Examine the form of the poem.

• How does the form contribute to the meaning?

Ex. 53. What do you know about concrete poetry? Study the following, read the poem 40 – Love and answer the questions.

Concrete poetry is arranged in such a way that the lines represent, mirror, or suggest the subject of the poem.

1. What did you think while reading the text?

2. Explain the title.

3. What is the message of the poem?

4. Think of any other pattern to express an aspect of love.

By Roger McGough

NOTES

Roger McGough (born 1937) became known, along with Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, as one of the “Liverpool Poets” during the 1960s. To him poetry at that time was a performance art, a medium for public rather than private consumption.

Ex. 54. Poems for analysis

Sonnet LXVI

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,

As to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d,

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d,

And strength by limping sway disabled,

And art made tongue-tied by authority,

And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,

And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill:

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that to die, I leave my love alone.

By W. Shakespeare

Hamlet’s Soliloquy

To be, or not to be, – that is the question;

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? – To die, - to sleep;

No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, – ‘tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, – to sleep; –

To sleep! Perchance to dream; ay; ther’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause; there’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn

No traveler returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us bear those ills we have

That fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’ver with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pitch and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action…

(From Hamlet by W. Shakespeare)

Sonnet LXXXI

Or shall I live your epitaph to make,

Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;

From hence your memory death cannot take,

Although in me each part will be forgotten.

Your name from hence immortal life shall have,

Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:

The earth can yield me but a common grave,

When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,

Which eyes not yet created shall o’ver-read;

And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,

When all the breathers of this world are dead;

You still shall live – such virtue hath my pen –

Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

By W. Shakespeare

Fatigue

The man in the corner

all slimped over

looks forlorner

than a tired lover,

forehead dulled

with heavy working,

eyelids lulled

by the train’s jerking;

head hangs noddy

limbs so limply

among a number

he dozes simply;

a dumb slumber

a dead ending,

a spent body

homeward wending.

By Peggy Bacon

Analyzing Prose

Ex. 55. Read the text.

Psycho

Norman Bates heard the noise and a shock went through him.

It sounded as though somebody was tapping on the windowpane.

He looked up, hastily, half prepared to rise, and the book slid from his hands to his ample lap. Then he realized that the sound was merely rain. Late afternoon rain, striking the parlor window.

Norman hadn’t noticed the coming of the rain, nor the twilight. But it was quite dim here in the parlor now, and he reached over to switch on the lamp before resuming his reading.

It was one of those old-fashioned table lamps, the kind with the ornate glass shade and the crystal fringe. Mother had had it ever since he could remember, and she refused to get rid of it. Norman didn’t really object; he had lived in this house for all of the forty years of his life, and there was something quite pleasant and reassuring about being surrounded by familiar things. Here everything was orderly and ordained; it was only there, outside, that the changes took place. And most of those changes held a potential threat. Suppose he had spent the afternoon walking, for example? He might have been off on some lonely side road or even back in the swamps when the rain came, and then what? He’d be soaked to the skin, forced to stumble along home in the dark. You could catch your death of cold that way, and besides, who wanted to be out in the dark? It was much nicer here in the parlor, under the lamp, with a good book for company.

The light shone down on his plump face, reflected from his rimless glasses, bathed the pinkness of his scalp beneath the thinning sandy hair as he bent his head again to resume reading.

From Psycho by Robert Bloch.

Ex. 56. Study the following and answer the questions.

Mode of presentation. This term refers to the way of telling a story. If the narrator gives a summarizing report of what happens in a certain period of time, he employs the panoramic mode of presentation. If he uses direct speech or presents the action in great detail, this is called scenic mode of presentation.

Disguised narrator. If things are presented as they are seen through the eyes of a character in the story, we speak of a disguised narrator.

Setting. The place, time, social circumstances, etc. in which the events of a novel or short story take place.

1. Describe Norman Bates’s activities at the beginning of the novel.

• What is he actually doing?

• Why is he acting like this?

• In what way are his activities influenced by the setting?

2. What kind of atmosphere is evoked by this description?

3. What do we learn about the narrator?

• Is there any clue that suggests by whom the story is told?

• From which point of view is the story told?

4. Comment on the mode of presentation in this text.

5. Rewrite the text from the viewpoint of an observer.

Ex. 57. Read the short story and analyze it.

The Portobello Road

(abridged)

One day in my young youth at high summer, lolling with my lovely companions upon a haystack I found a needle. Already and privately for some years I have been guessing that I was set apart form the common run, but it was the needle which attested the fact to my whole public, George, Kathleen and Skinny. I sucked my thumb, for when I had thrust my idle hand deep into the hay, the thumb was where the needle had stuck.

When everyone had recovered George said, “She put in her thumb and pulled out a plum.” Then away we were into our merciless hacking-hecking laughter again.

Then hac-hec-hoo, we shrieked into the hot Borderland afternoon. Really I should not care to be so young of heart again. That is my thought every time I turn over my old papers and come across the photograph. Skinny, Kathleen and myself are in the photo atop the haystack.

Everyone agreed that the needle betokened extraordinary luck. George said, “I’ll take a photo.” We look lovely and it was a great day at the time, but I would not care for it all over again. From that day I was known as Needle.

One Saturday in recent years I was mooching down the Portobello Road, threading among the crowds of marketers on the narrow pavement when I saw a woman. She had a haggard careworn wealthy look. I had not seen her for five years. How changed she was! But I recognized Kathleen, my friend. I took a good look at the man accompanying her. The beard was unfamiliar but I recognized beneath it his enormous mouth, his bright sensuous lips.

It was not for me to speak to Kathleen, but I had a sudden inspiration which caused me to say quietly,

“Hallo, George.”

The giant of a man turned round to face the direction of my voice. There were so many people – but at length he saw me.

“My God!” he said.

“What’s the matter?” said Kathleen.

“It’s Needle,” he said. “She said ‘Hallo, George’.”

“Needle,” said Kathleen. “Who do you mean? You don’t mean our old friend Needle who –“

“Yes. There she is. My God!”

“I don’t see anyone faintly resembling poor Needle,” said Kathleen looking at him. She was worried.

George pointed straight at me. “Look there. I tell you that is Needle.”

“You’re ill, George. Heavens, you must be seeing things. Come on home. Needle isn’t there. You know as well as I do, Needle is dead.”

I must explain that I departed this life nearly five years ago. But I did not altogether depart this world. There were odd things still to be done which one’s executors can never do properly. Papers to be looked over, even after the executors have torn them up. Lots of business, except, of course on Sundays and holidays of Obligation. When Saturdays are fine I go to the Portobello Road where formerly I jaunted with Kathleen in our grown-up days. Sometimes as occasion arises on a Saturday morning, my friend Kathleen, who is a Catholic, has a Mass said for my soul, and then I am in attendance as it were at the church.

I remember the day five years ago when I met George in the Portobello Road. He was fetching milk for his cousin. When we were crossing the field George saw the haystack and said, “See that haystack? Let’s sit there and talk.”

“Will your cousin worry?”

“My old cousin is terribly vague, poor soul. A bit hazy in her head. She hasn’t the least sense of time. If I tell her I’ve only gone ten minutes she’ll believe it.”

I giggled and looked at him. His face had grown much larger, his lips full, wide, and with a ripe colour that is strange in a man. He pulled me back. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

“OK, George, tell me.”

“First promise not to tell Kathleen. She wants it kept a secret so that she can tell you herself.”

“All right. Promise.”

“I’m going to marry Kathleen.”

“But you are already married.”

“I married Matilda in Congo.”

“But it'll still be bigamy. You can’t do a thing like that.”

“I need Kathleen, She’s been decent to me. I think we were always meant for each other, me and Kathleen.”

“I’ll have to be going,” I said.

But he put his knee over my ankles, so that I couldn’t move.

“No one knows about my marriage to Matilda except you and me.”

“And Matilda,” I said.

“She’ll hold her tongue so long as she gets her payments.”

“Let me go, George.”

“You promised to keep it a secret,” he said, “you promised.”

“If Kathleen intends to marry you I’ll tell her you are already married.”

“You wouldn’t do a dirty trick like that, Needle?”

“I must. Kathleen’s my best friend,” I said swiftly.

He looked as if he would murder me and he did, he stuffed hay into my mouth until it could hold no more, kneeling on my body to keep it still. Then he concealed my body in the hay, took his bottle of milk and went away.

The Haystack Murder was one of the notorious crimes of that year. George was above suspicion as his cousin swore that he hadn’t been gone more than ten minutes in all, and she believed it to the day of her death a few months later. There was the microscopic evidence of hay on George’s jacket, of course, but the same evidence was on every man’s jacket in the district that fine harvest year. Kathleen, to prove that George had absolutely no motive, told the police that she was engaged to him. George thought this a little foolish. They checked up on his life in Africa, right back to his living with Matilda. But the marriage didn’t come out – who would think of looking up registers in the Congo? George was relieved when the inquiries were over without the marriage to Matilda being disclosed. He was able to have his nervous breakdown at the same time as Kathleen had hers, and they recovered together and got married, long after the police had shifted their inquiries to an Air Force camp five miles from Kathleen’s aunt’s home. Only a lot of excitement and drinks came of those investigations. The Haystack Murder was one of the unsolved crimes that year.

After seeing George taken away home by Kathleen that Saturday in the Portobello Road, I thought that perhaps I might be seeing more of him in similar circumstances.

By Muriel Spark

Revision Exercises

Ex. I. The following statement contains ten underlined mistakes. Correct them.

‘Shadowlands’ is a true story of the love affair between C. S. Lewis, the writer, and Joy Gresham, an American poet. 1) Joy visited Lewis in Oxford and falls in love with the crusty old man. He, however, 2) denies to accept that he has also fallen in love, although he does enter into a marriage of convenience in order to enable her to 3) stay to England. Events take a dramatic turn when it is discovered that Joy has cancer. Lewis 4) forces to confront his feelings and marries her for the second time in a moving bedside ceremony. There follows a period of two years, during which Joy’s cancer is in remission and they are blissfully happy. This happiness is 5) tragicaly cut short 6) while Joy finally succumbs to her illness and dies, leaving Lewis to pick up the pieces of his life.

What director Richard Attenborough 7) manages achieving in this film, helped by another spectacular performance by Anthony Hopkins, 8 )it is a tremendous insight into the mind of one of England’s greatest writers. 9) Debra Winger who plays Joy, also puts in a very accomplished performance. And the beautiful photography gives us an authentic glimpse of what life was like 10) in Oxford in 1950s.

Ex. II. Give Russian equivalents.

Belles letters, a pop-up book, a ’scratch and sniff’ book, to browse, to dip into, to peruse, to wade through, to flip through, read avidly, challenging, contemptible, corny, dragged out, fanciful, farfetched, harrowing, plodding, stunning, tedious, library index, blurb, footnotes, frontispiece, proofs, a book hunter, secular prophet, permeable, sacrosanct, the shield of sacralization, raucous, salad days, to see better days, to live in a fool’s paradise, for better and for worse, to hold one’s tongue, to show one’s heels, as sound as a bell, to have no pluck to fight, dead as a doornail, to laugh oneself into stitches, ravenous, pose a stern challenge to, to be deeply ingrained in linguistic expertise, details have the weight of reality, omnivorous reader, to suit one’s palate, shibboleths, the approved canon of taste, jejune, to dish up, to label, reading and literary skills are below par, to be wary of smb, at convenient points, to break off, to be under way at the school, deficits in reading ability, to do smth with a view to one’s future career, motivated by altruism, pundit, to erode the time, the advent of, durability, to derive from, trashy, to make vast runs of, global immersion in, sales are booming, to dispense information.

