PrepTest 144, Section 1, Question 6
"Never was anything as incoherent, shrill, chaotic and(427 more words not shown)
It can be inferred from(29 more words not shown)
- AEach successive style(8 more words not shown)
- BEach successive style(8 more words not shown)
- CThe second style(18 more words not shown)
- DThe second style(18 more words not shown)
- EThe second style(18 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Put the three stages back in order. Schoenberg begins with shifting chromatic harmonies, pushes those unstable harmonies beyond a tonal basis, and then develops the 12-tone technique to bring order to nontonal music. Each step connects to the one before it.
What we’re looking for
This is more than a list of things he happened to do at different times. The second stage extends the first, and the third addresses the need for order created by the second. Predict an intelligible progression.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Each successive style grows out of the preceding development. The author explains the second through Schoenberg's extension of unstable harmonies and the third through his effort to organize nontonal music. Natural progression fits those links.
- B
Neither transition is described as inexplicable. We are given a musical connection and a reason for each development. An innovative style can still be understandable in relation to what came before it.
- C
The first half fits, but the third style is not an inexplicable break. Its purpose is to stabilize the nontonal music of the second stage.
- D
This reverses the situation for the first transition. The second style develops by pushing the first style's harmonies further, rather than appearing without explanation.
- E
This again wrongly calls the second stage inexplicable. It also bypasses that stage when relating the third to the first: the author's immediate link is between nontonal music and the new system developed to order it.
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