1 . “Pop” stands for popular, and a pop singer has to work very hard to stay popular. He must either give the public what they want, or he must find a new way of singing that will attract their attention. Even when he has succeeded, and his records are sold everywhere, he cannot relax. Then he must work harder than ever to remain popular, because there are always younger singers trying to become famous and to steal some of the popularity.
The life of a successful pop singer isn’t easy at all. He can only relax when he is alone, because everything he does is watched and reported in the special newspaper written for the fans. The fans are the most important people in the world for the singer. They buy his records, they go to his concerts, and they make him rich and famous. But they can be very annoying, too. Sometimes their enthusiasm (热情) is so hysterical (歇斯底里的) that they do anything to get a souvenir (纪念品). They steal handkerchief, they tear off buttons, and they even cut off pieces of unfortunate singer’s hair. Many singers have been forced to hide, and some who have not been so lucky as to escape have been stripped (剥) practically naked by their fans. A pop singer has to spend a lot of money on clothes because he must always look smart, or at any rate, different. He must have a luxurious (豪华的) car. And most importantly, he must always keep smiling for the benefit of his public.
1. Pop singer works very hard ___________.| A．to get attention |
| B．to stay popular |
| C．to get more money |
| D．to sell more records |
| A．lovely | B．friendly | C．boring | D．angry |
| A．smart and the same |
| B．smart and different |
| C．healthy and young |
| D．rich and strong |
| A．The Way to Become a Pop Singer |
| B．The Fans of the Pop Singer |
| C．The Pop Singers |
| D．The Success of Pop Singers |
2 . Xinjiang has long been known as a place of music and dancing.
No matter which ethnic group is living in Xinjiang, music and dancing are an inseparable part of our lives. From festive holidays to
When it comes to folk dancing in Xinjiang, the first thing people will
The moment when I
Every day I would assign my viewers
Short video and live-streams do not only
I believe so many people would like to connect with me on the Internet because they see me as a down-to-earth, relatable and real director of the
| A．weddings | B．lectures | C．meetings | D．teams |
| A．directing | B．conducting | C．composing | D．hearing |
| A．hobby | B．satisfaction | C．passion | D．friendship |
| A．meet with | B．care for | C．think about | D．find out |
| A．professionally | B．obviously | C．rapidly | D．frequently |
| A．recognized | B．felt | C．understood | D．described |
| A．outbreak | B．attendance | C．appearance | D．control |
| A．required | B．took | C．answered | D．replied |
| A．plans | B．designs | C．homework | D．creativity |
| A．emails | B．letters | C．performances | D．videos |
| A．made | B．wore | C．bought | D．changed |
| A．inspired | B．surprised | C．crazy | D．admired |
| A．compete | B．hire | C．improve | D．promote |
| A．fixing | B．repairing | C．establishing | D．digging |
| A．historical | B．cultural | C．natural | D．public |
3 . Starting in the mid-2010s, the success of streaming services like Spotify, Tencent and Apple Music led the music industry into a period of steady income growth. But the rise of streaming hasn’t just transformed the business of music; it has changed the music as well.
In 1972, the Temptations hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, winning three Grammys, with a seven-minute version of the song “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”. Before the Temptations sing a word, an instrumental introduction plays for more than four minutes. If the group were in the studio today, the title chorus (副歌) would most likely have been featured much earlier in the song. That’s because music streaming services pay artists based on the number of plays each month, and to count as a play, a user must listen to the song past the 30-second mark. If a song you’ve never heard before takes a long time to get to the hook (旋律最好的部分), there is a good chance that you may simply hit the button to go to the next song. To keep the “skip rate (跳过率)” as low as possible, musical artists are increasingly moving a song’s hook to that initial 30-second sweet spot.