Ex. III. Give English equivalents. Write them down.

Продолжение, захватывающий, трогательный, очаровательный, утонченный, архивы, читательский билет, книгохранилище, просматривать (книгу), пропускать, книга с загнутыми уголками, магазин “Букинист”, заглянуть в книгу в поисках нужной информации, сноски, корректура, прочитать от корки до корки, одолевать что-то тяжелое или скучное, растянутый, душераздирающий, поразительный, книга с объёмными картинками, жуткий, мне это непонятно, поступать безответственно, защитник, это уж слишком, честная игра, нечестная игра, паршивая овца, ни с того ни с сего, и глаз не сомкнуть, нахмуриться, правда выйдет наружу, портить вкус, опровергнуть доктрину, неразборчивый читатель, осмеиваться широкими слоями общества, пользоваться огромной и продолжительной популярностью, разрешать/преодолевать затруднения и несоответствия, угождать/удовлетворять, искусство повествования, воплощать, справедливо помещать грамотность в центр образовательной политики, наедине, низкий уровень грамотности, быть результативным, крепко спящий, горячий как кипяток, новенький, сна ни в одном глазу, холодный как лёд, опровергать/ставить в тупик, оцифровывать, читать с экрана, в высшей степени устойчив к повреждениям, предсказывать, хорошо подходит для хранения информации, повальное увлечение телевидением.

Ex. IV. Guess the words by their definitions.

1. Ability to last. 2. Ancient book written by hand. 3. To explain certain parts. 4. The place, time, social circumstances, etc. in which the events of a novel or short story take place. 5. Too simple (about ideas), boring (about writing or speech). 6. The number of visits to a specific site on the World Wide Web. 7. An old idea, custom or principle that you think is no longer important or suitable for modern times. 8. To read quickly taking in the main points. 9. To improve something, esp. in quality or effectiveness. 10. A picture or photograph at the beginning of a book, usually opposite the page with the title on it. 11. Extra information about something mentioned in the main text. 12. A convenient list of the dated and events of the period covered in the book. 13. To move (information or programs) from one computer system to another. 14. Answers to exercise questions. 15. Formal. To read smth attentively (esp. a document). 16. To load an operating system for a computer from a disk into the computer’s memory. 17. Meanings of foreign or technical expressions used in the text. 18. To obtain (stored information) from a computer’s memory. 19. To spend a lot of time and effort reading a difficult book. 20. To turn the pages of a book or a file quickly.

Ex. V. Translate into English. Write the sentences down.

1. На самом деле, только немногие предпочитают читать с экрана. Большинство же просто распечатывают нужный материал. 2. Продажи книг в интернет-магазинах быстро растут, ежедневно сайты таких магазинов посещают тысячи читателей. 3. Во всех учреждениях данные уже оцифрованы либо же оцифровываются сейчас. 4. Некоторые ученые предсказывают, что обычные книги со временем исчезнут, на их место придет интернет и электронные книги. 5. Питер с трудом одолел труды по истории, часто путаясь в датах и исторических персонажах. 6. В книжном магазине Джейн переходила от полки к полке, пролистывала журналы, заглядывала в справочники, просматривала художественную литературу. 7. В Интернете существуют бесплатные сайты, где вы можете загрузить понравившуюся книгу. 8. Нельзя получить доступ к этой информации без пароля. 9. Если в данную эпоху книга не соответствует признанному канону вкуса, это не значит, что её не оценят потомки. 10. Учителя составляют списки книг, которые дети должны прочесть летом. Однако многие не читают вообще ничего, а некоторые неразборчивы и читают все, что попадет под руку. 11. Министерство образования обнародовало проект по усовершенствованию навыков чтения у младших школьников. Сейчас этот проект претворяется в жизнь в некоторых школах. Учителя верят, что он будет результативным. 12. Наступление эпохи телевидения и сильное увлечение населения телевидением дало возможность определенной группе людей влиять на массовое сознание. 13. После прочтения нескольких детективов Дж. Х. Чейза сюжеты больше не покажутся вам захватывающими, а наоборот предсказуемыми. 14. Книги Дж. Роулинг о юном волшебнике Гарри Поттере бросают серьёзный вызов сказкам о Красной Шапочке и Буратино. 15. Исторические романы этого автора отличаются искусством повествования в духе народных традиций.

Music Topical Vocabulary

Classical music, ragtime, jazz, blues, swing, rock, hard rock, rock and roll (rock’n’roll), jive, hip-hop, rap, rumba, samba, bossa nova, waltz, polka.

Chamber music, background music, incidental music.

Movement, piece, suite, aria, fantasy, symphony, concerto, operetta, opera.

Viola, violin, French horn, oboe, bassoon, flute, double-bass, drum, accordion, tamtam, harp, clarinet, tuba, trumpet, cello, bow, piano keys, baton, under the baton of.

Beat, rhythm, lyrics, pitch, arpeggio, encore, score, chord, percussion, key, major, minor, scale, F flat, F natural, F sharp.

Compilation, the best-seller charts, concert-going, jam session, recital, full-scale recording, immersion in music, middle-of-the-road audience, virtuosity, versatility, visual impact, flair, copious composer.

Soprano, contralto, alto, bass, baritone, tenor.

Contralto (singer), alto, bass singer, tenor.

Conductor, virtuoso, chorus, choir.

Interminable, tuneful, catchy, soulful, smooth, sophisticated, sultry, ravishing, enticing, abrasive, genteel, hilarious, shrill, sanguinary, luscious, wayward, forceful, middle-of-the-road, vernacular.

Absolute pitch, music-deaf, to have a good/bad ear for music.

Transcribe, arrange, perform, practise scales, play by ear, savour a work (of music), introduce smb to classical music, appease popular taste, to wield broad appeal, release a single, to rank among (hits), to remain up-market.

Ex. 1. Match the word and its definition.

Ex. 2. Choose the correct element. Translate into Russian.

1. Scales and chords, for example, are constructed from/with pitches that are mathematical progressions of one another.

2. I spent nearly six years studying and practising -/the piano at school, which means four years playing scales and arpeggios, and only then actual pieces of music.

3. The teacher of music was the sort of person who detested pupils without -/an absolute pitch.

4. On the contrary, I had visions of one day performing in/at concerts and recitals, if not as a soloist, at least accompanying guest singers.

5. At/in the strings department I dropped the viola bow, at/in the percussion wing I broke two drumsticks or the brass class where I nearly swallowed a trumpet mouth-piece (загубник).

6. –What is the difference between -/an F flat and F natural? – A semitone.

7. Jazz brought together/close elements from ragtime, slave songs and brass bands.

8. The stadium has hosted numerous rock concerts, even -/the late rock star Freddy Mercury performed here.

9. As regards music, there is no accounting for/of tastes.

10. At/in his early age the child displayed an incredible gift of/for music.

11. The Fab Four were in/at the height of their powers in the 1960s.

12. Folk music has enjoyed a great upsurge of/in interest in recent years in Great Britain.

Ex. 3. Divide the musical instruments into string group, bow group, wind group, brass group and percussion group.

Drums, double-bass, flute, French horn, violin, tamtam, bassoon, harp, clarinet, tuba, viola, oboe, trumpet, cello.

Ex. 4. Identify the music style/rhythm by its definition.

Rumba, waltz, hard rock, polka, jazz, rap, swing, ragtime, blues, samba, rock, rock’n’roll.

1. A type of music that has a strong beat and parts for performers to play alone (e. g., for saxophone).

2. A type of music and dancing that has a strong beat and was popular in the USA in the early part of the 20^th century. Its characteristic features are syncopation, high tension, fluctuation between the regular rhythm of sharp harmonic accents and a lively irregular ragged melodic line.

3. A type of dance music played by a big band in the 1930s and 1940s and similar to jazz.

4. A slow and sad style of music that came from the southern US.

5. A fast dance from Brazil or the type of music for this dance.

6. A popular dance from Cuba, or music for this dance.

7. A style of music with a strong loud beat played on guitars and drums which first became popular in the 1950s.

8. A type of popular music in which the words of a song are not sung but spoken in time to music with a steady beat.

9. A type of popular modern music with a strong loud beat played using guitars and drums.

10. A type of rock music that is played loudly, has a strong beat and uses electric instruments.

11. A very quick simple dance for people dancing in pairs or a piece of music for this dance.

12. A fairly slow dance with a regular pattern of 3 beats and a piece of music intended for this type of dance.

Ex. 5. Fill in the gaps with the given words.

Enhance, charts, invasion, flair, sophisticated, amplified, drive, pomp, middle-of-the-road, splendour, lyrics.

1. The primitive coupled with the ___ appeal to great lovers of jazz.

2. Music festivals attract commonly ___ audiences.

3. Ed. Edgar’s music reflects the ___ and ___ of the Victorian age.

4. Classical music festivals help ___ the musical education of children and young people.

5. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones led a British “___” of the American ___.

6. Rock’n’roll is characterized by its ___, aggression and newness.

7. Rock’n’roll’s ___ are simple slogans. The music is ___ beat.

8. Queen had all the colour and ___ that other groups lacked.

Ex. 6. Translate into English. Write the sentences down.

1. Мне медведь на ухо наступил, сомневаюсь, что смогу сыграть даже простую гамму. 2. Дочка соседей учится играть на рояле и целый день мучает клавиши, исполняя гаммы и пассажи. 3. У него абсолютный слух. Он может воспроизвести отрывок из произведения на слух. 4. Когда мы вошли в зал, симфонический оркестр исполнял концерт для фортепьяно с оркестром. 5. Скрипка, альт, виолончель, контрабас принадлежат к группе струнных инструментов? Нет, смычковых. 6. Прозвучал последний аккорд, в зале повисла тишина, потом зал взорвался шквалом аплодисментов. 7. На сцене оркестр под управлением всемирно известного дирижера. Оркестр исполнит сюиту из балета Г. Вагнера. 8. Это очень мелодичная песня, слова легко запоминаются, но почему-то она не смогла подняться на верхние строчки в чартах. 9. Кто исполняет арию Евгения Онегина – бас или тенор? 10. В симфонической партитуре голоса распределяются по группам: деревянные духовые инструменты (флейты, гобои, кларнеты, фаготы); медные духовые (валторны, трубы, тромбоны); ударные; смычковые (скрипки, альты, виолончели, контрабасы).

Ex. 7. Give the definitions of the following musical genres: classical music, blues, soul music, country music, reggae, rumba, bossa nova, samba. Now compare your definitions with the information given below.

Classical Music

Classical music is generally thought of as sophisticated and refined; it may stem from a regional tradition, but aspires to universal form of communication. Classical music is sometimes defined as music produced in, or rooted in the traditions of art, and concert music. Classical music is contrasted with popular or music. In the English language, the term "classical music" is a reference to European classical music, such as Beethoven's symphonies, and its derivative styles, and rarely used to refer to traditional musical styles of other regions. Others prefer a more narrow use to refer to music of the classical music era, roughly between 1740 and 1830 and characterized by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Josef Haydn.

