GMAT Question of the Day : Reading Comprehension
The career of trumpeter Miles Davis was one of the most astonishingly productive that jazz music has ever seen. Yet his genius has never received its due. The impatience and artistic restlessness that characterized his work spawned one stylistic turn after another and made Davis anathema to many critics, who deplored his abandonment first of [...]
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Written by Take GMAT Team on May 10th, 2008 with
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The career of trumpeter Miles Davis was one of the most astonishingly productive that jazz music has ever seen. Yet his genius has never received its due. The impatience and artistic restlessness that characterized his work spawned one stylistic turn after another and made Davis anathema to many critics, who deplored his abandonment first of bebop and then of ?cool? acoustic jazz for ever more innovative sounds.
Having begun his career studying bebop, Davis pulled the first of many stylistic surprises when, in 1948, he became a member of an impromptu musical think tank that gathered in a New York City apartment. The work of this group not only slowed down tempos and featured ensemble playing as much as or even more than solos?in direct reaction to bebop?it also became the seedbed for the ?West Coast cool? jazz style.
In what would become a characteristic zigzag, Davis didn?t follow up on these innovations himself. Instead, in the late 1950s he formed a new band that broke free from jazz?s restrictive pattern of chord changes. Soloists could determine the shapes of their melodies without referring back to the same unvarying repetition of chords. In this period, Davis attempted to join jazz phrasings, harmonies, and tonal qualities with a unified and integrated sound similar to that of a classical orchestral piece: in his recordings the rhythms, no matter how jazzlike, are always understated, and the instrumental voicings seem muted.
Davis?s recordings from the late 1960s signal that, once again, his direction was changing. On Filles de Kilimanjaro, Davis?s request that keyboardist Herbie Hancock play electric rather than acoustic piano caused consternation among jazz purists of the time. Other albums featured rock-style beats, heavily electronic instrumentation, a loose improvisational attack and a growing use of studio editing to create jagged soundscapes. By 1969 Davis?s typical studio procedure was to have musicians improvise from a base script of material and then to build finished pieces out of tape, like a movie director. Rock groups had pioneered the process; to jazz lovers, raised on the ideal of live improvisation, that approach was a violation of the premise that recordings should simply document the musicians? thought processes in real time. Davis again became the target of fierce polemics by purist jazz critics, who have continued to belittle his contributions to jazz.
What probably underlies the intensity of the reactions against Davis is fear of the broadening of possibilities that he exemplified. Ironically, he was simply doing what jazz explorers have always done: reaching for something new that was his own. But because his career endured, because he didn?t die young or record only sporadically, and because he refused to dwell in whatever niche he had previously carved out, critics find it difficult to definitively rank Davis in the aesthetic hierarchy to which they cling.
1) Which one of the following best states the main point the passage?
(A) Because the career of Miles Davis was characterized by frequent shifts in styles, he never fulfilled his musical potential.
(B) Because the career of Miles Davis does not fit neatly into their preconceptions about the life and music of jazz musicians, jazz critics have not accorded him the appreciation he deserves.
(C) Because the career of Miles Davis was unusually long and productive, he never received the popular acclaim generally reserved for artists with more tragic life histories.
(D) The long and productive career of Miles Davis spawned most of the major stylistic changes affecting twentieth-century jazz.
(E) Miles Davis? versatility and openness have inspired the admiration of most jazz critics.
2) According to the passage, which one of the following true of the ?West Coast cool? jazz style?
(A) It was popularized by Miles Davis.
(B) It was characterized by a unified and integrated sound.
(C) It was played primarily by large ensembles.
(D) It introduced a wide variety of chord change patterns.
(E) It grew out of innovations developed in New York City.
3) The passage suggests which one of the following about the kind of jazz played by Miles Davis prior to 1948?
(A) It was characterized by rapid tempos and an emphasis on solo playing.
(B) It equally balanced ensemble and solo playing.
(C) It was a reaction against more restrictive jazz styles.
(D) It is regarded by purist jazz critics as the only authentic jazz style.
(E) It was played primarily in New York City jazz clubs.
4) Which one of the following best describes the author?s attitude toward Miles Davis? music?
(A) uneasy ambivalence
(B) cautious neutrality
(C) grudging respect
(D) moderate commendation
(E) appreciative advocacy
5) Which one of the following creative processes is most similar to Miles Davis? typical studio procedure of the late 1960s, as described in the fourth paragraph of the passage?
(A) The producer of a television comedy show suggests a setting and general topic for a comedy sketch and then lets the comedians write their own script.
(B) An actor digresses from the written script and improvises during a monologue in order to introduce a feeling of spontaneity to the performance.
(C) A conductor rehearses each section of the orchestra separately before assembling them to rehearse the entire piece together.
(D) An artist has several photographers take pictures pertaining to a certain assigned theme and then assembles them into a pictorial collage.
(E) A teacher has each student in a writing class write an essay on an assigned topic and then submits the best essays to be considered for publication in a journal.
6) Which one of the following, if true, would most undermine the author?s explanation for the way Miles Davis is regarded by jazz critics?
(A) Many jazz musicians who specialize in improvisational playing are greatly admired by jazz critics.
(B) Many jazz musicians whose careers have been characterized by several radical changes in style are greatly admired by jazz critics.
(C) Several jazz musicians who perform exclusively on electronic instruments are very highly regarded by jazz critics.
(D) The jazz innovators who are held in the highest regard by jazz critics had brief yet brilliant careers.
(E) Jazz critics are known to have a higher regard for musicality than for mere technical virtuosity.
Written by Take GMAT Team on May 10th, 2008 with
8 comments.
Read more articles on GMAT Question of the Day and GMAT Reading Comprehension and GMAT Verbal.
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#1. July 9th, 2006, at 11:26 AM.
1. B
2. E
3. A
4. E
5. A
6. B