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  3. What Makes Sound Beautiful? (69)Beauty is certainly mor

What Makes Sound Beautiful? (69)Beauty is certainly mor

游客2024-08-20  43
问题                     What Makes Sound Beautiful?
     (69)Beauty is certainly more than skin-deep. However you might define it, beauty extends far beyond the visual to that which pleases other senses and even the mind. The most important a-mong these other routes for the observation of beauty is the sense of hearing. Music is routinely recognized as beautiful. So are other sounds, like the whispering of wind through pines or the gentle purring of a cat.

    Just as philosophers and scientists have struggled to define visual beauty, they have attempted to analyze the appeal of pleasant sounds as well. Ultimately, sonic(声音的)beauty is in the ear of the beholder. Research and intuition can, however, suggest reasons why one person considers a musical piece gorgeous while another considers it a bucketful of noise.
    The existence of noise is a clue in itself. A conventional definition of noise would include adjectives like unwanted, annoying, disorganized, or meaningless. Sounds that have no discernible(可识别的)pattern to them or that intrude on mental order are not generally considered beautiful. The relationship of sound to the situation is crucial. An assertive orchestral piece like Copland’s "Fanfare for the Common Man" could be strikingly beautiful at a Fourth of July celebration yet decidedly annoying when it blares from someone else’s apartment while you are trying to concentrate on a difficult task.
    But it is the quest to discover the role of pattern that takes us beyond such obvious intuitive judgments about the beauty of sound. In the 1930s, a mathematician named George Birkhoff proposed formulas that would place a given work of art on a numerical aesthetic(审美的)scale. More beautiful art would score higher than less beautiful art. He proposed different specifies for analyzing painting, or geometric figures, or poetry, or music, but his central formula is M =0 / C. The symbol M stands for beauty, 0 for organization, and C for complexity.(70)In other words, a work of music that is very well organized and not very complicated scores higher than a work with similarly good organization but a high degree of complexity. Organization is good, complexity is bad.
    This aspect of Birkhoffs approach clearly oversimplifies the case. Organization and complexity do contribute to the perceived beauty of a musical piece, but not as mere opposites. They entwine and influence the piece in combination with each other and with other factors. To illustrate this, let’s consider one of those other factors, the musical experience and knowledge that a listener brings to a piece of music.
    Music critics are well-known for disliking works that become immensely popular and for praising material that the general public finds boring or even unpleasant. Why should this disparity be so common? Or why should a 40-year-old who loved bouncy pop music during his teen years now find it hard to tolerate his own teenage children’s taste in music?
    The answers probably involve a certain ideal level of complexity, a point where the complexity of a piece and the way it is organized are matched perfectly with a listener’s knowledge and experience. The work presents enough of a challenge so that the listener can enjoy thinking about and deciphering(解读)its patterns, but it is not so impossibly complex that the listener remains confused. A work that falls far below this ideal level is too simple or too familiar to be interesting. A work that reaches far above the ideal levels is frustrating and dissatisfying. [br] What level of complexity is ideal to a musical piece?
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答案 The ideal level of complexity，a point where the complexity of a piece and the way it is organized are matched perfectly with a listener’s knowledge and experience．
解析 (文章最后一段提到The answers probably involve a certain ideal level of complexity，a pointwhere the complexity of a piece and the way it is organized are matched perfectly with alistener’s knowledge and experience．)
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