Blues

The blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music. The form evolved in the United States in the community of the African slaves from spirituals, praise songs, field songs, shouts, and chants. The blues had been a major influence on later American and Western popular music, finding expression in ragtime, jazz, big band, rhythm and blues, rock and roll and country music, as well as conventional pop songs and even modern classical music. The phrase “the blues” is a synonym for having a fit of the blue devils, meaning low spirits, depression and sadness. There are few characteristics common to all blues, because the genre takes its shape from the peculiarities of individual performances. However, some characteristics have been present before the creation of the modern blues and are common to most styles of African American music. The earliest blues-like music was a "functional expression, rendered in a call-and-response style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure." This pre-blues music was adapted from slave field shouts expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content". The blues, as it is now known, can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the West African call-and-response tradition, transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar. Blues performers are Howlin’ Wolf (Chester Bennett), Bessie Smith, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix (blues-rock), Albert Collins, Kim Wilson.

Soul Music

Soul music is a combination of rhythm and blues and gospel which began in the late 1950s in the United States. Rhythm and blues (a term coined by music writer and record producer Jerry Wexler) is itself a combination of blues and jazz, and arose in the 1940s as small groups, often playing saxophones, built upon the blues tradition. Soul music is differentiated by its use of gospel-music devices, its greater emphasis on vocalists, and its merging of religious and secular themes. The 1950s recordings of Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and James Brown are commonly considered the beginnings of soul music. Burke's recordings, in the early 1960s, of "Cry to Me," "Just Out of Reach" and "Down in the Valley" are considered classics of the genre. Memphis and Florence (Alabama) were the centres of soul music.

Country Music

Country music, also called country and western music or country-western, refer to popular musical forms developed in the Southern United States, with roots in traditional folk music, Celtic music, blues, gospel music, and old-time music.

However, country music is actually a catch-all category that embraces several different genres of music: Nashville sound (the pop-like music very popular in the 1960s); bluegrass, a fast mandolin, banjo and fiddle-based music popularized by Bill Monroe and by the Foggy Mountain Boys; Western which encompasses traditional Western ballads and Hollywood Cowboy Music, Western swing, a sophisticated dance music popularized by Bob Wills; Cajun; Zydeco; gospel; oldtime (generally pre-1930 folk music), etc. Each style is unique in its execution, its use of rhythms, and its chord structures, though many songs have been adapted to the different country styles. One example is the tune Milk Cow Blues, an early blues tune by Kokomo Arnold that has been performed in a wide variety of country styles by everyone from Aerosmith to Bob Wills to Willie Nelson, George Strait to Ricky Nelson and Elvis Presley. The most famous performers of country music are Garth Brooks, Hank Williams, the Carter family, Iris Dement, Bob Dylan.

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre developed in Jamaica. Reggae may be used in a broad sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, including ska, rocksteady, dub, dancehall and ragga. The term may also be used to distinguish a particular style that originated in the late 1960s. Reggae is founded upon a rhythm style which is characterized by regular chops on the back beat, played by a rhythm guitarist and known as the "bang", and a bass drum often hitting on the third beat of each measure, known as "one drop." The subject matter of reggae songs deals with many subjects, with love songs, sexual themes and broad social commentary being particularly well-represented. Its origins can be found in traditional African Caribbean music as well as US and R&B. In 1963, Jackie Mittoo, pianist with the ska band The Skatalites was asked to run sessions and compose original music. Mittoo turned the traditional ska beat into reggae, slowing the rhythm down in the process. Bob Marley, who popularized reggae worldwide, also recorded rocksteady records early in his career

Rumba

Rumba is both a family of music rhythms and a dance style that originated in Africa and travelled via the slave trade to Cuba and the New World. The so-called rumba rhythm is a variation of the African standard pattern. Its variants include the bossa nova rhythm. Original Cuban rumba is highly polyrhythmic, and as such is often far more complex than the examples cited above. Rumba has different styles: ballroom rumba, Gypsy rumba, African rumba and Cuban rumba.

Bossa nova

Bossa nova is a style of Brazilian music invented in the late 1950s by a group of middle-class students and musicians living in the Copacabana and Ipanema beachside districts of Rio de Janeiro. The name could be translated as "the new beat" or "the new way". In Brazil, it became well known through the record "Chega de Saudade", performed by João Gilberto and composed by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. The record was released in 1958.

Samba

Samba is one of the most famous of the various forms of music arising from African roots in Brazil. The name samba most probably comes from the Angolan semba (mesemba) - a religious rhythm. Samba developed as a distinctive kind of music at the beginning of the 20th century in Rio de Janeiro (then the capital of Brazil) under the strong influence of immigrant black people from Bahia. The most popular names were Zeca Pagodinho, Almir Guineto, Grupo Fundo de Quintal, Jorge Aragão, and Jovelina Pérola Negra. Nowadays, samba is still one of the most popular musical genres in Brazil.

Ex. 8. Answer the questions.

1. How can classical music be defined?

2. What does the term “classical music” refer to in the English language?

3. What is the narrow use of this term?

4. Where did the origins of blues lie?

5. What does the phrase “the blues” mean?

6. Name blues performers.

7. What is soul music like?

8. When and where did it appear?

9. Where are the roots of country music?

10. What genres does the term “country music” embrace?

11. What can the term “reggae” denote?

12. Who popularized reggae?

13. What is rumba?

14. What kind of music is bossa nova?

15. How can the term “bossa nova” be translated?

16. Where does the name “samba” come from?

17. What influence did samba experience?

Ex. 9. Identify performers with musical styles.

Ex. 10. Summarize what you have learnt about musical genres. Which of them appeals to you most of all? Why?

Ex. 11. Name world-famous composers. Who is your favourite composer? Why? Have you heard of Ralph V. Williams, Benjamin Britten, Gilbert and Sullivan? Read the text about them and fill in the gaps with the given words.

Ralph V. Williams

Affect, ancient, evoke, folk, harshness, inhumanity, melodic, melodist, paradise, trivia.

R. V. Williams used the ___ tunes of the peasantry which, he thought, expressed the spirits and traditions of his people. He was much ___-ed by the ___ of industrialization and war. His music is an escape to a Garden of Eden, though it is not a ___ of gaiety and ___. His Symphony № 5 written during the Second World War ___s the ghastly truth of man’s ___. He was namely a ___, his love of ___ tunes was part of a ___ approach to music.

Benjamin Britten

Brand, challenge, copiously, dramatic, enjoy, explore, masterpiece, set, versatility, widely.

B. Britten composed quickly, ___ and practically, ___-ing most forms and mediums of music. His major achievements have been in the field of ___ or vocal music. In large opera houses his operas Peter Grimes, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Billy Budd ___ comparison with anything written today.

Britten’s ___ is demonstrated in his many works for children. Both Let’s Make an Opera and Noah’s Flood, a miracle play ___ to music, are almost exclusively written for performance by children.

The strength of Britten’s music has prevented it being ___-ed “old-fashioned”, and indeed his reputation, both at home and abroad, is probably higher than that ___-ed by any English composer during his lifetime. The War Requiem is ___ regarded as one of the ___-s of the 20^th century.

Gilbert and Sullivan

Brand, church, collaboration, composer, Establishment, instantaneous, libretto, librettist, operetta (2), satire, serious, reverse, topsy-turvy, perform.

One of the most English of institutions is the Gilbert and Sullivan light operas, or ___-s. W. Gilbert, the ___, or writer of the texts, and A. Sullivan, the ___ of music, lived in the late 19^th century. They created 14 operettas, of which 11 are regularly ___-ed today. W. Gilbert was a famous humorist. A. Sullivan was a composer of ___ music; at the time they met he was a ___ organist. The result of their first ___ was not particularly good, but their second ___ was an ___ success.

W. Gilbert aimed his wit at what we call the ___ that grouping of upper-class conservative persons and organizations exercising influence in the background of public life, But on the whole it was gentle ___. The basis of his ___ was a state of affairs he called ___, that is upside down or in disorder. In fact, even now, a situation where the natural commonsense order of things is ___-ed, is often called Gilbertian. The strangest thing about this highly successful partnership is that the two men never liked each other. The unique ___ of operetta in which the English so successfully laughed at themselves will always be remembered.

Ex. 12. Prepare a project. First discuss the topics (Belarusian composers, British composers, American composers. What does it mean to be a composer? …etc.). Discuss the sources of information and ways of collecting it (library, the Internet, questionnaire). Select the means of presentation (videofilm, slide-show, newspaper, etc.). Good luck!

Ex. 13. Do you enjoy listening to classical music? Do you go to concerts or just listen to some records on your Walkman/computer? Which is the best way? Read the text and find out different points of view.

Roll Over Beethoven

Recently, world-famous conductor Claudio Abbado filed a suit against his recording company to have a compilation CD of his interpretation of four Mahler symphonies destroyed. Do compilation CDs cheapen classical music or bring more people closer to it? Stuart Wavell delves into ongoing debate.

Should classical records be sold like lollipops? Are the great composers’ works reduced to mere lifestyle accessories? Have Mahler, Vivaldi and Beethoven succumbed to our pervasive soundbite culture? Such questions clamoured last week when a conductor followed the well-trod path of pop-stars by bringing a lawsuit against his recording company. Claudio’s Abbado’s writ against Deutsche Grammophon, the hallmark of classical recordings is as dramatic as any demand by George Michael or Robbie Williams of Take That. He wants DG’s Polygram Classique division in Paris to destroy all copies of his CD Adagio, which effectively performs a salami job on four Mahler symphonies. Gone are the long –some would say interminable – sections.

The tuneful compilation is likely to sell like hot cakes.

Taking such liberties with Abbado’s previous recordings is anathema to the 62-year-old maestro of the Berlin Philharmonic, widely regarded as the greatest living interpreter of Austrian and German repertoire. Only by studying every note can a work be understood and savoured, he contends.

The civil case has already split the classical world into two camps. Traditionalists are horrified at the dominance of catchy compilations in the best-seller charts. They blame uncharismatic conductors and Classic FM radio for the decline in concert-going and public attitudes. Opposing them are those who insist that compilation albums are introducing millions of people to classical music.

So has our attention span shortened? Dorothy Rowe, a sociopsychologist, believes not. “It’s not fault the of the public, but the way things are sold,” she says. “The people who run broadcasting have decided that everything has to be very brief, so those are the habits you build up.”

At the heart of the matter is whether people listen to or merely hear the newly packaged classics. We are in a time when you hear the best classical music in the airport and in the bathroom. The greatest danger is a trickle-down mentality which makes concert organizers appease popular taste and eschew risks.

The record industry is astonished by Abbado’s imperious gesture. Classical recordings account for no more than 8% of all records produced, and of that proportion only 2% or 3% represents the “pure” classical market. Full-scale recording, costing enormous sums, may sell no more than 200–300 copies. “Quite frankly if we didn’t have the sales of these compilation albums we probably wouldn’t be able to record the complete Mahler operas,” says Peter Russell managing director of Polygram Classics UK. These are people who like something familiar while they are driving along. I’m not sure they are particularly bothered about which symphony orchestra is playing”, Russell says. Nobody has the right to deprive the wider public of what it wants, a Pavarotti-driven explosion of opera recordings.

