1 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Beethoven is regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of music. In     1    (he) twenties, he began to lose his hearing, but he continued to write music. Inspired by his     2     (struggle) with deafness, he produced more than 130     3     (amaze) music works, including his Symphony No. 9 D minor.

In February 1824, he added the final notes to the score. The famous     4     (nine) symphony was completed. He signed his name     5     (proud) and imagined how people would respond when they heard it     6     the first time.

Before the performance, the backstage atmosphere at a very famous theatre in Vienne was tense. As he walked out onto the stage, the audience did not hesitate     7     (applaud) loudly. The theatre’s musical director joined him and together the two men took charge of the orchestra.

At last, the audience     8     (shock). It was not until one of the singers turned him to face the audience     9     the great man realised his symphony was     10     success.

2 . The painter Georgia O’Keeffe was born in Wisconsin in 1887 and grew up on her family’s farm. At seventeen she decided to be an artist and left the farm for schools in Chicago and New York, but she never lost her contact with the land. Like most painters,O’Keeffe painted the things that were most important to her, and nearly all her works are simplified portrayals (描绘) of nature.

O’Keeffe became famous when her paintings were discovered and exhibited in New York by the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, whom she married in 1924. During a visit to New Mexico in 1929, O’Keeffe was so moved by the bleak (荒凉的) landscape and broad skies of the western desert that she began to paint its images. Cows’ skulls and other bleached bones found in the desert figured prominently in her paintings. When her husband died in 1946, she moved to New Mexico permanently and used the horizon lines of the desert, colourful flowers, rocks, barren hills, and the sky as subjects for her paintings. Although O’Keeffe painted her best-known works in the 1920s,1930s and 1940s, she continued to produce tributes to the western desert until her death in 1986.

O’Keeffe is widely considered to have been a pioneering American modernist painter. While most early modern American artists were strongly influenced by European art, O’Keeffe’s position was more independent. She created her own vision and preferred to view her painting as a private effort. Almost from the beginning, her work was more identifiably (可识别地) American than other painters in its special treatment of colour,light,space and natural forms.

1. Alfred Stieglitz ________.

A．was a film director

B．married O’Keeffe in 1924

C．died in 1986

D．became famous when his paintings were exhibited in New York

2. Which of the following is most similar to O’Keeffe’s relationship with nature?

A．A photographer’s relationship with a model.

B．A writer’s relationship with a publisher.

C．A student’s relationship with a book.

D．A carpenter’s relationship with a hammer.

3. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as an influence on O’Keeffe’s paintings?

A．Her life in the countryside.

B．Her life in the West.

C．The works of European artists.

D．The appearance of the natural landscape.

4. The main idea of this passage is that ________.

A．O’Keeffe was a different modern American painter

B．O’Keeffe was the best painter of her generation

C．O’Keeffe liked to paint what was familiar to her

D．O’Keeffe used colours and shapes that are too simple

3 . 语法填空

Christopher Reeve

He was born     1     25 September, 1952 in New York. He found his passion in     2    (act) and starred in his first school play at eight. He starred in four Superman     3     (film) from 1978 to 1987.

He realized that his roles in films     4     (give) him the opportunity to be a real-life superman and gained a reputation for raising     5    (aware) for good causes. In 1995, he was thrown off his horse and broke his neck. He had no     6    (move) or feeling in his body at all. He felt     7     he had lost all hope. He even thought of ending his own life, but he     8     (eventual) found the will to live with the help of his wife, his family and his friends. He undertook an intense exercise programme and managed     9     (return) his film career. On 10 October, 2004, he passed     10    .

4 . 语法填空

Vienna is a beautiful old city on the river Danube. It’s the capital city of Austria and the centre of     1     (Europe) classical music. From 1750 a lot of composers and musicians     2     (come) to study and work in Vienna. The most famous family of musicians was the Strauss Family.

There were two composers     3     (call) Johann Strauss: a father and a son. The father, Johann Strauss the elder, wrote and played music     4     a classical dance—a waltz. His waltzes made him famous all over Europe.

The son, Johann Strauss the younger, was even     5     (successful) and popular than his father. He wrote more than 500 pieces of music and his most famous one was The Blue Danube. He wrote it in 1866. Strauss and Mozart were two of     6     most important composers.

Mozart was born in Austria in 1756. By the time he was six, he     7     (play) not only the piano, but also the violin and the organ. His family took him around Europe and he gave     8     (concert) in many cities. He wrote his first opera at the age of 12 and hundreds of beautiful pieces of music for the classical orchestra.     9     (fortunate), he died     10     he was only 35. Some people say he was the greatest European composer.

5 . 语法填空

Beethoven was a talented     1    (music) from his earliest days. At an early age, Beethoven published his first     2    (compose), a set of piano variations. When he was in his twenties, however, he began to lose his hearing. Instead of giving up, he continued to write music. Some of his greatest works, such as his ninth symphony, were created during the time he was deaf.

