High-Q | English פסיכומטרי

Unit 4

Text I

Scarcely any other composer of the period around 1800 so clearly reacted to the political events of his time, took up so committed a position, and concerned himself so intensively with the philosophical-political ideas of his contemporaries as did Beethoven. Much of this found its way into his music. These factors, which may in the wider sense be described as “political”, seldom came so clearly to the fore as they did in the “Eroica”. 5 With the restoration of the old regimes in 1815, there was a tendency to play down this “political” element in Beethoven's music, and after the suppression of the 1848 uprisings it was almost totally forgotten. On the one hand the significance formerly attached to his musical language was no longer clearly understood, and on the other hand after the failure of the Revolution in 1848, there began a political interpretation of 10 Beethoven's music in line with the tendencies of the reaction which ensued. In the first stage of this process Beethoven's music was deprived of its force and lifted out of the contemporary world to “classical” heights. This is the stage of idealistic interpretation. Richard Wagner, who as a young man had been a “Beethovenian”, attacked in 1865 the “hypocrisy of the classicist cult”. Then in 1870 in a celebrated paper on Beethoven he put 15 forward concepts associated with the second stage of the process of interpretation in terms of political function: that of nationalism. In the new German empire Beethoven became a national figure of the highest standing, his music a symbol of German virtues. Interpretations of this kind continued to appear without a break during the early part of the 20th century, and they came to full and frightful bloom during the years of Nazi rule. 20

13. The best title for this text could be -

(1) Some Political Aspects of Beethoven’s Music (2) The Appreciation of Beethoven’s Music by his Contemporaries (3) A Short Account of the Interpretation of Beethoven’s Music (4) Why Beethoven’s Music Was Promoted By the Nazi Regime

הטקסט בוחן פנים שונים של הקישור בין המוסיקה של בטהובן לפוליטיקה.

14. The word “reacted” (line 1) means -

(1) objected (2) responded (3) conformed (4) adhered

משמעות המילה היא

הגיב.

152

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