大学英语视听说2Unit1听力原文

Unit1

Lead-in

1. It's hard to come to a definite conclusion. It depends. I think this has something to do with people's moods and personalities. A person in high spirits often enjoys quick-tempo music. When one feels blue, the choice is more likely to be slow, sad music to fit that mood. It seems to me that race may also play a role in our choice of music. Asians, like Chinese, Japanese and Koreans often enjoy slow melodies. The famous \"Liang Zhu\point. When we move westward, to India and Europe, for example, we can easily observe the difference, for the musical rhythm there suddenly accelerates, and the music becomes more lively and upbeat.

2. Personally, I prefer pop music, though I have no objection to classical music. Classical music composed by such great musicians as Beethoven and Mozart is indeed brilliant, but few people can really appreciate it, let alone play or sing it. Pop music is different. As the name suggests, it is popular with all people. We can easily understand pop songs. What's more, anyone can sing pop songs without much difficulty since they require little professional training. Thus, the distance between the singer on the stage and the audience narrows. From time to time, the singer walks down to shake hands with fans, while the latter often sing along with their idols.

3. Generally speaking, I think so. At least this is true of most people. Mothers

tend to hum a soothing lullaby instead of a military march to their babies. At a sports meeting, the music is often fast and vigorous. Seldom is a painfully slow serenade played. With respect to the issue of efficiency, I'm afraid it is rather controversial. Quite a few students prefer to listen to a Walkman or a Diskman while they are doing their homework. On the other hand, many demand absolute silence before they can concentrate on their academic work.

4. I like to sing at a karaoke bar to relax. To my mind, this has at least two advantages. First, I can sing whatever I like to the accompaniment of the music from the TV. Second, after singing loudly or even screaming for a while, I often feel relaxed and forget my worries.

Listening In

Encore!

As soon as the singer completed the song, the audience cried, \"Encore! Encore!\" The singer was delighted and sang the song again. She couldn't believe it when the audience shouted for her to sing it again. The cycle of shouts and songs was repeated ten more times. The singer was overjoyed with the response from the audience. She thanked them and asked them why they were so much interested in hearing the same song again and again. One of the people in the audience replied, \"We wanted you to improve it; now it is much better.\"

The Carpenters

W: They play \"Yesterday Once More\" all the time on the campus radio. Do you like it?

M: I do. I never get tired of it. I like the Carpenters. Their voices are so beautiful and clear. I guess that's why they're so popular.

W: I like the way their voices blend. There were just two of them, brother and sister, right?

M: Yes, Richard and Karen I think they were. She died I think.

W: Yes, anorexia. It is hard to believe that someone so beautiful would starve herself to death.

M: It's a problem everywhere in the world, including China, I'm afraid. Women worry too much about their appearances, and are so crazy about losing weight.

W: Well, let's go for lunch before we go to the concert

Mozart

Mozart was a fascinating musician and composer whose fame continues to grow more than two centuries after his death. He was born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1756. Before the age of four, he had shown great musical talent. His father then decided to let him start taking harpsichord lessons. The boy's reputation as a musical talent grew fast. At five, he was composing music. From that time on,

Mozart was performing in concerts and writing music. By his early teens, he had mastered the piano, violin and harpsichord, and was writing symphonies and operas. His first major opera was performed in Milan in 1770, when he was only fourteen. At fifteen, Mozart became the conductor for an orchestra in Salzburg. In 1781, he left for Vienna, where he was in great demand as both a performer and a composition teacher. His first opera was a success. But life was not easy because he was a poor businessman, and his finances were always in a bad state. His music from the next decade was not very popular, and he eventually fell back on his teaching jobs for a living. In 1788 he stopped performing in public, preferring only to compose. He died in 1791 at the age of thirty-five. Although he lived only a short life, he composed over 600 works.

Let’s Talk

The Origin of the Song \"Happy Birthday to You\"

The story of the song \"Happy Birthday to You\" began as a sweet one, but later became bitter. Two sisters, Mildred Hill, a teacher at a kindergarten, and Dr. Patty Hill, the principal of the same school, wrote a song together for the children, entitled \"Good Morning to All\". When Mildred combined her musical talents with her sister's knowledge in the area of kindergarten education, \"Good Morning to All\" was sure to be a success. The sisters published the song in a collection entitled \"Song Stories of the Kindergarten\" in 13. Thirty-one years later, after Dr. Patty Hill became the head of the Department of Kindergarten Education at Columbia University's Teachers College, a gentleman by the name of Robert Coleman

published the song, without the sisters' permission. He added a second part, which is the familiar \"Happy Birthday to You\". Mr. Coleman's addition of the second part made the song popular and, finally, the sisters' original first part disappeared. \"Happy Birthday to You\" had altogether replaced the sisters' original song \"Good Morning to All\". In 1916 Patty took legal action against Mr. Coleman. In court, she succeeded in proving that they were the real owners of the song.

Further Listening and Speaking

Karaoke

Dalin: It's Mike's birthday on Friday, so a bunch of us are going to go to the karaoke bar. Would you like to come with us?

Laura: Karaoke bar? You have a special place just for singing? In America, bars sometimes have a karaoke night where the customers can sing a song, but we haven't special karaoke bars!

Dalin: Really? In China, karaoke is a very popular way for friends to spend time together. We can select the music that our group enjoys. We mostly sing pop songs.

Laura: Do you sing individually or in groups? Singing is not a very in thing, so I don't sing very well.

Dalin: I'm surprised that you don't sing much in America. So many really cool groups come from there.

Laura: Yeah, music is popular, but mostly we just listen to it.

Dalin: If you just listen to it, you miss out on a lot of fun.

Laura: Well, we sometimes dance to the music.

When was music first sent down a telephone line?

So you think downloading music from the Internet through a phone line is a really cool modern thing? Not so. In 16, Thaddeus Cahill filed a patent on the instrument for transmitting music electronically, and until 1914 he sent music signals down telephone lines with this instrument. And he wasn't even the first. Elisha Gray transmitted music over a telephone line in 1876, which was the same year the telephone was invented. Gray invented the first electronic music instrument in 1874, calling it the \"Musical Telegraph\". Alexander Graham Bell also designed an experimental \"Electric Harp\" for speech to be transmitted over a telephone line using technology similar to Gray's. Bell was a speech teacher for the deaf. In 1879, he created an instrument to measure hearing loss. That is why the degrees of loudness came to be measured in bels or decibels.