Ill health and increasing     3    (deaf) caused a drop in productivity at the end of Beethoven’s life, but he still managed to     4    (production) some important works, which were     5    (create).

Beethoven is widely considered one of the greatest     6    (compose) of all time. Beethoven’s     7    (music) compositions stand with William Shakespeare’s plays at the outer limits of human brilliance. Because of his courage and strong will, his music has given joy and     8    (encourage) to millions of people.

6 . John Myatt is an artist. He may not be the greatest artist in the world, but he is possibly the world’s greatest forger (伪造者). He is able to paint pictures in the style of famous artists like Monet and Matisse.

    1     This unusual skill got Myatt into a lot of trouble in the 1990s. For many years he taught art at a secondary school, but then he got divorced (离婚) and he gave up his job to spend more time with his children. In order to make some money he started painting pictures in the style of famous artists and selling them.

    2     He was honest about his work—he wrote his name on the back, and he sold them for ￡150 each. However, one of his customers, John Drewe, started to resell Myatt’s paintings as genuine, original works. Drewe had sold one of Myatt’s paintings for￡25,000. He contacted Myatt and suggested that they go into business together. Myatt agreed. He continued to paint and Drewe sold his paintings to art collectors around the world.     3    

The amazing thing is that Myatt painted his pictures with decorator’s paint.     4     But it soon came to an end. Drewe was divorced too, and his ex-wife found out about the forgeries. She went to the police and they arrested Dewe and Myatt. At their trial Drewe was sent to prison for six years and Myatt for less than one year.

    5     When he came out he started to produce pictures in the style of famous artists again. But he put his name on the back, as he’d done before he met Drewe. Myatt is now famous and instead of charging￡150 for a painting, he can charge￡40-50,000.

A．It wasn’t illegal.

B．Then he decided to stop copying famous paintings.

C．It was the same paint that people use to paint houses!

D．Myatt only spent four months in prison for good behavior.

E．That’s more than Drewe gave him for his ‘genuine’ paintings!

F．His pictures are so good that experts can’t tell that they are not originals.

G．Between 1986 and 1994 they sold about 200 paintings and made over a million pounds.

7 . 语法填空

Every artist’s wish is    1    (create) something that expresses an idea. But their     2    (inspire)comes from different sources.

For example, children’s toys inspired Hofman to create Rubber Duck, Chinese folk tales     3    (contribute) to his Floating Fish. During his stay in Wuzhen, he saw the fish     4    (feed) and some fish sculpted on the wall,     5     set his idea for Floating Fish in motion.

Tan Dun, a composer, known     6     composing music for the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has been using     7     combination of Chinese music and sounds from all over the world. He said Chinese music should carry “    8    (universe)expression”of the human spirit so as to be recognised by the whole world.

The experience in Xishuangbanna inspired Yang Liping to create her Spirit of the Peacock dance. Going deeper into the lives of     9    (vary)ethnic groups gave her lots of inspiration. The peacock represents the     10    (beautiful) of nature, and her dance aims to bring out the Dai women’s beauty.

8 . No artist has affected modern art more than Pablo Picasso.The thousands of masterpieces he created changed the way people thought about art. Picasso was perhaps the most talented and successful artist who ever lived.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in 1881 in a small town on the southern coast of Spain. His father was a painter who taught art. Picasso showed exceptional talent at an early age and, by the time he was in his teens, painted better than his father or any of the local art teachers. At sixteen, Picasso was sent to the Royal Academy of Madrid, where students drew from plaster casts and copied works of the old masters. Picasso felt these assignments were pointless and began to work on his own. Picasso’s father soon became angry with his son’s rebellious behavior, long hair, and strange clothes. He believed that Picasso was wasting his talent and scolded him, “Why don’t you cut your hair and paint sensibly？” In 1900, Picasso left for Paris — then the center of the art world.He lived in a cold, run­down building, painting constantly, sometimes surviving for days on only a piece of bread.During these years, his art reflected his dismal (凄凉的) surroundings.Homeless outcasts were the subject of many of his fairly realistic early paintings. After seeing African masks and sculptures, his works became more simplified and angular leading up to the revolutionary new style known as Cubism.

Picasso didn’t sell much of his works during these early years.On 8 May 1995, Picasso’s Angel Fernandez de Soto was sold at auction for D|S29 million.The next day Blue Period, one of his later works, sold for D|S5 million.But he worked continuously, always experimenting with different styles of painting.Though Picasso lived to be ninety­two and became the most famous artist in the world, he spoke of his youthful days in Paris as “the happiest time in my life”．As a matter of fact, everyone knows that in his late years, Picasso was inordinately frustrated about his age, death and his loss of sexuality — that’s in all his works.