People who go to concerts want three things: easy parking, free programmes and an introduction to the music from the podium. We should wonder if declining audiences are not to do with packaging. Maybe we should look into things like the blue jeans concerts they do in America. The compilation disc revolution has already put the traditionalists’ noses out of joint. Now it threatens the very place that defines their elevated status. They must be wondering if popcorn can be far behind.

From The Sunday Times

Glossary

Anathema: something regarded with strong dislike or disapproval.

Eschew: avoid.

Hallmark: symbol.

Out of joint: out of place.

Pervasive soundbite culture: continual hunger for music.

Puts noses out of joint: displeased, angered.

Salami job: cutting and editing of music or literature, as if it had been done by a butcher.

Trickle-down mentality: idea of bringing information and culture to a wide group of people.

Writ: an official legal action.

Ex. 14. Explain the items. Give Russian/Belarusian equivalents.

Delve into, succumb to smth, interminable sections, tuneful compilation, to sell like hot cakes, take liberties with smth, to savour a work (of music), the dominance of catchy compilations in the best-seller charts, the decline in concert-going, introduce smb to classical music, appease popular taste, full-scale recording, elevated status.

Ex. 15. Say what is meant by the following.

1. …the great composers’ works are reduced to mere lifestyle accessories…

2. …Mahler, Vivaldi and Beethoven succumbed to our pervasive soundbite culture…

3. …DG…effectively performs a salami job on four Mahler symphonies…

4. The greatest danger is a trickle-down mentality which makes concert organizers appease popular taste and eschew risks.

Ex. 16. Translate into English. Write the sentences down.

1. Патриция не хотела поддаваться искушению отложить бумаги, чтобы включить любимую симфонию Бетховена. 2. К сожалению, сейчас и в нашей стране можно говорить о снижении посещаемости концертов классической музыки. 3. Нужно очень рано знакомить детей с классической музыкой и учить её слушать. 4. Настоящий ценитель музыки отличает интерпретации различных оркестров и наслаждается малейшими оттенками звука. 5. Песня должна быть легко запоминающийся и мелодичной, чтобы завоевать популярность. 6. Вы не можете позволить себе так небрежно относиться к классическим композиторам. 7. Новый диск с мелодичными собраниями песен быстро распродается.

Ex. 17. Answer the questions.

1. Why did Claudio Abbado file a suit against his recording company?

2. What questions clamoured when the conductor brought a lawsuit?

3. How does the recording company treat classics?

4. What are the maestro’s considerations concerning the problem?

5. What are the two camps of the classical world?

6. Do people listen to or merely hear classics?

7. What is more profitable to record: full-scale sections or compilations?

8. What do people going to concerts want?

9. Why does the compilation disc revolution anger the traditionalists?

10. Do you like to listen to compilations of classics?

11. Who can savour a piece of classical music? Is special preparation needed?

12. Should full-scale recording give way to compilations?

Ex. 18. Summarize the text.

Ex. 19. Can jazz be called classical music? Explain your point of view.

Jazz

From “Steppenwolf” by Hermann Hesse

When passing a restaurant with a dancing floor, I was enveloped in a wave of feverish jazz, hot and coarse, like a steam exuded by raw meat. I stopped: though I rejected music of that sort, it always had a secret appeal for me. Jazz repelled me, and yet it was incomparably dearer to me than all modern academic music; its hilarious rough savagery deeply appealed to my instincts as well; it breathed honest naïve sensuality.

I stood for a minute smelling the shrill sanguinary music. I was greedily and furiously absorbing the atmosphere of the halls flooded by it. Half of this music, the lyrical half, was sweetish, luscious, sentimental through and through; the other half was violent, wayward, forceful; yet both halves merged peacefully and naively, and produced something integral. It was a music of ruin; this kind of music must have existed in the Rome of the last emperors. Certainly, in comparison with Bach, Mozart and genuine music, it was beastliness, but wasn’t all our art, our intellectual life, all our fake culture an equal kind of beastliness in comparison with genuine culture? Also, this music had the advantage of great sincerity, of the dear Negro open-heartedness, of childish high spirits. It had something of a Negro and something of an American about it, and an American always impresses us, Europeans, by his strength, but, also, by his boyish freshness and childishness. Is Europe going the same way? Probably we, the old connoisseurs and worshippers of past Europe, of past genuine music, of past genuine poetry, are just a silly minority of pretentious neurotics who will be ridiculed and forgotten tomorrow. Probably what we call “culture”, spirit, soul, what we regard as beautiful and sacred, is only a ghost, was dead and buried long ago and seems real and living only to us, a small group of fool. Has it ever been real and living? Aren’t we, fools, being so painfully concerned about a mere illusion?

NOTES

Hesse H. Steppenwolf. – Berlin, 1947. – P. 53.

Ex. 20. Complete the tasks.

Find in the text all the words, phrases and sentences by which the author describes jazz.

Confirm or refute the following, providing arguments for either.

• Half of this music, the lyrical half, was sweetish, luscious, sentimental through and through; the other half was violent, wayward, forceful…

• It was a music of ruin…

• Certainly, in comparison with Bach, Mozart and genuine music, it was beastliness…

• Also, this music had the advantage of great sincerity, of the dear Negro open-heartedness, of childish high spirits.

Comment on the final extract of the text beginning with “Probably we, the old connoisseurs and worshippers of past Europe…”

1. How would you answer the question posed by the author in this passage?

2. Can people worshipping the music and the poetry of the past really be regarded a “silly minority of pretentious neurotics”? Is the art of the past “dead and buried”? Is its value “a mere illusion”? Be sure to provide arguments and illustrations for whatever you say.

Discuss the following in pairs:

“Certainly, in comparison with Bach, Mozart and genuine music, it (jazz) was beastliness…”

The author seems to imply that jazz is not “genuine music”. Before confirming or refuting the point, it would be useful to sum up what it is people value in “genuine” (i. e. classical) and jazz music and what can be said against it.

FOR.

1. Classical music gives the listener a keen sensual delight.

2. Music has a deep intellectual appeal.

3. Music has a strong ethical effect: it ennobles the listener, makes him better and more humane.

4. Music condemns evil and supports the ideals of good.

5. Music creates a special spiritual world for the listener which immensely enriches his inner life and makes him happy.

AGAINST.

1. Classical music is a complicated art: it is difficult to find one’s way in it.

2. It is also an exclusive art: most people don’t like or understand it. It is not a popular art.

3. The very length of most classical pieces can send any listener to sleep.

4. People want the kind of music to which they can dance or just talk to friends. It should be simple, cheerful and up-to-date.

Ex. 21. Are musical genres associated with certain subcultures? Give examples. Now read the text and insert the given words.

Different, life, belong, to fight, wizards, hippie, subcultures, skinheads, soul, Goths, fashionable, jewellery, rock-and-roll, patriotic, warehouses, mod, hackers, ravers.

I have never imagined that there are so many music styles and so many (1)____ around us. I have only known something about (2) ___, that they are people who like to wear the blackest black and lots of silver (3) ____. I begin to understand why this subculture is so popular among teenagers and young people. They start to analyze their (4) ___ and become dissatisfied with it.

With the Internet, appeared the subculture of (5) ___. I think that every teenager would be proud to belong to this community, because these people are considered the (6) ___ of the computer world. But the (7) ___ subculture was a complete novelty for me. I couldn’t even imagine that young people who study mostly at different colleges and prefer to wear (8) ___ clothes can reflect any subculture.

Sometimes it is very difficult to tell to which subculture a person belongs. As for the (9)___, it is easy because they cut their hair shorter than others. Some people think that they are (10) ____, but others say that the only thing they want to do is (11) ___. A (12) ___ subculture isn’t popular anymore; today their community is becoming a place for really hopeless characters. I also think that every subculture has its own musical style. For example, mods listen to (13) ___ music, hackers prefer (14)____ types of music, (15) ___ prefer computer-made, synthesized music and drugs to created massive all-night dance parties in empty (16)___. Hippies are fans of (17) ___. My friends and I don’t (18) ____ to any subculture, we just have no time for them.

From English, 2004

Ex. 22. Answer the questions.

1. Do you agree that every subculture has its own musical style?

2. What are the characteristic features (in clothes, hairstyles, behaviour, music) of Goths, mods, ravers, punks, hippies, skinheads?

3. Do you consider yourself to belong to a certain subculture?

Ex. 23. What is club culture? What music is played at clubs? Read the text and answer the questions.

Club Culture in Britain

Going to nightclubs, or ‘clubbing’ as it is called, is very popular in Britain. From the age of about 15 young people like to go clubbing at the weekend. Usually friends meet in the evening and go to a pub or a café, or just sit at home and chat. Then, late in the evening after 10 p.m. they travel to the centre of the town and wait in a queue outside the nightclub. The clubs are usually special buildings with a big space inside for dancing. There is a bar of course, and often a special room with chairs and sofas where it is less noisy. This is for people who are tired of dancing. They can rest here for a while. Some clubs only play one kind of music, but most have different music on different nights. If you want to go to a club you need to know what kind of ‘night’ the club is offering. Here some simple definitions of popular styles.

House. This is the most popular form of dance music. It can have vocals, but the most characteristic element of House is a fast beat (110 beats per minute plus) and keyboards and synthesizers. House is also known as ‘Techno’.

Garage. This music started in a New York club called ‘Paradise Garage’. It is a dance version of disco with melodies, lots of vocals, but a fast, high energy beat.

Acid Jazz. This is just a mixture of modern hip-hop beats and old jazz records mixed together.

Ambient. This form of music is characterized by ‘found sounds’. For example, a DJ might use a recording of running water or an old recording of a politician’s speech. These short recordings are called samples.

Trip-hop. This is a mixture of Hip-Hop and Dance music. It has fewer lyrics than Hip-Hop and more of electronic sound.

From Speak Out, 2005

1. Do you enjoy going clubbing?

2. How would you describe Belarusian club culture?

3. What music is popular with Belarusian clubbers?

Ex. 24. Why do hip-hop and rap appeal to young people? Study the notes, read the text and find out the components of hip-hop movement.

Hip-Hop & Rap

Many people would agree that the most vigorous youth culture to appear since the decline of the hippie movement in the early 1970s has been the hip-hop movement. Created as an alternative to the culture of gang violence in the mid-1970s in the Bronx and Harlem, hip-hop culture had three major components: rap music, break dancing and graffiti art.

By the mid-1980s, rap music as an expression of hip-hop culture had become the Next Wave of wider popular culture. Rap music, with its heavy emphasis on beat, rhythm and lyrics that were often based on realistic images of violent inner-city life survived, and like the first generation of rock and roll, it seized the attention and interest of young people. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s rap gained enormous popularity fuelled by movies, radio, MTV exposure and parental disapproval.

