PURELY AMERICAN CREATIONS

After the Civil War, as black musicians began to play European instruments previously unavailable to them, Negroes created many minstrel songs and transported the minstrel style to the piano. Negro talent, influenced by minstrel sounds applied to European-style melodies, ultimately produced a new form called ragtime. The term probably derived from the ragged, uneven sound of this syncopated piano music, which mixed Afro-Caribbean dance rhythms with the accents of the quadrille, the polka, the schottische, and the march.

Ragtime faded during World War I but won a new audience in the 1960s and 1970s television shows and in personal appearances.

Jazz became so popular that it became established in the national consciousness. The word "jazz" was so firmly planted in the public mind that the decade of the 1920s was known as the Jazz Age. Louis Armstrong and Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington have become jazz classics.

While jazz, the first distinctively American music to emerge in that country, was winning adherents and acceptance, the ballads, broadsides, jigs, reels, and sacred songs that had come to America with English, Scottish, and Irish settlers were evolving their own American forms. There it remained for a century, virtually unchanged except for slight coloration from contact with black music. Then, like jazz, it was spread beyond its narrow boundaries, first by the phonograph, and then by radio.

Country music has made an important contribution to a new phenomenon called rock'n'roll. White listeners became aware of the excitement and validity this music could generate. The way was opened for another white performer, Elvis Presley, to project the essence of the black music, which became known as rock'n'roll. Presley's performing style stirred so much anger in the adult world that teenagers made him a symbol of their beliefs, and rock'n'roll became a musical expression of rebellion.

Write an annotation translation of the text

II Grammar

1. There isn’t a cloud in the sky, but it _____ cloudy in the morning.


is


was


were

2. We ______ English at the moment. 


are speaking


speak


is speaking

3. _____sun shines by day and _____ moon shines by night. 


A, a


A, -


The, the

4. This is _____ aunt and _____ new husband.


mine … his


my … her


me … hers

5. That is Mr. Smith. Can you see _____ well?


us


him


me

6. Little Jane doesn’t like _____ new dress.


she


her


hers

7. Do you like beer? – No, I hate _____ .


them


him


it

8. We generally have lunch at 12.30, but yesterday we _________ later.


had lunch


have lunched


had had lunch

9. Look! Helen _____ the garden. 


are working


work


is working

10. Don’t worry about your letter. I _______ it the day before yesterday.


sended


have sent


sent

III Essay Writing

How I went shopping

Signature of the examiner______________

EXAM CARD XIV

I Reading

O'Henry

O'Henry is a famous American short-story writer, a master of surprise endings of the stories. He wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. Typical for O'Henry's stories is a twist of plot which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance.

William Sidney Porter (O'Henry) was born in Greenboro, North Carolina. His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother and a paternal aunt. William was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen he left the school, and then worked in a drug store and on a Texas ranch. He continued to Houston, where he had a number of jobs, including that of bank clerk. After moving to Austin, Texas, in 1882, he married.

In 1884 Porter started a humorous weekly "The Rolling Stone". It was at this time that he began the heavy drinking. When the weekly failed, he joined the "Houston Post" as a reporter and columnist In 1894 cash was found to have gone missing from the bank and O'Henry fled to Honduras. He returned to Austin the next year because his wife was dying. In 1897 he was convicted of embezzling bank fund, although there has been much debate over his actual guilt. In 1898 he entered a penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.

While in prison O'Henry started to write short stories to earn money to support his daughter Margaret. His first work, "Whistling Dicks Christmas Stocking" (1899), appeared in "McClures Magazine" The stories of adventure in the U. S. Southwest and in Central America gained an immediately success among readers. After doing three years of the five years sentence, Porter emerged from the prison in 1901 and changed his name to O'Henry. According to some sources, he acquired the pseudonym from a warder called Orrin Henry.

O'Henry moved to New York City in 1902 and from December 1903 to January 1906 he wrote a story a week for the New York "World", also publishing in other magazines.

O'Henry's first collection, "Cabbages and Kings" appeared in 1904.

The second, "The Four Million" was published two years later and included his well-known stories "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Furnished Room." "The Trimmed Lamp" (1907) explored the lives of New Yorkers and included "The Last Leaf". "Heart of the West" (1907) presented tales of the Texas range.

O'Henry published 10 collections and over 600 short stories during his life time.

O'Henrys last years were shadowed by alcoholism, ill health, and financial problems. He married in 1907 Sara Lindsay Coleman, but the marriage was not happy, and they separated a year later. O'Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver on June 5, 1910, in New York.


Date: 2015-12-18; view: 1003