1. Pablo Picasso showed unusual talent for painting ________.

A．in his early childhood

B．in his early teens

C．at the age of sixteen

D．when he painted better than the local art teachers

2. Pablo Picasso started to reveal his rebellious spirit ________.

A．when he was a child

B．in his early teens

C．when he was studying in the Royal Academy

D．after he moved to Paris

3. What marks something of a turning point in his career as an artist?

A．Those miserable but fruitful youthful days in Paris.

B．Those realistic paintings reflecting dismal social surroundings.

C．The influences of masks and sculptures created by native African artists.

D．Experimenting with new different styles of painting.

4. This passage mainly discusses ________.

A．Picasso’s Cubism as a revolutionary style in art

B．Picasso as a rebel and his art

C．Picasso’s life and painting in Paris

D．Picasso’s influences on the development of modern art

9 . Pablo Picasso, born in Spain in 1881, was one of the most famous artists of the 20th century. Picasso began painting when he was a small child and took advanced art courses when he was only fifteen. Between 1904 and 1947 Picasso lived in Paris. In 1947 he moved to Riviera, in the south of France.

Many people thought Picasso’s works were strange and unpleasant. Still, he had a great influence on artists in every country. Today, Picasso is regarded as a genius, and his paintings are in the museums all over the world.

In 1912, Picasso actually invented a new type of art. He painted a picture, and then he pasted bits of paper and something else on the picture. This picture of art is called collage(拼贴艺术).

Picasso was not only a painter, but also a sculptor (雕刻家) and a designer of scenery for plays. There are even some photographs of “light paintings” that he created. These paintings were produced by moving a light pencil, or a small flashlight in the air. Although the images could be seen only by people watching them happen, the camera was able to catch the images as they occurred.

By the time he died in France in April of 1973, he had created 22, 000 works of art.

When he was asked how someone could become an artist, Picasso would reply, “If you want to draw, you must shut your eyes and sing.”

1. After reading the text, we can learn that Picasso was a(n) 　　　.

A．French artist

B．Spanish artist

C．English artist

D．Australian artist

2. The meaning of the underlined word “pasted” in this text means “　　　”.

A．stuck	B．struck
C．drew	D．mixed

3. According to the text, which of the statements is RIGHT?

A．Although Picasso was a great artist, he was not clever at all.

B．Picasso didn’t leave Paris until he was 23 years old.

C．People didn’t like Picasso’s works at first.

D．Picasso was only good at collage.

4. Which would be the best title for the text?

A．How to Become a Great Artist

B．A Genius

C．Pablo Picasso:More Than Just a Painter

D．Picasso’s Life in France

10 . Woody Guthrie is best known as an American folk (民间的) musician, whose musical works include hundreds of political,traditional,children’s songs, and ballads. He was born in America in 1912. Like many people, he left for California hunting for work when he grew up. There many people could find work only on farms gathering fruit or crops. These workers often lived in camps with poor conditions. Woody visited these farm workers. He played his guitar and sang songs he wrote that described the conditions at the camps he was visiting.

Later,he left California for New York City in 1940. There he met Alan Lomax,an expert on America’s traditional music, who collected and recorded traditional American folk music. When he heard Woody sing,Lomax knew he had found a true singer of American folk music. Alan Lomax recorded many of Woody’s songs. The songs told stories of people who had lost their land and received a lot of praise from musicians. In his most famous song, This Land is Your Land, he believed America should be a place that belongs to rich and poor people alike.

One day, while Woody and his wife were away, a fire started in their house. Their daughter Cathy Ann was severely burned. She died the next day. Woody was deeply hurt by her death. He remembered how his sister had died the same way. He was never the same after Cathy Ann died. He had trouble earning money and began drinking alcohol (酒). And he had sudden attacks of uncontrollable shaking. When he was forty years old, doctors said that he had Hunting ton’s chorea (亨丁顿舞蹈症), the same disease that had killed his mother. During his later years, in spite of his illness, Woody was regarded as a figurehead (名义领袖) in the folk movement,providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians.

Finally, he entered a hospital because he could no longer care for himself. He remained in the hospital until he died in 1967.

1. Woody Guthrie went to California to ________.

A．visit farms	B．meet experts
C．write songs	D．seek employment

2. What gave Woody Guthrie a great shock in his life?

A．His mother’s death.

B．The trouble of making money.

C．Losing his daughter.

D．His uncontrollable shaking.

3. From the passage, we can know that ________.

A．Woody Guthrie’s most famous song is This Land is Your Land

B．Alan Lomax was an expert on America's jazz music

C．Woody Guthrie went to New York City at the age of 38

D．Woody Guthrie's mother died in a fire

4. Which of the following is NOT true?

A．Farm workers in the 1920s in America lived a hard life.

B．Alan Lomax spoke highly of Woody Guthrie’s songs.

C．Woody Guthrie made a great contribution to classical music.

D．Woody Guthrie’s songs inspired many people after him.