Unlike the hippie movement, where anyone could put on a tie-dye shirt and become a weekend hippie, the hip-hop culture did not provide a lifestyle that most American young people could completely accept. White teenagers could not, as much as they might wish to, become black. They could and did, however, listen to the music, wear high-cost sneakers, sagging pants, hooded baggy sweatshirts, and baseball caps, imitate the hair cuts, adopt the rap vocabulary suitable for their daily lives, mimic street speech, and admire from a safe distance the lives of prominent black rappers and athletes. Thus, rap provided a connection to the lives of those living in the chaos of inner cities, a connection that brought it a degree of awareness of social injustice.

The hip-hop movement and rap music provided the biggest addition of black street phraseology to youth slang since introduction of Harlem jive in the 1930s. The idiom of rap is not entirely new. Such neologisms as fly, fat/phat, and rap are very old slang, and much of the rap vocabulary dealing with violence can be traced to Harlem jive, gangster slang of the 1930s, or the war in Vietnam.

One of the three original components of the hip-hop movement was break-dancing, which started in the South Bronx as an alternative to gang warfare. It consisted of highly rehearsed, acrobatic, stylized dancing, a form of street art or street theatre that was most often performed either on sidewalks for tips or in organized competitions.

The language of breakdancers provided the bridge from black street phraseology to the idiom of hip-hop. Among many words used by breakdancers which are found in the lexicon of hip-hop, there were some slang expressions and terms that were unique to breakdancing. The term break itself is an old jazz term, meaning that the music and dancing continue within a song but the singer does not. In hip-hop culture a breaker was a dancer, and breaking was dancing. A group of breakdancers was a crew, a term which came to have a more generalized meaning. To cut someone was to expel them from the group of dancers. A breaker’s dogs are dancing sneakers, and gear is one’s performance clothes. Also included in the breakdancer’s essentials are a box (a large, portable tape player, short for boom box), used to play joins (tapes or songs).

The third component of hip-hop movement was graffiti. Graffiti is an Italian word which means “scratchings”or “scribblings”, and it was originally used by archeologists to describe drawings and inscriptions scratched with chalk or charcoal on walls and other surfaces in ancient Pompeii and Rome. They are important to linguists because the language of graffiti is closer to the spoken language of the period and place than written language. In contemporary usage, graffiti refers to writings or pictures, rude, humorous, political or sexual in content, drawn with spray paint or felt-tip pens on walls in public places, such as buildings, parks, trains, buses, toilets, etc. Graffiti is also found in rural areas, often on bridges and rocks along a highway. It is a form of self-expression, and though graffiti art has never moved beyond vandalism, it had a great effect on commercial graphic art, related to hip-hop culture. The technique and content of graffiti have also influenced several contemporary artists.

Glossary

Tie-dye – to tie string around parts of a piece of material and colour it with dye in order to make a special pattern.

Jive – a dance to fast music that became popular in the 1930s and 1940s in which a man and a woman hold hands and the man swings the woman round.

Ex. 25. Answer the questions.

1. When and where did hip-hop culture appear?

2. What are the three major components of hip-hop culture?

3. What is rap music like?

4. Why did rap gain enormous popularity?

5. What clothes do rappers wear?

6. What is their language like?

7. When did breakdancing start?

8. What is included in the breakdancer’s essentials?

9. What place does graffiti occupy in hip-hop culture?

10. Would you like to try your hand at reading rap or breakdancing?

Ex. 26. Summarize the text “Hip-hop & Rap”.

Ex. 27. Do you like Eminem’s songs? What do you think of his lyrics?

No Free Pass for Eminem

Steely Dan’s music isn’t abrasive like hip-hop. It’s at the opposite extreme, cool and enticing. Some listeners might even find themselves singing along with deeply unsavory come-ons. The group’s audience, mostly boomer-age adults, considers itself sophisticated enough to handle a few ironies and the concept of an unreliable narrator, and the music goes down so smoothly that it seems perfectly genteel. Mr. Becker and Mr. Fagen are punctilious pop craftsmen who have spent a long time in the music business. So Steely Dan is granted literary license. Similarly, there was no controversy when Shawn Colvin’s “Sunny Came Home”–about a woman who takes revenge on an abusive husband by burning down the house – received Grammys as Record of the Year and Song of the Year for 1997, even if it was pro-arson.

Eminem gets no such leeway. He’s belligerent, foulmouthed and sick-minded, and his favourite all-purpose insult is a homophobic slur. (In a defense that’s both weak and disagreeable, he has said he doesn’t mean it to apply only to homosexuals.) Where Steely Dan uses insinuation and indirection, Eminem is bluntly antagonistic; where Steely Dan lives for understatement, Eminem goes for hyperbole.

Instead of the Slim Shady alias he used on his previous album (which, incidentally, won two Grammy awards for “rap” without any repercussions), Eminem uses his real name in the title of “The Marshall Mathers LP.” And his music is hip-hop, which renders him immediately suspect to much of the baby-boom generation. Somehow, all those factors make him forfeit the presumption that every word on his album is not completely, unironically sincere. He’d be the first artist who, to paraphrase Philip Roth, never made anything up.

And if that were so, he’d probably be safely behind bars. Between the murders, death threats, rapes, bank robbery, drug abuse, drunken driving, fistfighting, vandalism, animal mutilation and the notion that, as he sarcastically raps, “I invented violence,” Eminem would be a full-time crime wave. Op-ed handwringers, who are used to parsing the straight-faced pronouncements of politicians, can glean all the scurrilous quotes they need. People who worry about domestic abuse (most of Eminem’s misogyny is directed at his wife and his mother) and about homophobia also have plenty of ammunition. All of them help Eminem reach his true objective: “I think I was put here to annoy the world.”

Where Steely Dan plays one basic identity game – impersonating louse after louse – Mister Mathers runs a multiple-identity Olympics. He’s a success, a loser, a madman, a star, a whiner, a combatant, a jerk – anything, he insists, but a hypocrite. He portrays realistic irritation spilling over into homicidal rampages, and as a child of the tabloids, he exploits his own troubled real-life marriage, like Henny Youngman turned blood-thirsty. He knows he’s a mess; he also jeers that plenty of other people have thoughts like his that they’re unwilling to admit. “Yeah, I probably got a couple of screws up in my head loose,” he raps. “But no worse than what’s goin’ on in your parents’ bedrooms…”

What may be the funniest part of the Grammy hoopla is that Eminem-haters think the imprimatur of the Grammy would be to Eminem’s advantage.

If “The Marshall Mathers LP” were named Album of the year, they seem to think, Eminem would be established in the pop mainstream, with his four-letter words and vicious fantasies certified as acceptable behaviour…

The New York Times, 18. 02. 2001

Baby-boom generation – people born during the demographic explosion of 1946-1964.

Ex. 28. Explain the underlined words and phrases. Give their Russian/ Belarusian equivalents.

Ex. 29. Explain what is meant under:

• …the music goes down so smoothly that it seems perfectly genteel…

• Where Steely Dan uses insinuation and indirection, Eminem is bluntly antagonistic; where Steely Dan lives for understatement, Eminem goes for hyperbole.

• Op-ed handwringers, who are used to parsing the straight-faced pronouncements of politicians, can glean all the scurrilous quotes they need.

• Where Steely Dan plays one basic identity game – impersonating louse after louse – Mister Mathers runs a multiple-identity Olympics

• …portrays realistic irritation spilling over into homicidal rampages…

• …got a couple of screws up in my head loose…

Ex. 30. Answer the questions.

1. What is Steely Dan’s music like?

2. What is typical of Eminem’s music?

3. What is the difference between Steely Dan’s and Eminem’s performance style and music? Make several points.

4. What helps Eminem to reach his objective “to annoy the world”?

Ex. 31. Analyze the title. Was Steely Dan expected to be presented an award? Does this title catch the eye of a reader? Read the text and suggest a new title.

Steely Dan Wins With an Unlikely Best Album

The top winner when the 43^rd annual Grammy Awards were presented Wednesday evening at the Staples Centre here was an album about incest, statutory rape, threesomes and drugs. But it was not by the rapper Eminem. It was a very different sort of album: “Two Against Nature,” a marriage of funk, rock, jazz and lecherous lyrics by Steely Dan, a veteran rock group that had never won a Grammy.

The album, the band’s first in 20 years, earned four Grammys. It was an unlikely victory: many were predicting that the award for album of the year would go to either “You’re the One” by Paul Simon, a perennial Grammy favourite, or the much debated “Marshall Mathers LP” by Eminem, which sold at least seven million more copies than “Two Against Nature” (which has sold 800,000 copies).

“We’d like to thank Eminem for taking the heat,” Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen said backstage, commenting on the lack of censure the band had received for the subject matter of “Two Against Nature”. As for his feelings on not having won a Grammy for his past three decades of work, Mr. Fagen cracked, “They gave us plenty of time to work on our speeches.”

Eminem, the subject of more hand-writing than any artist in recent history, didn’t leave empty-handed, however. The white rapper swept up the hip-hop awards. His song “The Real Slim Shady”, in which he raps that he’ll never win a Grammy because critics can’t stand him, won for best rap solo performance. And he beat his mentor and producer, Dr. Dre, to win the best rap album for “The Marshall Mathers LP.”

“I guess first of all I want to thank everybody who could look past the controversy and see the album for what it was, and also for what it isn’t,” Eminem said in an acceptance speech before going on to prove that he is a family man by thanking his daughter and saying that he loved her. He also delivered the night’s most memorable performance, rapping his song “Stan” (changing about half of the swearwords), a tale about an obsessed fan that also serves as a response to his critics (the moral is, don’t practise what Eminem preaches). Elton John sang the chorus and, after the performance, made a point of hugging and clasping hands with the rapper, who has been heavily censured for his homophobic lyrics.

Outside there were protests against Eminem early on. With the ceremony a half-hour old, about 30 people were demonstrating, though the crowd had been larger earlier. “Hate set to a groove is still hate,” one sign read. The protest had dissipated before the ceremony was over.

Eminem also won best rap performance by a duo or group along with Dr. Dre for “Forgot About Dre,” from the producer’s “2001” album. Despite the title, Grammy voters don’t seem to have forgotten about Dre: he also won the best producer award.

But while Eminem dominated the conversation onstage and backstage, U2 sneaked into the winner’s circle. “Right now, it’s our night,” Bono said with a characteristic lack of humility, accepting the award for record of the year (given to a single) for “Beautiful Day” (though he did concede that a competitor, the helium-voiced diva Macy Gray, also deserved the honour).

U2’s return to bare-bones rock from the ironic high-concept electronic pop of its previous albums paid off with three awards. “Beautiful Day,” a propulsive tribute to simply being alive in the world, also won the best song award, presented to the song-writers (in this case U2), and the band won for best rock performance by a group.

“Honestly, we thought we’d come along this year and reintroduce ourselves,” Bono said backstage. “We didn’t think we’d win any awards. One we thought would be great, and then next year we thought we’d have an avalanche.” (Though U2’s single was released in time to be nominated for this year’s awards, its album wasn’t.)

“This megalomania thing starts from an early age,” Bono added.

As for the pop’s reigning trend, teenybop pop, its stars were completely shut out of the winner’s circle. “I Try” by Ms. Gray beat hits by Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears to win best female pop vocal performance, and, in a more unpredictable twist, “Two Against Nature” triumphed over ‘N Sync and Mr. Spears for best pop vocal album. (Madonna, who opened the show with a slickly choreographed tribute to herself, lost in both categories.) The other two awards Steely Dan’s music earned were best pop performance by a duo or group with vocal, for “Cousin Dupree”, and best engineered non-classical album.

