I Reading

THE CHURCH AND MUSIC

In colonial times, when the majority of the population was Protestant, most serious music was in the form of hymns because the Puritans always put religion first, even in their music. Although they did enjoy such entertainment as folk songs outside the church, most of the music in their lives was in the form of the psalms they sang at services.

Meanwhile, Negro slaves were allowed some religious expression and much of their music came out of their hymns. So black churches were developing their own gospel songs, blending African rhythms with religious texts.

More and more religious verses were sung to popular melodies, patriotic airs, and dance tunes. Such were the hymns sung at camp meetings in the late 1800s and early 1900s in isolated areas where there were no churches.

Those meetings, which went on for 4 or 5 days, featured rousing evangelical preaching, praying, and singing. The songs were revival hymns — simple, folklike, repetitious pieces that were often called spiritual songs and, later, spirituals. Negro religious songs, which blended African musical traditions with Christian themes, became known as spirituals, too, because of their similar use of repetition.

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II Grammar

1. I ___ come if I had had time.

have

had

would have

did

2. Michael was born ..... 1962.

in

at

on

3. Jack Strom has been a postman all his life; he ..... mail to homes and offices to the people of the town.

is delivering

has delivered

has been delivering

delivers

4. I ..... Mario for some time since he left Milan a few years ago.

haven’t seen

don’t see

didn't see

aren’t seeing

5. This building is very high. Actually it’s ..... building in the town.

more higher

the highest

higher

6. I don’t like Alice. She ..... about difficulties of life all the time.

complains

is complaining

has complained

has been complaining

7. Hardly ..... the place of our destination when it became quite dark.

had we reached

we reached

we were reaching

we had been reaching

8. I taught ..... to play the guitar.

myself

meself

by myself

9. Traffic is a big problem in London which is full of people ..... homes and families can be located quite far away.

who's

whose

its

their

10 A new supermarket is going to ... next year.

build

be built

be building

building

III Essay Writing

Imagine that you are in London. Write what do you want to visit there.

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EXAM CARD XXI

I Reading

PURELY AMERICAN CREATIONS

After the Civil War, as black musicians began to play European instruments previously unavailable to them, Negroes created many minstrel songs and transported the minstrel style to the piano. Negro talent, influenced by minstrel sounds applied to European-style melodies, ultimately produced a new form called ragtime. The term probably derived from the ragged, uneven sound of this syncopated piano music, which mixed Afro-Caribbean dance rhythms with the accents of the quadrille, the polka, the schottische, and the march.

Ragtime faded during World War I but won a new audience in the 1960s and 1970s television shows and in personal appearances.

Jazz became so popular that it became established in the national consciousness. The word "jazz" was so firmly planted in the public mind that the decade of the 1920s was known as the Jazz Age. Louis Armstrong and Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington have become jazz classics.

While jazz, the first distinctively American music to emerge in that country, was winning adherents and acceptance, the ballads, broadsides, jigs, reels, and sacred songs that had come to America with English, Scottish, and Irish settlers were evolving their own American forms. There it remained for a century, virtually unchanged except for slight coloration from contact with black music. Then, like jazz, it was spread beyond its narrow boundaries, first by the phonograph, and then by radio.

Country music has made an important contribution to a new phenomenon called rock'n'roll. White listeners became aware of the excitement and validity this music could generate. The way was opened for another white performer, Elvis Presley, to project the essence of the black music, which became known as rock'n'roll. Presley's performing style stirred so much anger in the adult world that teenagers made him a symbol of their beliefs, and rock'n'roll became a musical expression of rebellion.

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