In a story that fits a Hollywood script (剧本), two strange neighbors connected through music and formed an unusual bond by playing the piano together through a wall.
Giorgio Lo Porto is an Italian living in London, England. While he’s never met his neighbor, he knows his new neighbor is a pianist.
His curiosity sets off a series of online videos recording their growing friendship.
Lo Porto then says that he’s left a note telling his neighbor that he loved his music and included a request: Could you play “My Heart Will Go On?” As music starts playing in the background, he posts “I guess it’s a yes.”
In the next video, not only does Lo Porto play the piano, he’s also invited his neighbor to a duet (二重奏). Although he hasn’t played for a while, it appears that his relationship with his neighbor lights up his lost passion for the instrument (乐器).
In another video, Lo Porto begins playing “River Flows Through You,” and stops. At the very moment, his neighbor picks up where he left off.
And just like that, the two started a weekly duet “meet up,” as they played back and forth through the wall.
With every note, Lo Porto’s curiosity about his neighbor’s identity (身份) increased, until one day he took the leap to meet him.
With much expectation and thousands of fascinated online users, Lo Porto revealed (透漏) that he finally met his melodic neighbor.
“Well, today I have met my neighbor. It was better than expected. His name is Emil...” Lo Porto posted.
It turns out that Emil is a 87-year-old native of Poland who recently lost his wife to COVID. He was in between homes as he waited for his house to be sold.
As Lo Porto explained, Emil played the piano at 2 PM every weekend “because his wife loved it.” Playing it “keeps him closer to his wife and away from the painful reminder” of her absence. Lo Porto promised Emil that he would continue their duets till he moved out.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右;
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
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After that, they kept in touch by phone.
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However, bad news came.
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2 . Music is a part of every culture around the world. In fact, the ability to appreciate music is built into our brains. Music makes us feel good. Many music studies look at the long-term benefits of being a music listener or participating in a music program as a child. But can listening to music help us connect and empathize (产生共鸣) with someone right at the moment? A new study aims to find it out.
In this study, 60 university students were asked to watch several 15-second videos in which a person describes an autobiographical (自传体的) experience. In some cases, people in the video talk about a relatively ordinary event, like moving into a new apartment, while other stories contain strong emotional content, like recalling a terrible accident or a loved one’s death.
While students watched these videos, the researchers randomly played either “emotionally neutral (中立的)” music or very sad music in the background. After watching each video, the students expressed how much sympathy they had for the person in the video, and how much they wanted to help that person. They were also tested on their social reasoning skills—how well they understood the person’s thinking method in the video. All of these could be signs of empathic connection (同感沟通).
Results showed that people watching the sad videos felt more sadness themselves and more sympathy for the other person than those watching the neutral videos—not a big surprise. But these empathic feelings were strengthened by listening to sad music. The music had no effect, however, on whether or not the students could reason out the other person’s experience and understand what they might be thinking or feeling.
While music is not the only way — other art forms, like fiction and dancing, have also been shown to increase empathy, for example—music could be a powerful tool. “It’d be very interesting to extend our finding further, to see if listening to music in a social context can improve our real-world ability to empathize with and feel sympathy for others in the long term,” says the lead researcher Brennan McDonald.
1. What does the new study want to find out?| A．Whether music can benefit us. |
| B．Whether music can arouse genuine emotions. |
| C．Whether music can improve the social effect. |
| D．Whether music programs can increase our confidence. |
| A．To film a short autobiographical video. |
| B．To share one of their miserable experiences. |
| C．To think up ways to help the person in need. |
| D．To watch videos while listening to different background music. |
| A．We can increase our sympathy by using some music. |
| B．Music helps us understand others’ thinking processes. |
| C．Most adults are much more emotional than children. |
| D．Music can influence us both emotionally and intellectually. |
| A．Study different types of music. |
| B．Test the long-term effect of music on people. |
| C．Find more ways to make people more caring. |
| D．Compare the effect of music with that of other art forms. |
| A．Jazz. | B．Classical. | C．Folk. |
| A．At 5:15 | B．At 6:00 | C．At 6:40 |
1. When will the performance start?
| A．At 4:30 p. m. | B．At 4:45 p. m. | C．At 7:00 p. m. |
| A．The terrible weather. | B．A food cart. | C．A concert. |
| A．She’s a music fan. |
| B．She likes country music best. |
| C．She won’t have dinner tonight. |
6 . No matter where you usually hear today’s top hits, you’ve probably noticed that they tend to be around three minutes long.
As Vox explains, the custom dates back to the early 20th century, when shellac (虫胶) records first appeared in the market. The rates at which these records spun varied, but 78 revolutions (旋转) per minute (RPM) quickly became the norm. The most popular record sizes were 10 inches which could hold about three minutes of music per side, and 12 inches which held roughly four to five minutes per side. To get radio stations to broadcast their music and get people to buy it, musicians pretty much had to accommodate those time limits.