Shelby Lynne, accepting the award for best new artist, also felt like her moment in the sun was a long time coming, remarking onstage that it took her “13 years and six albums to get here.”

D’Angelo picked up two awards: his slow-burning, soulful “Voodoo” won for best R&B album, and his falsetto delivery of “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” earned him the best male R&B performance. Another double winner in R&B was Destiny’s Child, whose “Say My Name”, a song about calling a boyfriend and checking to see whether he’s in bed alone by asking the question posed in the song title, won for best R&B song and best R&B group performance. And the English band Radiohead picked up the best alternative music album Grammy for its most experimental album to date, “Kid A”.

The album was also nominated for album of the year, but Ed O’Brian, a guitarist with the band, said he felt Eminem deserved to win. “We all feel that he’s made the most culturally significant album, whether it’s good or bad,” he said.

In the relatively recent best dance recording category, many in the business complained that the only song that was out of place in the running, because it wasn’t club-oriented, was “Who Let the Dogs Out,” the first American hit by the Bahamian group the Baha Men. Nonetheless, the Baha men, after having been dropped by two major labels over the last 10 years, had their day in the sun, winning their first Grammy for the song.

In the classical field, music by 20^th-century composers and nontraditional choices dominated. Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic won the Grammy for best orchestral performance for their construction and performance of Mahler’s difficult, unfinished ‘Symphony № 10”. In a twist, a chamber music group, the Emerson string Quartet, picked up the second best classical album Grammy of its career, this one for “Shostakovich: the String Quartets”. And, in an untraditional choice, a guitarist, Sharon Isbin, won for best solo instrumental album without orchestra for her diverse folk-inspired “Dreams of a World”; she is the first guitarist to win the award in some 30 years.

For best musical show, the star power of “Elton John and Tim Rice’s ‘Alda’ was an easy winner. And few could have been surprised when B. B. King and Eric Clapton won best traditional blues album for “Riding With the King”. Bjork, snubbed by the Oscars for the film “Dancer in the Dark,” didn’t get love from the Grammys either, losing in both categories she was nominated in: best pop instrumental performance (the Brian Setzer Orchestra won) and best instrumental arrangement accompanying a vocalist. The winner there was Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”, which was arranged by Vince Mendoza. Ms. Mitchell, often upset about not receiving enough accolades for her work from the mid-70’s on, won’t have anything to complain about this year: her “Both Sides Now” also won best traditional pop vocal album.

Lee Ann Womack’s bittersweet (it’s achy, but not breaky) “I Hope You Dance” won the best country song award for the writers. And two country legends who can’t even get signed in Nashville won awards: Dolly Parton for her haunting bluegrass collection “The Grass Is Blue” (for best bluegrass album) and Johnny Cash for best male country vocal performance for “Solitary Man.”

In the first year of a new award, Best Native American Music Album, one of the most persistent lobbyists for the addition of the category, Tom Bee, won along with Douglas Spotted Eagle, both of whom produced the drum-group compilation “Gathering of Nations Powwow.”

In the very open-ended best contemporary jazz album category, “Outbound”, by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones was a surprise winner.

Less surprising, Branford Marsalis walked away with the best jazz instrumental album for “Contemporary Jazz”. Tito Puente received a posthumous acknowledgment for his album with Eddie Palmieri, “Masterpiece/Obra Maestro,” which won best salsa album. And Jimmy Sturr picked up his 11^th award for best polka album.

And who said hard rockers are slobs? Members of both Rage Against the Machine, which won best hard rock performance for “Guerilla Radio”, and the Deftones, who won for best metal performance for “Elite”, were wearing suits and ties.

By Neil Strauss

The New York Times, 23.02. 2001

Ex. 32. Compare the two articles dedicated to the Grammy Awards 2000. Any differences in the evaluation of Steely Dan’s and Eminem’s music? Where does the attention of the authors focus?

What kinds of awards does Grammy include?

How is the ceremony depicted in the article?

What vocabulary does the author employ to characterize the winners, their behaviour, their albums and songs?

Ex. 33. Summarize the texts “No Free Pass For Eminem”, “Steely Dan Wins With an Unlikely Best Album”.

Ex. 34. Render into English.

Бриллиантовый клуб поп-звезд

При обсуждении музыкальных альбомов то и дело употребляются определения “серебряный”, “золотой”, “платиновый”. Так что ж это такое?

В мировой шоу-индустрии статус “платинового” получают диски, разошедшиеся по свету тиражом более 1 млн. экземпляров. “Золотым” признается альбом или сингл, на который нашлось более 500 тыс. покупателей, а “серебряным” – более 250 тыс. В 1999 году утвержден новый статус – “бриллиантовый”. Он будет предоставлен тем музыкальным сборникам и синглам, чей распроданный тираж превысил 1 млн. копий. На первую награду сразу же нашлись претенденты: Майкл Джексон, Элтон Джон, Гарт Брукс, Селин Дион, Аланис Мориссет, а также группы “Fleetwood Mac”, “Eagles”, “Backstreet Boys”, “Boys II Men”. Такая вот “бриллиантовая” компания.

Ex. 35. Read the title and try to predict the contents of the text. Read the text and find out whether you were right.

Building a Better Pop Star The Making of Mandy Moore

Wearing skintight Dolce & Gabbana jeans and a hot-pink T-shirt, fifteen-year-old Mandy Moore is a picture of ice-cool glamour in the warm-‘n’-fuzzy lobby of Walt Disney World’s BoardWalk Inn. Twirling her flowing blond hair, her eyes hidden behind hipster shades, Moore is oblivious to the bustle of pasty-white tourists in oversize T-shirts and knee-high socks. A couple of vacationers stop and whisper, “Who is she? She looks familiar”. An older man adjusts his glasses and drawls, “She sang the national anthem at a Magic game”.

You are correct, sir! Before landing her current position as rising pop sensation, Moore sang at so many sporting events in her hometown of Orlando that she was dubbed National Anthem Girl. But her first album, So Real, she has given up the Stars and Stripes circuit for a shot at becoming the next teen pop-star. Combining the requisite formula of up-tempo R&B ditties and sappy ballads with a few well-choreographed videos, So Real is not an instant chart-topper but an album filled with potential – and potential dollar signs, a fact not lost on Moore label, Epic/550 Records, which has the singer on a dizzying promotional campaign.

In today’s climate, cross-marketing is just as important as music – if not more – as labels compete with video games, the Internet and cable TV for teen attention. The more ubiquitous an artist is, the better. In the next few months, Moore will be schmoozing in Hong Kong and New Zealand, dashing through a short European tour with the English boy band 5ive and, of course, doing lots of MTV. She just signed a three-year contract with the network; her next project has her playing a big part in MTV’s spring-break coverage. All this after recently opening for ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys, modeling for Tommy Hilfiger and Wet Seal clothing, and signing a deal to become the global spokeswoman for Neutrogena.

“It’s really surreal,” says Moore, exuding an endless supply of youth energy while sitting on a bench next to a man-made lake. “I thought a record company would sign an artist my age and wait until I was seventeen or eighteen before they started having me do stuff. But I jumped right in.”

Despite the apparent urgency, her management has never wanted her to be an overnight sensation. “This is one of the few teen-pop stories that is taking its time to develop,” says Moore’s manager, Jon Leshay. Although he adds that her initial sales were way beyond expectations, the Mandy Moore marketing plan was implemented nearly a year earlier, something that has become de rigueur for teen artists. It began in March 1999 with the construction of two Web sites, one by Transcontinental Media (the folks behind the initial success of ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys) and one developed by Epic/550. Then came the autograph sessions following her opening set on the ‘N Sync and Backstreet tours.

“At that first ‘N Sync show, there was a line two and a half hours long to meet her and get her autograph,” says Epic/550’s Scott Carter. “No one should know who she is, but the reaction was amazing”. After each backstreet show, Moore was accompanied by a four-person marketing team, which set up a booth and passed more than a thousand stickers, fan-club registration cards and cassette singles. “We made sure every kid at those shows knew who she was,” says Carter. So while Christina Aguilera’s record debuted in the Top Ten, Moore’s entered at a respectable Number Seventy-seven and has been selling 40,000 to 60,000 copies a week – not blockbuster numbers, but right in line with the Mandy army’s master plan.

“I would much rather have this type of slow success,” says Leshay, “than radio getting the most bang for the buck now and forgetting about tomorrow. And twelve-year-old Sherry from Nebraska doesn’t care where Mandy debuts – it’s where she ends up”. So far, the plan seems to be working. “Candy”, the first single, re-entered the Hot 100 four months after its initial entry. “After the holidays, we were one week away from working the second single,” Leshay says. “But then Z-too (New York station) re-added “Candy”, and a bunch of other radio stations followed suit. Now the record has surged back into the Top Fifty. We’ve put the second single on hold.”

Music is just a starting point for Moore whose handlers take pains to position her as “a celebrity focusing on music” rather than “a pop star”. Lori Lambert, a vice president for strategic marketing at Epic/550 Records, says, “When I first looked at this kid, I knew she was a star. She had that sizzle that you don’t see very often. I felt that I could introduce her to people who need to attach themselves to a star.” Still, Moore’s appeal transcends looks. “If I was a marketer and I needed just a pretty girl, I’d go hire one from Ford Models,” says Lambert. “Mandy is warm and accessible as well as pretty, which sets her apart from other kids.”

But in a world where Britney begat Christina, who begat Jessica Simpson, how does Mandy Moore set herself apart? “The consumer will mention them in the same breath,” concedes Moore’s A&R rep, Dave McPherson, who signed her after a friend slipped him a CD. “But Mandy is a singer inside a supermodel’s body, and her stardom will transcend the music business.”

But even future superstars can get fatigued. “My cheeks hurt,” Moore groans sweetly after two hours of smiling and signing autographs as a Virgin Megastore. “I wish I could take a week off and go to the beach with my friends. But the best thing is performing live. No matter how crappy your day is, getting onstage and having fun makes it all better.” Moore is especially giddy tonight because she’s performing in her hometown: her two brothers and her best friend, Bonnie, are in attendance. The contingent mills about Moore’s trailer before the show. Her cell phone rings, and she turns away sheepishly to answer the call.

“T. J.’s coming,” she announces.

“We don’t like him,” explains Mandy’ mother. “He’s fifteen going on twenty-one.”

“He’s nice to me,” the fifteen-year-old says. Moore adds that she doesn’t have a boyfriend and staunchly refutes an undying rumour that she’s dating Backstreet Boy Nick Carter. “I can’t go anywhere without getting asked that,” she says. “My parents wouldn’t have that. Nineteen is a little old. People would say that I’m a whore and a slut. That comes with the territory.”

It’s a remarkably self-aware statement from someone so young. But just when you think her maturity belies her age, the cell phone rings again. “Oh, God,” she says dreamily. “I hope that’s T.J.”

By Matt Hendrickson

From Rolling Stone, 2000

Ex. 36. Explain the underlined phrases.

Ex. 37. Answer the questions.

