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READING COMPREHENSION

Ex.4. &Work in groups. Group A – reads about S. Joplin; group B – reads about H. Purcell. Read your extract and answer the questions after texts:

1. Where and when was he born?

2. What is known about his family?

3. What education did he get?

4. What musical instrument did he play?

5. When did his career as a musician begin? Speak about its further development.

6. What kind of music pieces did they design? Give names of the most successful ones.

7. When did he die? Is he still popular?

8. Which of the following numbers or dates relate to your person? What do they refer to?

When you have finished change your information with a partner from the other group. Write down a summary about the musician from the opposite group.

Scott Joplin

Ever since it was the musical theme in the film ‘The Sting’, there are few people who have not tapped their feet to the hit piano tune, ‘The Entertainer’ – the most famous composition of the American musician, Scott Joplin.

Scott was born in Texas (some scholars consider his birthplace to be in Louisiana) in 1868, into a poor but musical black family. His father, who was a freed slave, played the violin, and his mother played the banjo and sang. Scott played the violin and bugle but his favorite instrument was his neighbor’s piano. His father worked extra hours to buy him a battered old grand piano, and soon Scott was playing by ear negro tunes, blues and spirituals. Music flowed naturally from his fingers, and he quickly became the talk of the town.

Scott didn’t learn to read music until he was 11, when an old German music teacher spotted his talent and gave him free, formal piano lessons. He learned to play the works of such composers as Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart as well as his improvised music. Thus when he started to write music, his tunes were a wonderful mixture of classical European and African beat. This unique style was known as Ragtime, and was played everywhere in the USA in the early 1900s by both black and white musicians.

In 1882, when Scott was 14, his mother died and he left home to seek his fortune in ST. Louis. In the 1880s, St. Louis was noisy and bustling with life. The waterfront of the Mississippi River was full of gangsters, gamblers, and sailors. The sound of music was everywhere – black, white and mixed. The hot steamy nights were filled with blues, working songs, banjos, and honky tonk pianos. Scott was soon playing Ragtime piano in cheap bars on the waterfront. This was a rough, tough area of the city where arguments over girls, whisky, and money were settled with fists and guns. By 1898 Joplin had sold six pieces for the piano. Of the six, only "Original Rags", a compilation of existing melodies that he wrote collaboratively, is a ragtime piece. The other five were "Please Say You Will", "A Picture of Her Face", two marches, and a waltz. Later he produced the award-winning opera Treemonisha, although the score to his earlier ragtime opera, A Guest of Honor, is lost.

Scott grew up very fast and his musical talent continued to develop. All in all he wrote about 50 piano rags.

Scott Joplin died in 1917. Today he is the undisputed King of Ragtime, thanks to his natural ability, his unusual musical education, and the popularity of the film, The Sting

Henry Purcell

In the world of music England is supposed to be a mere province. If she produces an indifferent composer or performer, that is regarded elsewhere as perfectly normal and natural; but if foreign students of musical history have to acknowledge a British musical genius, he is considered a freak. Such a freak was Henry Purcell.

Henry Purcell’s life remains something of a mystery to us. Tradition has it that he was born in St. Anne’s Lane in Westminster, some time between June and November 20^th 1659.

Henry entered the Chapel Royal as a chorister at the age of about 6. The boys were taught the usual school subjects, including Latin. Their musical instruction they took in the lute, the violin and keyboard instruments, as well as singing and composition. The most talented practiced their gifts by writing anthems.

Purcell, who had left the choir the previous year because his voice broke, seems to have remained connected with the chapel for theoretical instruction and perhaps as a musician who was exceptionally useful when new music was wanted at short notice.

Purcell’s music now began to be published. His songs appeared in such collections as Choice Ayres – one when he was only 16 – and New Ayres and Dialogues (duets). In 1680, when he came of age, he was first commissioned to write incidental music for a play, Nathaniel Lee’s tragedy, Theodosius, or The Forest of Love. Later Purcell wrote a large number of odes,designed for royal birthdays and suchlike occasions.

All through the 1680s Purcell was particularly busy with the composition of anthems most of which were verse anthems. But there were also some full anthems, which are purely choral and as a rule written much more in accordance with the older church traditions. Henry had almost unbelievable skill in polyphony or counterpoint.

On the stage Purcell was as much at home as in the church. Many of the songs and duets he set for the production of plays by authors of the day, and were published in a periodical collection entitled The Theatre of Music.

Operas in the proper sense of the term he wrote few – some people would say only one(Dido and AEnas). Such works as King Author (1691), The Fairy Queen (1692) and The Indian Queen (1695) have been called semi-operas, because the music is intermittent and there is a great deal of dialogues.

Henry Purcell was no doubt a genius, and his creative force was in full spate when he died – probably of the consequences of a mere chill – on November 21^st 1695.

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