As music technology developed over the years, from records to cassette tapes to CDs, three minutes didn’t fall out of fashion. According to Classic FM, this was partly because radio stations could fit more commercials into a program if the songs stayed relatively short. It’s also likely that pop music listeners just preferred briefness; after all, it’s what the last several decades had taught them to expect. As Thomas Tierney said, “It’s implanted in our DNA.”
Today, many tracks come in under three minutes long. Shorter attention spans and social media’s influence might explain the trend toward briefness, but it’s not the only factor: The reward model matters, too. “Instead of getting paid by physical sales, you’re getting paid in a stream, which only counts if someone listens to 30 seconds of a song,” songwriter Charlie Harding told The Verge. “It actually makes sense if you can have more songs streamed at a time, which means that you want to pack your album full of much shorter songs.”
In other words, success is now less about sales but more about the number of streams. Today’s pop stars are making music that reflects the shift—not unlike how 20th-century musicians learned to work within the original three-minute limits.
1. Why did some songs in the early 20th century tend to be about three minutes long?| A．To keep up with the development of society. |
| B．To follow the musicians’ steps. |
| C．To be in memory of shellac records. |
| D．To meet the market demand. |
| A．Fewer media. | B．Fewer listeners. | C．More profits. | D．More programs. |
| A．Its songwriter. | B．Its physical sales. |
| C．The number of its streams. | D．The album’s packaging. |
| A．Why are many pop songs about three minutes long? |
| B．What kind of pop songs do people like? |
| C．How did music technology develop gradually? |
| D．Why are pop songs getting shorter now? |
7 . The earliest known music festival occurred in the 6th century BCE. After centuries’ development, by the late 1960s, Rock bands began to organize their own music festivals. Perhaps the first formal and well-known festival to Rock was the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, which brought that band to the attention of American audiences.
By 1970, the festival grew to bring in more than 600,000 people, showing the popularity of music festivals to organizers. Many others also began to organize such events. The Summerfest Festival was established in 1968.
| A．Rock music is the reflection of history. |
| B．Woodstock festival changed the form of rock concerts. |
| C．However,it focused not only on music but other events. |
| D．Another early rock festival was the Isle of Wight Festival. |
| E．Today, it’s hard to imagine summer without musical festivals. |
| F．What perhaps put music festivals on the map was Woodstock in 1969. |
| G．Others are intended for younger audiences or those who prefer period based music. |
| A．Mexican food. |
| B．Mexican music. |
| C．Mexicans. |
1. Why does the man feel surprised about Betty?
| A．She went to the concert late. |
| B．She didn’t enjoy the concert. |
| C．She argued with somebody. |
| A．He kept talking. | B．He littered the rubbish. | C．He stared at the woman. |
| A．Made a complaint. | B．Hit the boy. | C．Quarreled with the woman. |
10 . Florence, a 17-year-old senior student in high school, was busy composing (创作) a song. She plans to publish an album (音乐专辑) with three other music lovers whom she met at the 2016 Campus Singing Competition. Edward, 18, is another one of the four students to make their own album. Actually he was the one who came up with this fun idea in the first place.
“Everyone loves music. Being a good way to express our feelings and emotions, music can tell something about who we are and our experience of the world. We hope we can use our music to touch our peers (同龄人),” Edward said.
The album includes 15 songs on three themes-love, campus life and youth, with pop and electronic music styles. The inspiration for the songs came from the students’ lives. Take the song Sea of Tranquility for example—it was written by Edward during a flight back to Chengdu after he took part in the China High School Biology Olympiad in summer. “The sky is clear and the ground looks small from the plane. This scene makes me feel calm and peaceful,” Edward explained.
The songs were created one by one with the efforts of the four writers. But a challenge soon appeared. The students found that they didn’t have enough money to produce the album. So to cut down their costs, they used an iPad and headphones to record the songs in an empty classroom on the weekend.
Apart from reducing their costs, they also tried to raise money through crowdfunding on the Internet. They raised more than 7,000 dollars before the album was published in October. “Thanks to all the supporters, we’ll keep working on our own music,” Edward said.
1. Why did Edward and his music team make the album?| A．To earn money. | B．To be famous. |
| C．To influence young people. | D．To make friends. |
| A．They were written by Edward. |
| B．They are based on students’ lives. |
| C．They are quite different in style. |
| D．They are mainly about friendship. |
| A．They were short of money. |
| B．They disagreed on the theme. |
| C．They received stress from teachers. |
| D．They had poor abilities to make music. |
| A．Album Collections. | B．Student Musicians. |
| C．Theme Music. | D．School Life. |
