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GRE Exam
Robert Philip argues that the advent of recorded music has directed performance style into a search for greater precision and perfection, with a consequent loss of spontaneity and warmth. Various expressive devices once common in classical music have been almost outlawed, including portamento (sliding from one note to another on a stringed instrument), playing the piano with the hands not quite synchronized, and flexibility of tempo. Philip fully documents these changes. However, other forces independent of recording were also at work. For example, the freedom of tempo so valued by Philip was. in its time, both a necessary expedient and disastrously abused. Recording alone did not cause the reaction against it. although hearing a particularly unintelligent use of it on disc may have reinforced the prejudice.
Hie author would most likely agree with which of the following statements about the "devices"?
The term "ragtime opera" was used frequently m the first years of the twentieth century, but more often than not its use was (i)_________. The very idea of "ragtime opera" was viewed as lii)_________: opera was regarded as the highest form of musical art; ragtime was at the opposite pole.
Business leaders who prefer centralized, pyramidal managerial structures to diversity and competition tend to (i)_________dissent in the decision-making process. But this insistence on (ii)_________can be dangerous in that it deprives decision makers of a full range of alternatives.