Admission Test GRE-Verbal Exam : Section One : Verbal

Late Victorian and modern ideas of culture are indebted to Matthew Arnold, who, largely through his
Culture and Anarchy (1869), placed the word at the center of debates about the goals of intellectual life
and humanistic society. Arnold defined culture as "the pursuit of perfection by getting to know the best
which has been thought and said." Through this knowledge, Arnold hoped, we can turn "a fresh and free
thought upon our stock notions and habits." Although Arnold helped to define the purposes of the liberal
arts curriculum in the century following the publication of Culture, three concrete forms of dissent from his
views have had considerable impact of their own. The first protests Arnold's fearful designation of
"anarchy" as culture's enemy, viewing this dichotomy simply as another version of the struggle between a
privileged power structure and radical challenges to its authority. But while Arnold certainly tried to define
the arch-the legitimizing order of value-against the anarch of existentialist democracy, he himself was
plagued in his soul by the blind arrogances of the reactionary powers in his world. The writer who
regarded the contemporary condition with such apprehension in Culture is the poet who wrote "Dover
Beach," not an ideologue rounding up all the usual modern suspects. Another form of opposition saw
Arnold's culture as a perverse perpetuation of classical and literary learning, outlook, and privileges in a
world where science had become the new arch and from which any substantively new order of thinking
must develop. At the center of the "two cultures" debate were the goals of the formal educational
curriculum, the principal vehicle through which Arnoldian culture operates. However, Arnold himself had
viewed culture as enacting its life in a much more broadly conceived set of institutions. A third form is
so-called "multiculturalism," a movement aimed largely at gaining recognition for voices and visions that
Arnoldian culture has implicitly suppressed. In educational practice, multiculturalists are interested in
deflating the imperious authority that "high culture" exercises over curriculum while bringing into play the
principle that we must learn what is representative, for we have overemphasized what is exceptional.
Though the multiculturalists' conflict with Arnoldian culture has clear affinities with the radical critique,
multiculturalism actually affirms Arnold by returning us more specifically to a tension inherent in the idea
of culture rather than to the cultureanarchy dichotomy. The social critics, defenders of science, and
multiculturalists insist that Arnold's culture is simply a device for ordering us about. Instead, however, it is
designed to register the gathering of ideological clouds on the horizon. There is no utopian motive in
Arnold's celebration of perfection. Perfection mattered to Arnold as the only background against which we
could form a just image of our actual circumstances, just as we can conceive finer sunsets and unheard
melodies.
It can be inferred from the passage that the two-cultures debate

• A. influenced Arnold's thinking about culture
• B. led to a schizophrenic educational system
• C. emerged as a reaction to the multiculturalist movement
• D. developed after 1869
• E. was carried on by American as well as European scientists

DRUGGIST : PHARMACY

• A. waiter: restaurant
• B. ballerina: tutu
• C. hand: glove
• D. coach: team
• E. child: father

The first person in the group starts off by naming anything that is geographical. It could be a city, state,
country, river, lake, or any proper geographical term. For example, the person might say,"Boston." The
second person has ten seconds to think of how the word ends and come up with another geographical
term starting with that letter. The second participant might say, "Norway," since the geographical term has
to start with "N." The third person would have to choose a word beginning with " Y." If a player fails to think
of a correct answer within the time limit, that player is out of the game. The last person to survive is the
champion.
Before you choose your own word, think about how-

• A. the last word starts
• B. long the last word is
• C. smart you are
• D. the spelling of the first word
• E. the last word ends

Considering today's high divorce rate and growing number of single-parent households, it is _______ that
the most Americans still adhere to the _______ belief in the importance of an intact nuclear family.

• A. surprising . . superficial
• B. illuminating . . controversial
• C. interesting . . popular
• D. astonishing . . traditional
• E. encouraging . . obsolete

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