Short Passages Comprehension - XV

Please study carefully the comprehension given below. The passages is followed by a set of questions choose the best answer to each question.

A jolly musicologist by the entirely unobjectionable name of Henry Pleasants has written a book called ‘The Agony of Modern Music’. That word ‘Agony’ is right. Much of it is just not written down but improvised. Much of what passes for music of these times is raucous noise and the excuse for persisting with it is that every common youngster understands and likes it.
The pleasant fellow concedes that ‘serious’ music is virtually dead. This may be dismissed as yet another pleasantry which the undirected young indulge in. Paul Hindesmith, possibly one the last of the classical giants. Once said that some composers tended to develop an oversublimated technique “which produces images of emotions that are far removed from any emotional experience a relatively normal human being ever has.
That is just the point. High art can never be totally democratised. There is a barrier between the egghead and the hoipolloi and it would be lazy idealism to ignore this. When Bach played and Beethoven roared, who was then the gentleman?
The pity of it is that while talking music to the masses, all known rules are broken and improvisation becomes king. That, roughly speaking is how jazz was born; by dropping discipline, inspiration, deep personal emotions and every element of creative art and adopting improvisation as its main rationale. Why, they even tried to smuggle bits of jazz into serious music so that the composer could somehow survive.
Now they are going one step further : learn it by ear, don’t write down the stuff, make it up as you go along and hope, by these shoddy techniques, that everyone present will applaud and thus, provide the composer and the performers with their daily bread.

Ques 1. The author uses the word ‘improvisation’ to suggest :
(a) making the original more sublime
(b) tampering with the original
(c) rendering the original more popular
(d) simplifying the original


Ques 2. According to the author high art cannot be democratised because :
(a) high art is oversublimated
(b) people differ in their emotional experience
(c) masses cannot be expected to appreciate what only the few intelligent can
(d) democratising necessarily involves improvisation

Ques 3. They tried to introduce bits of jazz in serious music so that :
(a) music might survive
(b) the masses could take to serious music
(c) the new composers might survive
(d) music is democratised

Ques 4. Which of the following words can best replace the word raucous in the paragraph?
(a) shrill
(b) soothing
(c) pleasant
(d) popular

Ques 5. Speaking of the techniques of some composers Paul Hindesmith said that they evoked image of emotions:
(a) not experienced by normal people
(b) felt only by subnormal people
(c) never felt by masses
(d) not experienced by eggheads

Answers :
(1) (b), (2) (b), (3) (c), (4) (a), (5) (a).