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  3. Music is a mystery. It is unique to the human race: no other species produces elaborate sound for no particular reason. It has b

Music is a mystery. It is unique to the human race: no other species produces elaborate sound for no particular reason. It has b

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问题    Music is a mystery. It is unique to the human race: no other species produces elaborate sound for no particular reason. It has been, and remains, part of every known civilization on Earth. Lengths of bone fashioned into flutes were in use 40,000 years ago. And it engages people’s attention more comprehensively than almost anything else: scans show that when people listen to music, virtually every area of their brain becomes more active.
   Yet it serves no obvious adaptive purpose. Charles Darwin, in The Descent of Man, noted that "neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life." Then, what is the point of music. Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist, has called music "auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our mental faculties." If it vanished from our species, he said, "the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged." Others have argued that, on the contrary, music, along with art and literature, is part of what makes people human; its absence would have a brutalizing effect.
   Philip Ball, a British science writer and an avid music enthusiast, comes down somewhere in the middle. He says that music is ingrained in our auditory, cognitive and motor functions. We have a music instinct as much as a language instinct, and could not rid ourselves of it. He goes through each component of music to explain how and why it works, using plentiful examples drawn from a refreshingly wide range of different kinds of music, from Bach to the Beatles, and from nursery rhymes to jazz.
   His basic message is encouraging and uplifting: people know much more about music than they think. They start picking up the rules from the day they are bom, perhaps even before, by hearing it all around them. Very young children can tell if a tune or harmony is not quite right and most adults can differentiate between kinds of music even if they have had no training.
   Music is completely sui generis. It should not tell a non-musical story; the listener will decode it for himself. Many, perhaps most, people have experienced a sudden rush of emotion on hearing a particular piece of music; a thrill or chill, a sense of excitement or exhilaration, a feeling of being swept away by it. They may even be moved to tears, without being able to tell why. Musical analysts have tried hard to find out how this happens, but with little success. Perhaps some mysteries are best preserved.
The saying "sui generis" (Para. 5) is closest in meaning to _____.
选项 A、unique
B、touching
C、overwhelming
D、mysterious
答案A
解析 词语理解题。文章末段讲人们可以自我理解音乐中的内涵，音乐能够引发人们强烈的情感反应以及至今仍有奥秘等待解答。这些都说明了音乐的独特性，因而选A项。
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考研英语二

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