BAC ENG 2008, SCRIS, 3-4 H, SB 1, VAR 3, SUB SI REZOLV

[musa paradisiaca]

Ministerul Educaţiei, Cercetării şi Tineretului
Centrul Naţional pentru Curriculum şi Evaluare în Învăţământul Preuniversitar

Examenul de bacalaureat 2008
Proba E/F
Proba scrisă la Limba Engleză
L1 - Intensiv 3-4 ore
SUBIECTUL I ( 30 puncte) Varianta 003

Read the text below and complete the following tasks.

Imagine a locked room in which a person sits alone staring into space. There is nothing to look at. (1) … Except for sounds.

But these sounds resemble nothing heard before. They lack all similarity to experience and any reference to surroundings. Now imagine that those sounds – (2) … - are the sounds of a Beethoven symphony. What would one’s ear and mind make of them? How much would be understood?

A new field, for example, sometimes called biomusicology, is preoccupied with how music affects the brain. What regions of the brain respond to changes in harmony or melody? Is there a single region that makes sense of music?

Music may be revealing a code. This view has contributed to a renewed interest in the
relationship between music and mathematics. (3) …

Every effort to examine the effects of single musical variables - pitch, metre, harmony -inadvertently shows just how much more music is than the sum of its parts. Dr Tramo, director of the Institute for Music and Brain Science at Harvard University, has shown that many regions are active when music is heard: (4) ….

The relationship between music and language is also complex. The Russian composer Vissarion Shelabin continued to write music for a decade after a stroke in 1953 damaged his speech and language understanding. In one classic study, brain-damaged patients could identify instruments and wrong notes but could not recognise melodies.

1. Four sentences/groups of words have been removed from the text. Select the appropriate sentence/group of words for each gap in the text. There is one extra sentence/group of words which you do not need to use.
4 points

A. Music is similar to mathematics in important respects.
B. music can only be successfully interpreted in a locked room.
C. Most of the world is stripped away.
D. heard for the first time.
E. even motor areas of the brain can become active though the body might be at rest.

2. Explain the underlined words.
6 points

3. Sum up the text in about 50 words.
10 points

4. For the following questions, choose the answer (A, B, C, D) which fits according to the text.
6 points

1. Why does the writer mention the Beethoven symphony in the second paragraph?

A. to illustrate that certain kinds of music do not make sense
B. to emphasise the difference between a well-known piece of music and music that has
never been heard before
C. to demonstrate that music needs to be related to famous people in order to be
appreciated
D. to speculate what it would sound like to a person with no previous experience of this
kind of music

2. Biomusicology…

A. is the study of how the brain understands and reacts to music.
B. examines the relationship between language and music.
C. is the study of how neurons react to language and music.
D. examines which regions of the brain respond to changes in intonation.

3. Research indicates…

A. that the relationship between music and the mind is unexpectedly complex.
B. that several areas of the brain respond exclusively to music.
C. that the brain is activated only when in motion.
D. harmony stimulates all parts of the brain.

5. Comment on the following statement: Music may be a self revealing code.
(100 words)
4 points

PROPOSED SOLUTION

3. 1.

3. 1. 1 – C;
3. 1. 2 – D;
3. 1. 3 – A;
3. 1. 4 – E;

3. 2.

3. 2. 1. -- locked = key-fastened;
3. 2. 2. –- harmony = musical accordance;
3. 2. 3. –- decade = ten years;


3. 3.

Music affects human lives in many ways. That is why, researchers studying this issue try to discover how music affects the human brain ( which they call biomusicology ) and what is the relationship between music and mathematics or music and language, in both normal and disabled people. The results can help us to better understand the effects of sounds ( and music, especially ) on us, humans. ( 64 words )

3. 4.

3. 4. 1 – B;
3. 4. 2 – A;
3. 4. 3 – A;

3. 5.

To express music in words is one of life’s harder tasks. In spite of this, Pianist Keisuke Toyama tells us that musical notes are codes, which, if deciphered, will reveal the souls of their composers. Some piece of music may sound uplifting, but the composer might have faced a painful farewell, someone’s death, or illness. Learning how composers’ hearts are set into notes will help us change the way the music sounds to us. For example, Chopin’s Barcarolle, is described as playful-sounding. However, at the time he wrote it, Chopin wasn’t feeling well : he could barely play the piano and had been sent to a remote island. So, music as a self revealing code will probably never be deciphered in the most proper way. ( 124 words )