题目内容

Material culture refers to the touchable, material "things" --physical objects that can be seen, held, felt, used--that a culture produces. Examining a culture’s tools and technology can tell us about the group’s history and way of life Similarly, research into the material culture of music can help us to understand the music culture. The most vivid body of "thing" in it, of course, is musical instruments. We cannot hear for ourselves the actual sound of any musical, performance before the 1870s when the phonograph was invented, so we rely on instruments for important information about music-cultures in the remote past and their development. Here we have two kinds of evidence: instruments well preserved and instruments pictured in art. Through the study of instruments, as well as paintings, written documents, and so on, we can explore the movement of music from the Near East to China over a thousand years ago, for we can outline the spread of Near Eastern influence to Europe that resulted in the development of most of the instruments on the symphony orchestra. Sheet music or printed music, too, is material culture. Scholars once defined folk music-cultures as those in which people learn and sing music by ear rather than from print, but research shows mutual influence among oral and written sources during the past few centuries in Europe, Britain and America. Printed versions limit variety because they tend to standardize any song, yet they stimulate people to create new and different songs. Besides, the ability to read music notation has a far-reaching effect on musicians and, when it becomes widespread, on the music-culture as a whole. Music is deep-rooted in the cultural background that fosters it. We now pay more and more attention to traditional or ethnic features in folk music and are willing to preserve the fold music as we do with many traditional cultural heritage. Musicians all over the world are busy with recording classic music in their country for the sake of their unique culture. As always, people’s aspiration will always focus on their individuality rather than universal features that are shared by all cultures alike. One more important part of music’s material culture should be singled out: the influence of the electronic media--radio, record player, tape recorder, and television, with the future promising talking and singing computers and other developments. This is all part of the "information-revolution", a twentieth-century phenomenon as important as the industrial revolution in the nineteenth. These electronic media are not just limited to modern nations; they have affected music cultures all over the globe. The main idea of the first paragraph is

A. the importance of cultural tools and technology.
B. the cultural influence of the development of civilization.
C. the focus of the study of the material culture of music.
D. the significance of the research into the musical instruments.

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血竭为( )

A. 鞣质、树脂
B. 酯树脂
C. 胶树脂
D. 香树脂
E. 油胶树脂

Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions. Now listen to the interview. Why are organic vegetables not always safe

A. Because they contain more chemicals.
Because they can make people less resistant to sunshine.
C. Because some chemicals in them can be potential dangers.
D. Because their genes are modified to some degree.

秦皮的显微特征为( )

A. 石细胞类圆形、方形,外壁较薄
B. 皮层外侧石细胞多呈分枝状,稀有纤维束
C. 乳汁细胞中舍有胶丝
D. 有晶鞘纤维
E. 薄壁细胞含草酸钙砂晶

Cindy Sherman is a strangely elusive artist. Her face has become famous through the photographs she takes of herself, but her work is not autobiographical. Coveted by collectors and extolled by critics, her images explore raw human emotion and common artifice—without revealing who she really is. A retrospective at the Museum of Modem Art (MoMA) in New York demonstrates that although the 58-year-old American may be her own model, she is not her own muse. Her ninth-floor Manhattan studio also offers clues. Pinned to the walls are magazine cuttings and computer printouts of people in what she calls "preposterous" positions: society ladies in ball gowns making breakfast, actresses who are completely naked except for a designer handbag and costume jewellery. She keeps her props in meticulously organised cupboards—multicoloured wigs, prosthetic noses, false boobs and funny clothes. An orange plastic chest of drawers holds loads of make-up; nearby is the giant track pad she uses to do her post-production digital work. It is here that Ms Sherman mutates into the objects of her fascination. Why does the photographer appear in most of her work One reason is shyness. Disguises can be liberating and delegating can be arduous; she tried hiring models once, but found she hated it. Ms Sherman enjoys working alone and doing everything herself. She has also experimented with still lives in which she does not appear. These images appeal to her hard-core fans but they lack the life, literally, of her other work. They are also hard to sell. When collectors buy a Sherman photograph, they want her. Last year one of the 1981 "Centrefold" series (pictured) made $3.9m, then a record for a photograph at auction. Bemused by how much collectors want her in the frame, the artist mimics a male voice: "Is she behind that mask I only want it if she is in there!" Unlike many of her male peers who have jumped ship to bigger galleries, Ms Sherman has stayed loyal to her original dealers—Metro Pictures, the New York gallery that presented her first solo show in 1979, and Sprüth Magers, which has represented her in Europe since 1984. Neither gallery puts pressure on her; they let her get on with her work at her own pace. As a result, she does not overproduce or aimlessly repeat herself. Ms Sherman broke into the art world with "Untitled Film Stills", a series of 69 black-and-white images that were taken in the late 1970s. A fictional archive of publicity shots in which she poses as characters in films from the 1950s and 1960s, the work was an immediate hit. Its exploration of media culture took Pop Art beyond celebratory consumerism into a more critical vein. And its satire of female stereotypes was subtly feminist—so subtle, in fact, that a feminist art historian advised the young Ms Sherman to superimpose text on the works to bring out the irony. Ambiguity is a characteristic of Ms Sherman’s work. One is never quite sure where the artist stands in relation to her characters, and they in turn are often difficult to define. The "Centrefold" series of 12 colour photos in which the artist shot herself from above with fearful or pensive expressions added a layer of anxiety to the uncertainty. Among Ms Sherman’s most celebrated later works are her "Clowns", which were shot in 2003 and 2004. Eva Respini, who has curated the MoMA show, believes that the clown is a "stand-in" for the artist. In one picture, the name Cindy is embroidered on the jacket of a heavily made-up clown with prosthetic cheeks and nose. It is typical of Ms Sherman’s style that she would be disguised beyond all recognition, looking sad and ugly, in a work that flirts with self-portraiture. Indeed, looking over all the photographs, it is interesting to see how the artist has aged gracefully in real life but intriguingly badly in her fictions. In 2007 French Vogue commissioned her to do a series of six photographs in which she transformed herself into desperate middle-aged fashion victims dressed in Balenciaga. These pictures led to "The Socialites" in which she depicted herself as older women whose multimillionaire husbands, one suspects, have cast them off for younger versions. Their dignity in the face of faded glamour reveals both the empathy and brutality of the artist’s eye. Ms Sherman is a kind of actor-director of still pictures who delves into the representation of women—and occasionally men—in Western society. Back in the 1970s, when she first embarked on this artistic path, few would have predicted that she could make so many compelling bodies of work through depicting herself. But much like a character actor who takes pleasure in nailing a bit part, Ms Sherman takes a detailed interest in others while mastering the art of making it up. (From The Economist; 805 words) What can be learned from the last but one paragraph

A. It’s difficult to see the traces of time on the face of Ms Sherman.
B. Ms Sherman poses as older women in her works as she advances in age in real life.
C. The characters in Ms Sherman’s works are not dignified.
D. Ms. Sherman is short of elegance in her works.

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