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OFFICIAL ACT Form 2176CPRE · Annual 2024

Reading

36 questions ~9 min recommended
⏱ 00:00
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Even when Luc was busy and could not talk he always made me welcome and allowed me to wander around the inner sanctum of the back room on my own. When things were quieter, he seemed glad of the company and would tell me about the pianos that had just arrived. Our talks made real for me one of his fundamental beliefs, that each and every piano had completely individual characteristics, even if of the same manufacturer and age1. Joseph Roisman, the distinguished first violinist of the Budapest String Quartet, seemed to be content to give up his beloved Lorenzo Storioni when he agreed to sell it to me after the Quartet retired. But when I finally met with him, he had second thoughts. "Steinhardt," he said to me plaintively, "I'll sell the violin to you some day, but for now I'm enjoying playing chamber music with my friends every Friday night." And that is exactly what he did until his death a year or two later. Lifschey and Roisman dealt with retirement in different ways, but their stories made me wonder about not only what I'll do with my violin if and when I retire, but also about the very nature of a musician's day-to-day, year-to-year relationship with his instrument. I began playing violin when I was six years old2, now I'm seventy-six. It has been an integral part of my life for the last seven decades. Does that make the violin my very close friend? Well, yes. Sometimes. The violin obviously can't speak with words, but when I ask something of it, the instrument can respond with an astonishing range of substance and emotion. There are other moments, however, when the violin stubbornly refuses to do my bidding—when it only reluctantly plays in tune, or makes the sound I want, or delivers the music's essence for which I strive. Then I have to cajole, bargain or adjust3 to its every whim. Some friend; more like an adversary, you might say. Or is the violin my partner? A woman once went backstage to congratulate the great violinist Jascha Heifetz after a concert. "What a wonderful sound your violin has, Mr. Heifetz!" she exclaimed. Heifetz leaned over his violin that lay in its open case, listened intently for a moment, and said, "Funny, I don't hear a thing." My violin also lies mute in its case without me—but, on the other hand, I stand mute on the concert stage without it.

It was never Kenney Holmes's intention to become a wedding singer. The grandson of West Indian immigrants, Holmes was raised in Gordon Heights, on Long Island, in what he calls "a small black community founded by like-minded thinkers," families of immigrants and Southern blacks who, as Holmes says, "didn't come here to fool around" and who handed down to their children their own keen sense of ambition. "We grew up in that kind of atmosphere," he says, "of positive thinking, of getting educated, whether or not you had a degree." Holmes was well-suited for the role of event bandleader. His production skills helped him control his band's sound, and his familiarity with country, big-band and classical music made him popular with audiences who wanted, as he says, "a tango or a Viennese waltz," as well as Wilson Pickett. Like any American boy in the 1950s and '60s, he was fascinated with popular music: He listened to the area's one radio station, which "mostly played Sinatra"; sometimes in the evenings, with a coat hanger stuck into the top of his portable radio, he could pick up a faint signal from WWRL, a rhythm and blues station in New York City. When he was a teenager, his brother brought home a guitar. "I was 16, it was a Sunday night," he says. "I sat down and played 'I Can't Get No Satisfaction.' I was addicted." While he was not a virtuoso, he was, he discovered, good at making money at it. He learned three songs—"Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones, "And I Love Her" by the Beatles, and "Shotgun" by Junior Walker and the All Stars—and formed a band. "We went out and sold it," he says. "We could play those three songs all night. We got pretty popular out on the island, playing battle of the bands, fire halls, high school proms, for $10 a night." Still, a career as a musician was not what he, or his family, had had in mind. Over the next few years, he says: "I did everything I could not to be a guitar player. I went to college not to be a guitar player." Thinking he would be a psychiatrist, he took pre-med classes but didn't complete a degree. Along the way, he continued playing nightclubs and parties.

1. In Passage A, the parenthetical information in line 19 and lines 21–23 mainly serves to:

2. Based on the assertion in Passage A that Luc’s 'attitude about how people treated their pianos seemed to mirror his philosophy of life' (lines 25–26), which of the following statements would most nearly describe Luc’s philosophy of life?

3. As it is used in line 32, the phrase bit into most nearly means:

4. In the third paragraph of Passage B (lines 61–65), the author most clearly shifts from:

5. In Passage B, the statement that Lifschey 'was not merely an excellent oboist; he was a great artist' (lines 44–45) can best be described as:

6. In Passage B, it can most reasonably be inferred that Heifetz’s response to the woman who congratulates him is intended to point out that:

7. In Passage B, the author most directly indicates that the violin is sometimes an adversary by stating that it:

8. Compared to Passage A, Passage B is more directly focused on the:

9. In contrast to the way the pianos are described in Passage A, the passage author’s violin in Passage B is described as:

10. Which of the following assertions about instruments is most strongly supported by details provided in both Passage A and Passage B?

11. The main purpose of the passage is to:

12. One theme of the passage is that:

13. Which of the following events referred to in the passage occurred last chronologically?

14. Based on the passage, the residents of Gordon Heights in the 1950s and 1960s would best be described as:

15. The main purpose of the third paragraph (lines 13–22) is to:

16. The main idea of the fourth paragraph (lines 23–31) is that:

17. Based on the passage, the main reason Holmes eventually preferred playing music at weddings and private parties to playing music in clubs was that:

18. The main idea of the eleventh paragraph (lines 73–80) is that:

19. It can most reasonably be inferred from the passage that Holmes’s band members like playing music with Holmes in part because, in contrast to other band leaders, Holmes:

20. In the passage, the phrase something more canned (lines 86–87) most nearly refers to:

21. Which of the following rhetorical techniques does the author repeatedly use in the passage as a means to engage the reader?

22. It can most reasonably be inferred that the author’s statements about the educational use of photographs apply to photographs taken during what time period?

23. Which of the following words is most nearly given a negative connotation in the passage?

24. Which of the following actions referred to in the passage most clearly characterizes a hypothetical event rather than an actual event?

25. Particular photographs of Goyathlay are referred to and described by the author to support his claim that:

26. The author most strongly suggests that one reason commercial photographers began to photograph Native American communities was that commercial photographers were:

27. The fourth paragraph (lines 63–71) marks a shift in the focus of the passage from:

28. Based on the passage, the author’s use of the word 'measuring' (line 12) most nearly describes the way that some desert plants:

29. Which of the following statements best summarizes the process by which the frog Cyclorana platycephala survives in the desert?

30. Based on the passage, which of the following plants and animals employ a communal strategy to survive in the desert?

31. The passage most strongly suggests that compared to the frog Cyclorana platycephala, the honeypot ants are unique in that they:

32. Which of the following provides the best paraphrase of lines 7–11?

33. Based on the passage, it can most reasonably be inferred that the scarring some seeds require before germination is accomplished through:

34. As it is used in line 26, the word extent most nearly means:

35. According to the passage, which of the following actions did people in the Negev Desert take in order to farm there?

36. Based on the passage, the pleats in the body of the saguaro cactus:

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