1. How did Mandy Moore start her singing career?

2. Was her first album successful?

3. Is there any formula of a successful album? What is your opinion?

4. What factors are important to take into account when ‘making’ a star?

5. What does Mandy Moore’s promotional campaign include?

6. What are the gimmicks to make us remember the name of a young singer?

7. What is the road to megastardom – a knock-out or a slow success? What is better for an artist?

Ex. 38. Prepare the project: “Making of stars”, “On the road to success”.

Ex. 42. Can religious beliefs be an impediment to singing activity? Give examples. Read the text and say what obstacles Toni Braxton overcame on her way to success.

Toni Braxton

Toni Braxton was one of the most popular and commercially successful female R&B singers of the ‘90s, thanks to her ability to straddle seemingly opposite worlds. Braxton was soulful enough for R&B audiences, but smooth enough for adult contemporary; sophisticated enough for adults, but sultry enough for younger listeners; strong enough in the face of heartbreak to appeal to women, but ravishing enough to fascinate the fellas. Wielding such broad appeal, Braxton managed to score not one, but two albums that sold over eight million copies; naturally, they were accompanied by a long string of hit singles on the pop and R&B charts, one of which – “Un-break My Heart” – ranks among the longest-running number one pop hits of the rock era.

Toni Braxton was born in Severn, Maryland on October, 1968. The daughter of a minister, she was raised mostly in the strict Apostolic faith, which prohibited not only all popular culture, but also pants in women’s wardrobes. Encouraged by their mother, an operatically trained vocalist, Braxton and her four sisters began singing in church as girls; although gospel was the only music permitted in the household, the girls often watched Soul Train when their parents went shopping. Braxton’s parents later converted to a different faith, and eased their restrictions on secular music somewhat, allowing Braxton more leeway to develop her vocal style; because of her husky voice, she often used male singers like Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, and Michael McDonald as models, as well as Chaka Khan. Braxton had some success on the local talent-show circuit. She studied to become a music teacher. However, Braxton soon dropped out of college after she was discovered singing to herself at a gas station by songwriter Bill Pettaway (who co-authored Milli Vanilli’s ‘Girl You know it’s True’). With Pettaway’s help, Braxton and her sisters signed with Arista Records in 1990 as a group dubbed simply the Braxtons. The Braxtons released single in 1990 called ‘The Good Life’ and while it wasn’t a hit, it caught the attention of L. A. Reid and Babyface, the red-hot songwriting/production team who had just formed their own label, LaFace in 1991, and the following year she was introduced to the listening public with a high-profile appearance on the soundtrack of Eddie Murphy’s Boomerang. Not only did her solo cut ‘Love Shoulda Brought You Home’ become a substantial pop and R&B hit, but she also dueted with Babyface himself.

Braxton’s first album ran high, and when her eponymous solo debut was released in 1993, it was an across-the board smash, climbing to number one on both the pop and R&B charts. It spun off hit after hit, including three more Top Ten singles in ‘Another Sad Love Song’, ‘Breathe Again’, and ‘You Mean the World to Me’. Plus the double-sided R&B hit ‘I Belong to You’/’How Many Ways’. With eventual sales of over eight million copies, Toni Braxton’s run of popularity lasted well into 1995. By that time, Braxton had scored Grammies for Best New Artist and Best Female R&B Vocal in 1994, and tacked on another win in the latter category for ‘Breathe Again’ in 1995. To tide fans over until her next album was released, Braxton contributed ‘Let It Flow’ to the Whitney Houston-centered soundtrack of Waiting to Exhale in 1996. Again working heavily with L. A. Reid and Babyface, Braxton released her second album, Secrets, in the summer of 1996, and predictably, it was another enormous hit. The first single, ‘You’re Makin’ Me High’ was Braxton’s most overtly sexual yet and it became her biggest pop hit to date; however, its success was soon eclipsed by the follow-up single, the Daine Warren-penned ballad ‘Un-break My Heart’. It was an inescapable juggernaut, spending an amazing 11 weeks on top of the pop charts and even longer on the adult contemporary charts). By then Secrets was well on his way to becoming Braxton’s second eight-million-seller. In 1997, she picked up Grammy awards for Best Female Pop vocal and best female R&B Vocal.

Toward the end of 1997, Braxton filed a lawsuit against LaFace Records, attempting to gain release from a contract she felt was no longer fair. When LaFace countersued, Braxton filed for bankruptcy, a move that shocked many fans (who wondered how that could be possible, given her massive sales figures) but actually afforded her protection from further legal action. Braxton spent most of 1998 in legal limbo. Braxton and LaFace finally reached a settlement in early 1999, and the singer soon began work on her third album. Heat was released in the spring of 2000, and entered the charts at number two, matching the highest position held by Secrets. Lead single ‘He Wasn’t Man Enough’ was a Top Ten hit, although the follow-ups ‘Just Be a Man About it’ and ‘Spanish Guitar’ didn’t sustain the album’s momentum as well as one might have expected. A brisk seller out of box, The Heat eventually cooled off around the two-million mark; a disappointing showing compared to her previous efforts, despite yet another Grammy win for Best Female R&B Vocal. In 2001, Braxton made her feature film debut in the comedy Kingdom Come, and married Mint Condition keyboardist Keri Lewis; by the end of the year they had a baby boy. Braxton also released her first holiday album, Snowflakes. In early 2002, she appears in the VH1 movie Play’d, and recorded More Than a Woman for release later that year. The singles ‘Please’ and ‘That’s the Way Love Works’ announced Braxton’s 2005 return with the full-length Libra.

From School English, 2006

NOTES

Adult contemporary – a style in Western pop music

Soul Train – a musical TV programme in the USA

Ex. 43. Explain the underlined words and expressions. Make up sentences with them. Write the sentences down.

Ex. 44. Answer the questions.

1. Why does Toni Braxton wield broad appeal?

2. What is her family background?

3. What singers acted as models for Toni Braxton? Why?

4. Was her first album a success?

5. How many Grammies did Toni Braxton score?

6. Did the second album Secrets match the first one in success?

7. Why did Toni Braxton file a lawsuit against LaFace Records?

8. How was the conflict settled?

9. What musical achievements of Toni Braxton in 2000–2005 can you name?

Ex. 45. Prepare a short summary of the text.

Ex. 46. Translate into English.

1. Песни исполнителей блюза очень мелодичные и задушевные. 2. Молодая певица кажется утонченной леди, она не будет петь песни, где в припеве есть слова вроде “уси-пуси”. 3. Поп-группа выпустила первый сингл в 1999 году, который сразу же оказался в первой десятке. 4. По итогам 1996 года альбом Селин Дион ‘Падая в тебя’ получает сразу два ‘Грэмми’, в том числе и в самой престижной номинации ‘Альбом года’. 5. Джанет Джексон нарасхват у ведущих студий звукозаписи, которые воюют за право записывать её голос и готовы выложить за контракт с певицей по 40-60 млн. долларов. 6. Первый одноимённый диск Мадонны, выпущенный в 1983 году, имел ошеломляющий успех. Несколько песен из альбома сразу же вошли в американские хит-парады. Второй альбом ‘Как святая дева’ (Like a Virgin) затмил успех первого: сразу 8 песен из него попали в элиту шоу-бизнеса. 7. В начале 90-х все ждали заката суперзвезды, этому способствовали скандальные разоблачения, запреты на показ клипов на телевидении. 8. Первые три альбома ‘Ю-ту’, записанные в начале 1980-х, прошли незаметно для поклонников рока, хотя уже в них чувствовалось тонкое своеобразие молодой группы. Традиционный гитарный ритм-энд-блюз перемежался с ирландскими народными мелодиями, элементы музыки ранних панков сочетались с чертами авангардного рока. 9. Выход альбома и организация концертных выступлений обеспечили группе всемирный успех. Оперный стиль ‘Куин’ в сочетании с ‘помпезным роком’ и виртуозностью исполнения (вспомним вокальные изыски Фредди Меркьюри и гитарные пассажи Брайана Мэя) лишь подчеркивали ее творческую индивидуальность и неповторимость. 10. Во второй половине 80-х альбом Майкла Джексона ‘Триллер’ достиг тиража в 40 млн экземпляров. Этот диск – номер 1 среди альбомов-бестселлеров. 11. За всю историю поп-музыки самый ошеломляющий успех для «дебютанта» выпал на долю альбома “Whitney Houston”, названного по имени исполнительницы. 12. В рейтинге самых богатых певцов Элтон Джон уступает только Полу Маккартни в мире британской рок-музыки.

Ex. 47. Read the text and answer the questions.

Music of Protest

For years, critics have complained about American pop music’s indifference to politics. But George W. Bush has changed it all. America is experiencing its biggest wave of protest music in decades.

Neil Young. Neil Young’s latest album is called Living with War, and it has lots of angry anti-Bush songs. The angriest of them is Let’s Impeach the President. It ends with a 100-voice chorus shouting:

Let’s impeach the president for lying

And leading our country into war,

Abusing all the power that we gave him

And shipping all our money out the door.

Let’s impeach the president for spying

On citizens inside their own homes,

Breaking every law in the country

By tapping our computers and telephones.

Pink. Dear Mr. President is a song found on Pink’s album I’m not Dead. The singer says that the song is an open letter to President Bush and that it is one of the most important songs she has ever written:

Dear Mr. President

Come take a walk with me.

Let’s pretend we’re just two people and

You’re not better than me.

I’d like to ask you some questions if we can

speak honestly.

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?

How do you dream when a mother has no

chance to say goodbye?...

Bring ‘Em Home Now. Last year, Moby, REM’s Michael Stipe and many other famous musicians took part in an anti-war concert called Bring ‘Em Home Now. It was held on the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

‘We have to do this thing more often,’ said Stipe, ‘you know, protest’.

The Dixie Chicks. The Dixie Chicks are back with a new single. In 2004, at a concert in London, one of them, a Texas native, said, ‘We’re ashamed that the President of the US is from Texas’. American country music stations stopped playing their songs and they received threats in the mail. After a long silence they are back with a hit – Not Ready to Make Nice – that is definitely not an apology:

I’m not ready to make it nice,

I’m not ready to back down,

I’m still mad as hell.

From Speak Out, 2007

1. What political issues started the wave of musical protest?

2. What problems does Neil Young raise in his lyrics?

3. What questions does Pink ask the president in her song?

4. How can musicians show their disapproval of a certain policy? Give your examples.

5. Do you know any other political events that caused musical protest?

Ex. 48. What makes the guitar so charismatic? Discuss your ideas, then read the text.

The Humble Instrument that Conquered the World

The guitar is no longer merely a machine that makes sounds. Without playing a note, it is already a bundle of meanings and possibilities. The electric guitar has become a symbol of brash vitality, of modernization, of barely tamed powers and impulses.

Meanwhile, an acoustic guitar promises intimacy and homespun sincerity, with the romantic legacy of the troubadour behind it. Of course, the saxophone, violin, grand piano – all have their own extra-musical connotations and emblematic forms. But no instrument has been as all-conquering as the guitar.

