.

Tchaikovskiy was born in a small town in the Urals. His father was a mining engineer. As a boy Tchaikovskiy loved music, but did not think of devoting his life to it. He planned to be a lawyer. When he was old enough, he began to study law. But at 21 he decided that music was much more interesting and entered the conservatoire at St.Petersburg. After he graduated five years later, he was made a professor at the Moscow Con­servatoire. As well as teaching, he wrote a great deal of music.

His compositions are so popular now that it is hard to believe that at first they were not popular at all. For ten years his operas were failures and no one paid much attention to anything else he wrote. His home life, moreover, was not happy. Because of his unhappiness and lack of success, he became ill and had to give up his teaching.

At last his music won the praise it deserved. Tchaikovskiy was only 53 when he died, but he lived long enough to know that his music was being played far and wide across the world.