GRE-Verbal最も有効な質問と解答で勉強

The village of Vestmannaeyjar, in the far northern country of Iceland, is as bright and clean and up-to-date
as any American or Canadian suburb. It is located on the island of Heimaey, just off the mainland. One
January night in 1973, however, householders were shocked from their sleep. In some backyards red-hot
liquid was spurting from the ground.
Flaming "skyrockets" shot up and over the houses. The island's volcano, Helgafell, silent for seven
thousand years, was violently erupting! Luckily, the island's fishing fleet was in port, and within twenty-four
hours almost everyone was ferried to the mainland. But then the agony of the island began in earnest. As
in a nightmare, fountains of burning lava spurted three hundred feet high. Black, baseball-size cinders
rained down. An evilsmelling, eye-burning, throat-searing cloud of smoke and gas erupted into the air,
and a river of lava flowed down the mountain. The constant shriek of escaping steam was punctuated by
ear-splitting explosions. As time went on, the once pleasant village of Vestmannaeyjar took on a weird
aspect. Its street lamps still burning against the long Arctic night, the town lay under a thick blanket of
cinders. All that could be seen above the ten-foot black drifts were the tips of street signs. Some houses
had collapsed under the weight of cinders; others had burst into flames as the heat ignited their oil storage
tanks. Lighting the whole lurid scene, fire continued to shoot from the mouth of the looming volcano. The
eruption continued for six months. Scientists and reporters arrived from around the world to observe the
awesome natural event. But the town did not die that easily. In July, when the eruption ceased, the people
of Heimaey Island returned to assess the chances of rebuilding their homes and lives. They found tons of
ash covering the ground. The Icelanders are a tough people, however, accustomed to the strange and
violent nature of their Arctic land. They dug out their homes. They even used the cinders to build new
roads and airport runways. Now the new homes of Heimaey are warmed from water pipes heated by
molten lava.
The village is located on the island of-

• A. Heimma
• B. Helgafell
• C. Vestmannaeyjar
• D. Heimaey
• E. Hebrides

Marie Curie was one of the most accomplished scientists in history. Together with her husband, Pierre,
she discovered radium, an element widely used for treating cancer, and studied uranium and other
radioactive substances. Pierre and Marie's amicable collaboration later helped to unlock the secrets of the
atom. Marie was born in 1867 in Warsaw, Poland, where her father was a professor of physics. At the
early age, she displayed a brilliant mind and a blithe personality. Her great exuberance for learning
prompted her to continue with her studies after high school. She became disgruntled, however, when she
learned that the university in Warsaw was closed to women.
Determined to receive a higher education, she defiantly left Poland and in 1891 entered the Sorbonne, a
French university, where she earned her master's degree and doctorate in physics. Marie was fortunate to
have studied at the Sorbonne with some of the greatest scientists of her day, one of whom was Pierre
Curie. Marie and Pierre were married in 1895 and spent many productive years working together in the
physics laboratory. A short time after they discovered radium, Pierre was killed by a horse-drawn wagon
in
1 906. Marie was stunned by this horrible misfortune and endured heartbreaking anguish. espondently she
recalled their close relationship and the joy that they had shared in scientific research. The fact that she
had two young daughters to raise by herself greatly increased her distress. Curie's feeling of desolation
finally began to fade when she was asked to succeed her husband as a physics professor at the
Sorbonne. She was the first woman to be given a professorship at the world-famous university. In 1911
she received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for isolating radium. Although Marie Curie eventually suffered a
fatal illness from her long exposure to radium, she never became disillusioned about her work.
Regardless of the consequences, she had dedicated herself to science and to revealing the mysteries of
the physical world.
Marie had a bright mind and a __personality.

• A. strong
• B. strange
• C. humorous
• D. envious
• E. lighthearted

VAGARY:

• A. full disclosure
• B. explicitness
• C. essential element
• D. foreseeable event
• E. impartiality

The origin of the attempt to distinguish early from modern music and to establish the canons of
performance practice for each lies in the eighteenth century. In the first half of that century, when
Telemann and Bach ran the collegium musicum in Leipzig, Germany, they performed their own and other
modern music. In the German universities of the early twentieth century, however, the reconstituted
collegium musicum devoted itself to performing music from the centuries before the beginning of the
"standard repertory," by which was understood music from before the time of Bach and Handel. Alongside
this modern collegium musicum, German musicologists developed the historical sub-discipline known as
"performance practice," which included the deciphering of obsolete musical notation and its transcription
into modern notation, the study of obsolete instruments, and the re-establishment of lost oral traditions
associated with those forgotten repertories. The cutoff date for this study was understood to be around
1 750, the year of Bach's death, since the music of Bach, Handel, Telemann and their contemporaries did
call for obsolete instruments and voices and unannotated performing traditions-for instance, the
spontaneous realization of vocal and instrumental melodic ornamentation. Furthermore, with a few
exceptions, late baroque music had ceased to be performed for nearly a century, and the orally
transmitted performing traditions associated with it were forgotten as a result. In contrast, the notation in
the music of Haydn and Mozart from the second half of the eighteenth century was more complete than in
the earlier styles, and the instruments seemed familiar, so no "special" knowledge appeared necessary.
Also, the music of Haydn and Mozart, having never ceased to be performed, had maintained some kind of
oral tradition of performance practice. Beginning around 1960, however, early-music performers began to
encroach upon the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Why? Scholars studying performance
practice had discovered that the living oral traditions associated with the Viennese classics frequently
could not be traced to the eighteenth century and that there were nearly as many performance mysteries
to solve for music after 1750 as for earlier repertories. Furthermore, more and more young singers and
instrumentalists became attracted to early music, and as many of them graduated from student- amateur
to professional status, the technical level of early-music performances took a giant leap forward. As
professional early-music groups, building on these developments, expanded their repertories to include
later music, the mainstream protested vehemently. The differences between the two camps extended
beyond the question of which instruments to use to the more critical matter of style and delivery. At the
heart of their disagreement is whether historical knowledge about performing traditions is a prerequisite
for proper interpretation of music or whether it merely creates an obstacle to inspired musical tradition.
Which of the following is the most appropriate title for the passage?

• A. "Competing Views on the Necessity of Historical Knowledge for Inspired Musical Tradition"
• B. "Performance Practice and New Interpretations of the Viennese Classics"
• C. "Unannotated Performing Traditions of the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries"
• D. "How Far Should Early Music Extend?"
• E. "Performance Practice: The Legacy of the German Collegium Musicum"

The _______ that computers are _______ educational tools has led many parents to believe that children
don't need to be monitored when using the computer, as they do when watching television.

• A. belief . . sophisticated
• B. hypothesis . . powerful
• C. myth . . inimical
• D. argument . . effective
• E. misconception . . benign