Every track that is listened to for more than 30 seconds counts as a play, but whether a listener makes it all the way through a song helps to determine whether a streaming service like Spotify will recommend similar songs in the future. For a musician, getting a song on Spotify’s popular Today’s Top Hits playlist means real money. A study by researchers at the University of Minnesota and the European Joint Research Centre found that songs on the list gained an average of 20 million streams, worth up to $163,000 in royalties (版税).
As a result, according to an analysis by blogger Michael Tauberg, the average length of hit songs has dropped by more than 30 seconds since 2000, when it was over four minutes. Nearly two-thirds of the songs that achieved the number one spot in the first half of 2021 were under three minutes long.
1. Why is the Temptations mentioned in paragraph 2?| A．To explain what made a song special in the past. |
| B．To show admiration for their musical achievements. |
| C．To illustrate the structure of popular songs in the past. |
| D．To introduce the changes in song structure brought about by streaming. |
| A．The artists will receive higher royalties. |
| B．The listeners are more likely to skip it. |
| C．It will be recommended to more users. |
| D．It will be more popular among listeners. |
| A．Advance in music production technology. |
| B．The change in listeners’ musical preference. |
| C．The desire for higher streaming-based income. |
| D．Increased competition among streaming platforms. |
| A．How streaming changes the length of music. |
| B．How streaming services produce hit songs. |
| C．How streaming promotes the development of music. |
| D．How streaming influences our preference for music. |
4 . Tonal languages use pitch (音调) to distinguish words that otherwise might sound the same. In Mandarin, for instance, mă means horse whereas mã means mother. Nontonal languages like Spanish sometimes include pitch changes to suggest emotion, for example, but not to change a word’s meaning.
As a Mandarin speaker and musician, Jingxuan Liu wondered about the crossover (融合) between language and music. While studying at Duke University, Liu helped analyze the musical abilities of nearly half a million people from 203 countries. Her colleagues had launched an online game in which participants completed several musical tasks, including identifying matching melodies at different pitches and finding beat tracks that fit songs’ rhythms.
On average, native speakers of the 19 represented tonal languages were better at the melody task compared with speakers of 29 nontonal languages. And the effect wasn’t small a tonal first language strengthened melodic understanding by about half the amount that music lessons did, which was also surveyed. But tonal languages speakers tended to be worse at the rhythm task.
Humans must be choosy about what they pay attention to. Pitch patterns are quite important in tonal languages, which might explain the balancing act in music. “You’ve got a finite resource of attention, and you’ve got to divide up that somehow,” says study coauthor Courtney Hilton, a scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Prior research on language and music often compared just two tongues, usually English and Mandarin. But other cultural influences, such as Eastern and Western music styles, could have affected results. By examining a wide range of people, the new study included languages never estimated in this way and reached more generalizable conclusion.
“Our result here is showing that the language someone speaks which is an important part of culture — also shapes cognition,” Hilton says.
1. Why did Liu’s colleagues launch the online game?| A．To attract more students to do the research. |
| B．To learn about different people’s musical abilities. |
| C．To confirm the role of music in people’s language learning. |
| D．To find the difference between tonal languages and nontonal ones. |
| A．Finding beat tracks. | B．Suggesting emotion. |
| C．Distinguishing word meanings. | D．Figuring out matching melodies. |
| A．Valued. | B．Limited. | C．Special. | D．Potential. |
| A．Ground-breaking. | B．Brain-washing. | C．Inefficient. | D．Unreliable. |
The guzheng is one of the
In the 1950s and 1960s, the guzheng and a number of other traditional Chinese instruments experienced a major overhaul (改造) to expand their sound range and improve their expressiveness. The redesign of the guzheng was led by Professor Wang Xunzhi from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
The new instrument
6 . The first thing you notice at Nate Otto’s house is a 1967 Oldsmobile 98, an old car. Inside is a small, 100-year-old reed organ ( 簧风琴). It’s just a small taste of what’s in Otto’s house: self-playing, old-style musical robots called player pianos. Some sound and look as good as they did a century ago. Some are awaiting repair. Otto, a 29-year-old, has decided that it’s his job to bring player pianos back to life.
