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  3. Mathematical ability and musical ability may not seem on the surface to be connected, but people who have researched the subject

Mathematical ability and musical ability may not seem on the surface to be connected, but people who have researched the subject

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问题    Mathematical ability and musical ability may not seem on the surface to be connected, but people who have researched the subject and studied the brain say that they are. Three quarters of the bright but speech-delayed children in the group I studied had a close relative who was an engineer, mathematician or scientist, and four fifths had a close relative who played a musical instrument. The children themselves usually took readily to math and other analytical subjects and to music.
   Black, white and Asian children in this group show the same patterns. However, it is clear that blacks have been greatly overrepresented in the development of American popular music and greatly underrepresented in such fields as mathematics, science and engineering.
   If the abilities required in analytical fields and in music are so closely related, how can there be this great discrepancy? One reason is that the development of mathematical and other such abilities requires years of formal schooling, while certain musical talents can be developed with little or no formal training, as has happened with a number of well-known black musicians.
   It is precisely in those kinds of music where one can acquire great skill without formal training that blacks have excelled popular music rather than classical music, piano rather than violin, blues rather than opera. This is readily understandable, given that most blacks, for most of American history, have not had either the money or the leisure for long years of formal study in music.
   Blacks have not merely held their own in American popular music. They have played a disproportionately large role in the development of jazz, both traditional and modem. A long string of names comes to mind—Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin, W.C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker... and so on.
   None of this indicates any special innate ability of blacks in music. On the contrary, it is perfectly consistent with blacks having no more such inborn ability than anyone else, but being limited to being able to express such ability in narrower channels than others who have had the money, the time and the formal education to spread out over a wider range of music, as well as into mathematics, science and engineering.
What do we know about opera from the passage?
选项 A、It is disliked by blacks.
B、It requires formal training.
C、It is more difficult to learn than classical music.
D、It is very popular among rich people.
答案B
解析 推断题。根据关键词opera定位到原文第四段It is precisely in those kinds of music where one can acquire great skill without formal training that blacks have excelled popular music rather than classical music，piano rather than violin，blues rather than opera．可知，对于黑人而言不需要经过正规训练就可以获得极好的技能的音乐领域包括流行音乐、钢琴和蓝调音乐，所以歌剧属于需要经过正规学习的领域。因此，正确答案是B。
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