PrepTest 151, Section 1, Question 19

What we’re looking for

Working the answers

• A
  Correct

  B's account makes the nonmusical elements integral to opera's artistic value: the words provide dramatic ideas and opportunities for music and staging, and the union creates the work's distinctive character. A instead says opera's aesthetic value depends not on its poetry, plot, or scenery but on an emotional range dominated by music. This is the actual disagreement.

• B

  B explicitly calls music the most important element even in the more balanced type. A also puts music first. This doesn't give us the required opposition.

• C

  Many factors needn't mean equal importance for music and words. A could accept that good music requires a skillful balance of rhythm, tempo, and other musical features while maintaining that music drives opera's value. This doesn't clearly locate a principle A would reject. The disagreement concerns the nonmusical elements, which choice A identifies explicitly.

• D

  A would be likely to agree that music should not be subordinated: it allows benefits from combining the arts when the words take the secondary role. This fails the requirement that A reject the principle.

• E

  B permits separate analysis of formal features. A also recognizes poetry as an art in its own right; nothing suggests it would deny that a libretto's formal features can be analyzed apart from its music. Separate analysis is not the disputed claim about what gives an opera its artistic value.