As the owner of Rum River Restoration, Otto believes he’s the only full-time player piano restorer ( 修复师) in the state of Minnesota. He specializes in Jazz Age objects that once were ubiquitous in America but now are largely forgotten except by collectors.
Otto believes in doing things the old-fashioned way and tries his best to make player piano restorations as real as possible.
Otto views the player pianos that he fixes as kinetic art ( 动态艺术) pieces. The classic player piano, or pianola, was first developed at the end of the 19th century. It was seen as a thing that helped to change American musical tastes, spreading new styles of music such as jazz to middle-class people. In their successful days, most of the pianos made in the U.S. were player pianos.
By the 1920s, however, the rise of radios and record players provided an even easier way to listen to music, hurting the sales of player pianos. The market for the instruments finally disappeared with the 1929 stock market crash ( 股票市场暴跌) and the Great Depression.
Keeping a player piano going today is a little like restoring an old car: It takes time, love, money and so on. A full rebuild of a player piano mechanism might take 100 to 150 hours of work and cost $5,000 to $8,000 on average, Otto said. But it’s worth it for some people to once again hear an instrument that brought generations of family members together to listen, sing and dance.
1. What does the underlined word “ubiquitous” in Paragraph 2 mean?| A．Natural. | B．Difficult. |
| C．Common. | D．Interesting. |
| A．It was created in the 20th century. | B．It was invented by Otto’s family. |
| C．It helped the spread of jazz. | D．It can be easily found today. |
| A．It fell out of popularity. | B．It was not known to the public. |
| C．It was first brought outside the U.S. | D．It caused the sales of record players to fall. |
| A．It was a waste of time. | B．It was worth continuing. |
| C．It was easier than restoring cars. | D．It was not helpful in supporting his life. |
7 . Before movies had voices, they had music. From silent films to today’s computer-generated ones, film composers use the score to help tell the story.
Music Manipulates (影响) Emotions
The most obvious role music plays in movies is in manipulating the audience’s emotions and bringing them the desired feelings.
Music Gets Us in the Mood
The first bars of music in a movie usually establish its style. The low sound of an organ communicates a different atmosphere than light electronica playing a quick tune.
Music Introduces People, Places and Things
Music helps viewers understand the story, a trick filmmakers picked up from operas, etc.
Movies rely on music to help establish time period, location, cultural heritage or social standing. Using Baroque-style music sets a scene in the 18th century. Back to the Future used Huey Lewis’ The Power of Love for its “present day” scenes and such songs as Earth Angel and Johnny B. Goode for its scenes in the past.
| A．Music places us in time and space. |
| B．Music doesn’t have to be real for this to be effective. |
| C．Music enables people to forget about time and space. |
| D．Composers use music to predict and connect the story. |
| E．Film composers create theme music for characters, situations or places. |
| F．The selection of certain sounds creates feelings of happiness, fear or even panic. |
| G．Film composers carefully choose instruments and sounds to set a mood for each scene. |
8 . Imagine having the opportunity to sing together with hundreds of other people while you are at home alone. You can do this in a virtual choir. Virtual choir members record themselves while they perform alone on video. These videos are uploaded onto the Internet, and then they are put together into one video that you can see online—a virtual choir. Anyone can take part in a virtual choir from anywhere—all you need is a video camera and an Internet connection. A virtual choir enables people to add their voices to those of other individuals and become part of the global community. It has proved to be a positive influence on the lives of many people.
The virtual choir was the idea of award-winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre. He fell in love with Mozart’s classical music when he sang for the university choir. Moved by this music, he said, “It was like seeing color for the first time.“ Over ten years after his graduation, Whitacre’s original compositions began to become quite popular among choirs and singers. This led to the creation of the virtual choir.