The guitar is everywhere: electric and acoustic, factory-standard and endlessly customized. It serves three-chord amateur strummers and dizzingly virtuosic pros. Its capabilities shape music from Honolulu to Reykjavik, Chicago to New Delhi, London to Lagos and points beyond; the Boston exhibition includes a Martin Backpacker mini-guitar that went into space in 1994 aboard the Columbia shuttle. If the Spanish armada had seized half the territory now held by the descendants of the Spanish guitar, fast food would be tapas and gazpacho and we’d be reading this newspaper in Spanish.

The exhibition provides evidence that the guitar’s destiny was ordained at least 400 years ago. From the beginning, it was a humble instrument, something that ordinary people could play with little training. And in both its sound and its physical form, its essence has been flexibility.

The guitar remains the most personal of instruments. Like the violin family, the guitar has a shape that has always been seen as anthropomorphic, with a body, neck and head. But it gets more intimate treatment than a bowed string instrument. Cradled in a player’s lap or strapped across the chest, as close as a loved one, it is caressed or abused with both hands, while its vibrations are felt next to the player’s heart. It becomes a phallic weapon for a rocker on stage, a partner in harmony for a folkie, a tonal drum for a funk rhythm guitarist. As a bonus, it doesn’t hide a performer’s face, so that every note of a solo can be telegraphed with an appropriate grimace, to the delight of arena rockers and jazz guitarists alike…

In reaching the entire world, the guitar had kept its humility. It’s convivial, stylish, malleable and unpretentious. To repay a little hospitality, it will change its old habits or study a new language. It’s got panache, but it’s also the perfect guest. No wonder it has been the life of the party for so long.

From The New York Times, 12. 11. 2000

Ex. 49. Answer the questions.

1. What does an electric guitar symbolize?

2. What images does an acoustic guitar evoke?

3. Is the guitar suitable for beginners or virtuosos? Is the instrument popular only in Europe and America?

4. What rare exhibits were shown at the exhibition?

5. What is the essence of the guitar?

6. Does the guitar have a convenient shape?

7. What adjectives does the author choose to characterize the instrument? Please, add more adjectives describing a guitar.

8. Can you play the guitar? Who taught you to play? Was it difficult?

9. What famous guitar performers do you know?

10. Is there any musical instrument which can rival the guitar in its popularity?

Writing

Ex. 50. A. Read musical reviews.

William Orbit Pieces in a Modern Style

On first listening, master producer William Orbit’s first solo album – a selection of classical works by the likes of Samuel Barber, John Cage, Vivaldi and Henry Górecki reinterpreted electronically – sounds sweet and becalming, if a little undistinguished. Orbit has said that this record is meant to be chill-out music, and it certainly works on that level. The pieces drift by, cloudlike, accented by wind chimes, the rush of helicopter blades and other effects – these are songs that sound made for lying on a grassy hill, watching the sky go by. But the more you listen to Pieces in a Modern Style, the more warmth and affection you hear, particularly in the muted twinkling keyboards of Ravel’s “Pavane pour une Infante Dėfunte” and the buttery synthesized strings on Handel’s “Largo from Xerxes”. These are Orbit’s billet-doux to music that touches him. They’re not meant for classical purists; they’re charming little curios for anyone who’s interested in the process of reinvention – or in just chilling out.

Stephanie Zacharek

Joni Mitchell Both Sides Now

Deep down, Joni Mitchell has always been a jazz singer. Though her compositions centre on life lessons and other writerly observations, what animates them are the intricate melodies – jackknifing, sharp-cornered lines that demand to-the syllable specificity. On Both Sides Now, Mitchell applies that precision to tunes that have been famously blubbered over for decades (plus two of her own songs). Where Linda Ronstadt and other pop singers who have covered jazz standards tend to lean on oversize crooning (most recently and abhorrently George Michael), Mitchell knows that the romance vanishes when the lines are exaggerated. So she concentrates on the melodic essence of torchy warhorses like “You’ve Changed” and “Stormy Weather”, boiling away the frills until all that’s left are haunting, painfully stark declarations. Singing atop a velvety orchestra, sounding buoyant one minute and betrayed the next, Mitchell interprets “At Last” with slurry, smeared-paint gestures and gives “Don’t Go to Strangers” a weary, Billie Holiday-worthy soul ache. It is Mitchell’s emotional generosity, not the fabulous surroundings, that winds up mattering most: after years of spinning yarns heavily dependent on words, she’s telling these stories with a repertoire of gingerly placed inflections and anguished sighs, tools she’s always had but never flaunted.

Tom Moon

From Rolling Stone, 2000

B. Select an album and develop your own review.

Revision Exercises

Ex. I. Give Russian equivalents.

To practice scales, arpeggio, amplifier, pitch, absolute pitch, music-deaf, to have a good/bad ear for music, to play by ear, encore, score, chord, to transcribe, percussion, movement, viola, French horn, oboe, bassoon, to arrange, bow, jam session, flute, piece, suite, background music, under the baton of, recital, key, major, minor, piano keys, double-bass, drum, incidental music.

Ex. II. Give English equivalents. Write them down.

Аранжировать, гамма, сольный концерт одного исполнителя, без музыкального слуха, играть по слуху, аккорд, ударные, пассаж, играть гаммы, иметь хороший музыкальный слух, партитура, абсолютный слух, фрагмент, камерная музыка, фоновая музыка, музыка к фильму, пьесе, высота тона, звука, бис, вызов на бис, иметь плохой музыкальный слух, произведение, сюита, валторна, альт, дирижер, контрабас, фагот, аккордеон, виртуоз, гобой, флейта, барабан, хор, исполнять, аккомпанировать, выступление джаз- или рок-групп без предварительной репетиции, усилитель, мажорный тон, минорный тон, контрабас, смычок.

Ex. III. Translate into English. Write the sentences down.

1. Симфонический оркестр включает группу смычковых, группу деревянных духовых, медных духовых и группу ударных. 2. Камерная музыка – это классическая музыка для нескольких инструментов и для нескольких исполнителей – соло, трио, квартета или квинтета. 3. У меня плохой слух, но все-таки я могу сыграть гамму. 4. Предполагается, что для того, чтобы сочинять музыку, надо иметь абсолютный слух, уметь играть музыку по слуху. 5. Кто писал партитуру для этого фильма? 6. Для регтайма характерна синкопация аккордов. 7. Сюжет довольно предсказуемый, но музыка к фильму просто замечательна. 8. Cкрипач блестяще исполнил этот фрагмент из сюиты. 9. Смычковый инструмент включает скрипки, альты, виолoнчели и контрабас. 10. Оркестр под руководством этого дирижера завоевал международное признание. 11. Он не разбирался в музыке и не знал разницы между ля бемольным и ля диезным. 12. Это произведение исполняется в мажорной тональности.

Ex. IV. Fill in the gaps with the given words.

George Handel

Concerto, contribution, draw, masterful, melodic, musical, opera, oratorio, rival, stroke

Handel showed ___ tendencies at about the age of 4 and at the age of 8 young Handel began to study music. His first ___ was produced in 1705. Altogether he wrote nearly 50 opers. But it is the form of an oratorio that is his greatest ___ to the art of music. He coposed many ___s, the noblest of which “The Messiah”, was first produced in Dublin in 1742. The grandeur and scope of his choral writing ___s that of Bach and Beethoven, and his superb ___ gift retains its freshness to this day. His instrumental music too has a character of its own, and his best ___s are characterized by breadth and vitality. All his finest work contains ___ ability to produce the most impressive ___s with the simplest means – a quality which caused Beethoven to call him a “master of masters” who “knows how to ___ blood.”

Edward Elgar

Aspiration, blend, chamber, many-sided, musical, music-festival, oratorio, self-taught, sonata, Enigma

Though virtually ___ and coming forward as a composer relatively late Ed. Elgar was a ___ musician. His connection with the British ___ movement began in 1890. The ___ Variations, a colourful collection of ___ portraits for orchestra, established his reputation in 1899. The following year saw the appearance of his ___ “The Dream of Gerontius”, probably his most important work. After World War I he produced three ___ works: a string quartet, a piano quintet and a ___ for violin. His music variously ___s warmth, ___ and pageantry.

Ex. V. Render the text into English.

Кто правит бал “Грэмми”?

“Грэмми” в мире популярной музыки – это то же, что и “Оскар” в кинематографе. По престижности и масштабности проведения церемонии вручения призов, присуждаемых Национальной академией звукозаписи США, в музыкальном мире ей нет равных. Без учета “золотого списка” обладателей “Грэмми” вряд ли можно сказать “кто есть кто” в мире популярной музыки.

Главное действо “Грэмми” – церемония награждения победителей, проводимая ярко, с большим размахом – становится событием года. Так, в 1997 году знаменитый нью-йоркский зал “Мэдисон Сквер Гарден”, вмещающий 12 тыс. зрителей, был ослеплен блеском прибывших на торжество поп-звезд. Только на рекламную раскрутку церемонии было затрачено свыше 10 млн. долларов. Ее транслировали телеканалы 170 стран мира с телеаудиторией более 1,5 млрд. человек. Ну, а ночью Нью-Йорк чествовал победителей конкурса в различных номинациях на грандиозном балу, устроенном в одном из шикарных отелей города.

Королем бала был признан Эрик Клэптон, победивший сразу в трех номинациях “Грэмми”. В частности его сингл “Измени мир” (“Change the world”) удостоился главной награды “Запись года”. Клэптон был увенчан лаврами и как лучший вокалист 1996 года, затмив тем самым славу королевы двух последний балов “Грэмми” Уитни Хьюстон. Ее венценосное место заняла блистательная Селин Дион, получившая награду в другой престижной номинации – “Лучший альбом года” – за проект “Падая в тебя” (“Falling into you”).

Очередную премию “Грэмми” за композицию “Призрак Тома Джода” (“The Ghost of Tom Joad”) в номинации “Песня года” получил невозмутимый Брюс Спроингстин. Лучшей певицей в стиле кантри неожиданно стала самая молодая участница конкурса 15-летняя Ли Энн Раймс. Она же была удостоена почетного звания лучшего нового артиста. Застигнутая врасплох от свалившихся на нее тяжеловесных наград, Ли Энн не смогла сдержать слезы радости, чем глубоко тронула сердца зрителей. Это было сказочное превращение из Золушки в принцессу. В 1998 году титул принцессы звездного бала Ли Энн передала в изящные руки скрипачки и певицы китайского происхождения Ванессы Мэй.

А подведение итогов 1998-го года открыло миру еще одно звездное имя – Лорин Хилл. Талантливая молодая певица стала победительницей сразу в пяти номинациях, обойдя по количеству наград даже таких завсегдатаев клуба “Грэмми”, как Мадонна и Селин Дион, у которых оказалось соответственно четвертая и третья премии. Композиция Мадонны “Луч света” (“Ray of Light”) из одноименного альбома была названа лучшим музыкально видео, а песня “Мое сердце будет биться” (“My heart will go on”) из фильма “Титаник” в исполнении Селин Дион признана лучшей сразу и как “Запись года”, и как “Песня года”.

Следует отметить, что вручению призов “Грэмми” предшествует насколько хитроумная процедура и отлажена такая строгая система отбора исполнителей, что как-то повлиять на конечный результат и вывести в победители не самого лучшего практически невозможно. Не зря награды “Грэмми” считаются самыми объективными и дают наиболее четкое представление о распределении элитных групп и солистов на звездном небосклоне.

Список использованных источников

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