Exercises

1. In Text A, find the key sentences through which Charlie’s perception of music is described.

2. Answer the questions:

a) “…the pleasure partly sensual, partly intellectual”. Do you agree that music doesn’t appeal to our senses alone, but also to our intellect?

b) “…love for others and a desire to do something for them, a wish to be good and a delight in goodness…” Explain the meaning of the adjectives “ethical” and “aesthetic”. Do you agree that music has not only an aesthetic but also an ethical effect on the listener?

c) “…if you had to combine all those feelings into one and give it a name, the name you’d give it was happiness”. Isn’t ‘happiness’ too big a word to describe the feeling aroused in us by music?

3. What do you know about Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck?

4. Find in Texts B and C answers to the following questions (you are not supposed to translate, try and find your own wording for the answers):

a) What difference does Tchaikovsky point out between his perception of Mozart’s music and the music of Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin?

b) At what age did the great composer discover for himself the world of music? How did it happen?

c) How did Tchaikovsky characterise Chopin’s music? Why is it that Tchaikovsky considered himself ‘lucky’ in having been brought up in a family indifferent to music?

d) What effect did Mozart’s produce on P.I. Tchaikovsky?

e) Does N.F. von Meck share Tchaikovsky’s attitude towards Mozart? What kind of music does she prefer?

f) What is the difference between the tragic element in life and in music, in her opinion?

g) What is the ethical influence of music on people, as both N.F. von Meck and W.S.Maugham see it?

The following extract from “Angel Pavement” by J.B.Priestley describes a symphony concert through the impressions of a man to whom classical music is new and unfamiliar. With humour and kind understanding, the author shows how an unprejudiced person can gradually find their bearings in the seeming chaos of sound and even come to enjoy the new experience.

Mr. Smeeth Goes to a Symphony Concert

…As the elderly foreign woman on his right happened to be examining the programme, he had a peep at it and had just time to discover that it was a symphony. Brahms’ First Symphony in fact they were about to hear. It would probably be clean above his head, but it could not possibly be so horrible to listen to as that modern stuff in the first half of the programme.

It was some time before he made much of it. The Brahms of this symphony seemed a very gloomy, ponderous, rumbling sort of chap, who might now and then show a flash of temper or go in a corner and feel sorry for himself, but for the most part simply went on gloomily rumbling and grumbling. There were moments, however, when there came a sudden gush of melody, something infinitely tender swelling out of the strings or a ripple of laughter from the flutes and clarinets or a fine flare up by the whole orchestra, and for these moments Mr. Smeeth waited, puzzled and excited, like a man catching glimpses of some delectable strange valley through the swirling mists of a mountain side. As the symphony went on, he began to get the hang of it more and more, and these moments returned more frequently, until at last, in the final section, the great moment arrived and justified everything, the whole symphony concert.

It began, this last part, with some muffled and doleful sounds from the brass instruments. He had heard some of those grim snatches of tune earlier on in the symphony, and now when they were repeated in this fashion, they had a very queer effect on him, almost frightened him. It was as if all the workhouses and hospitals and cemeteries of North London had been flashed past his eyes. Those brass instruments didn’t think Smeeth had much of a chance. All the violins were sorry about it; they protested, they shook, they wept, but the horns and trumpets and trombones came back and blew them away. Then the whole orchestra became tumultuous, and once voice after another raised itself above the menacing din, cried in anger, cried in sorrow, and was lost again. There were queer little intervals, during one of which only the strings played, and they twanged and plucked instead of using their bows, and the twanging and plucking, quite soft and slow at first, got louder and faster until it seemed as if there was danger everywhere. Then, just when it seemed as if something was going to burst, the twanging and plucking was over, and great mournful sounds came reeling out again, like doomed giants. After that the whole thing seemed to be slithering into hopelessness, as if Brahms had got stuck in a bog and the light was going. But then the great moment arrived. Brahms jumped clean out of the bog, set his foot on the hard road, and swept the orchestra and Mr. Smeeth and the whole Queen’s Hall along with him, in a noble stride. This was a great tune! Ta tum ta ta tum tum, tum, ta tum ta-ta tum ta tum. He could have shouted at the splendour of it. The strings in a rich deep unison sweeping on, and you were ten feet high and had a thousand glorious years to live. But in a minute or two it had gone, this glory of sound, and there was muddle and gloom, a sudden sweetness of violins, then harsh voices from the brass. Mr. Smeeth had given it up, when back it came again, swelling his heart until it nearly choked him, and then it was lost once more and everything began to be put in its place and settled abruptly, fiercely, as if old Brahms had made up his mind to stand no nonsense from anybody or anything under the sun. There, there, there, there. There. It was done. They were all clapping and clapping and the conductor was mopping his forehead and bowing and then signalling to the orchestra to stand up, and old Brahms had slipped away, into the blue.

There was a cold drizzle of rain outside in Langham Place, and it was a long and dreary way to Chaucer Road, but odd bits of magic kept floating back into his mind, and he felt excited and happy. Ta tum ta ta – now how did that go? All the way from the High Street to Chaucer Road, as he hurried down from the darkening streets and tried to make his overcoat collar reach the back of his hat, he was also trying to capture that tune. He could feel it still beating and glowing somewhere inside him.