In 2009,Whitacre received a video of a girl who was singing one of his works. Inspired, he asked his fans to make videos, which he then joined together into one performance. His first virtual choir, “Lux Aurumque”, had 198 singers from 12 different countries. It has received millions of views on the Internet. Since then, the virtual choir has become a worldwide phenomenon. Whitacre’s next effort was the virtual Youth Choir for UNICEF, which was first seen on stage on 23 July 2014 in the UK. Altogether, 2,292 young people from 80 countries joined in to sing Whitacre’s song “What If”.
The virtual choir is a wonderful way for people around the world to sing with one voice and thus make the world a better place.
1. Which of the following is a virtual choir?| A．Many members performing on their own. |
| B．Hundreds of people singing together on a stage. |
| C．Many people singing online together at the same time. |
| D．Individual singing videos combined into one on the Internet. |
| A．The popularity of Whitacre’s composition. |
| B．The encouragement of Whitacre’s professor. |
| C．Whitacre’s desire of being a famous composer. |
| D．Whitacre’s love for communication with others. |
| A．He had thousands of his fans make videos. |
| B．He joined nearly two hundred videos together. |
| C．He made his first virtual choir on stage in the UK. |
| D．He asked a girl to sing his work to make it popular. |
| A．To advertise Whitacre’s music composition. |
| B．To introduce the influence of the virtual choir. |
| C．To persuade people to join Whitacre’s choir team. |
| D．To appeal to netizens to compose their own music. |
“What will we be singing for the contest this year?” a student from my high school choir,a singing team, asked eagerly.
I hesitated this moment. “I was thinking,” I said, “maybe we’ll skip the contest and just work hard on the concerts this year. ”
“NO!” the kids protested.
“We’ve got to go to contest!”
“In Class A. ”
“It’s tradition!”
This was true. Awards lined the front wall of the music room from the past successes of large, talented classes. But a change in educational policies, with an emphasis on academics, had reduced my choir to a mere thirty-two students. My section leaders had graduated or been forced to drop music classes, leaving me with young, inexperienced kids who couldn’t read music, couldn’t hold their parts, and could sing only a simple melody or song.
“Maybe we could enter Class B this year,” I suggested, knowing even that would be a near-impossible mission.
“No!” the kids screamed. “Class A!”
I shook my head. “Class A is extremely difficult. ”
“We can do it!” they shouted. “We can do it!”
“I’ll have to think about it,” I said, hoping their enthusiasm would die off in a couple of weeks.
But that didn’t happen. If anything, the class became more fixed. Every day they begged and begged and they insisted. Because I had to protect their self-pride I couldn’t tell them they weren’t good enough. My efforts to prevent their eagerness, by showing them a difficult piece of music from the contest list, simply ended with, “It’s okay, Mrs. Pliszka, we’ll get it. ”
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。
I struggled to make a decision.
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When the contest day finally arrived, the kids felt ready to take on the world!
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10 . Recent research shows that listening to music improves our health in surprising ways. If we take a music lesson or two, that musical training can help raise our IQs and even keep us sharp in old age.
As Bob Marely once put it: “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” Research at Drexel University found that music reduced pain more than standard treatments in cancer patients. Other research showed that music can ease pain in patients.
A study with healthy older adults found that those with ten or more years of musical experience scored higher on cognitive (认知的) tests than musicians with one to nine years of musical study.
A study showed that students who listened to relaxing classical music for 45 minutes before turning in slept much better than students who listened to an audiobook or did nothing different from their normal routine. If you’re having trouble sleeping, try listening to a little Mozart before bedtime.
Music Raises IQ and Academic Performance| A．Music Relaxes People |
| B．Music Helps You Sleep Better |
| C．The non-musicians scored the lowest. |
| D．Here are some amazing benefits of music. |
| E．Therefore, standard treatments are strongly advised by doctors. |
| F．But the selection needed to be either classical pieces or their choices. |
| G．Research shows that learning music predicts higher scores in children. |
