Welcome to the penultimate roadmap for the C2 Development Course. We’re tacking into the wind this week, veering far off our originally planned route as Ben responds to your (hugely valuable) feedback.
This week looks a little different. That reinventing the wheel thing has made it into the Roadmaps, too. Stick with it, though, I think this is a good ‘un.
Guiding question: what do we lose when certain voices are excluded from our cultural heritage?
Before you watch any of the videos below, answer this question. Record your answer – either verbally or textually.
Task 1 – Reflect and Predict
Before you read anything, take some time to reflect on the following questions. There are no right or wrong answers – this is about your own experience and ideas. Write freely; aim for around 50–80 words per question, but try to use your ‘best C2 English’ in at least two of your answers. Feel free to email any/all of your answers to Ben if you’d like some feedback at this stage.
1. Think about your relationship with music. Which genres, periods or styles do you feel most connected to, and why? Has that changed over the course of your life?
2. When you hear the term ‘classical music’, what images, associations or feelings does it conjure up? Do you think your response is typical of people your age or from your cultural background?
3. A musical ‘canon’ refers to the body of works considered most important within a tradition. What do you think determines whether a piece of music or a composer becomes part of that canon? What factors might work against it?
4. Consider the idea of a ‘legacy’ in the arts. What would it take for an artist’s work to endure for two or three centuries? Can you think of any artists from any field whose legacy you feel has been unjustly overlooked or undervalued?
5. Do you think the platforms and technologies we use today, such as streaming services, algorithms and social media, are making our cultural landscape more diverse or less? Justify your view.
Task 2 — Discover and Explore
Before reading the article, spend five to ten minutes researching the following. Note down anything you find – don’t worry about being exhaustive (and don’t read anything from The Conversation!)
Who was Marianna Martines? When and where did she live? What is she known for? Why might she be considered significant?
Make a table like the one below, and complete the first column with things you find out from your reading
| What I already Know | What I Want to find out | What I Learned (complete after reading) |
|---|---|---|
When you’re done, think about things you’d like to find out. Complete the second column.
This now gives you a key into reading the full article. As you read, complete the final column of your KWL chart. Then answer these two questions briefly:
What surprised you most?
Which of your predictions were confirmed?
Task 3 – Language in Focus
This task has two parts.
Part A: Reading the Language
The following are paraphrases of ideas and expressions found in the article. Your task is to go back into the text and find the specific language the author uses — a word, phrase, collocation or grammatical structure — that corresponds to each paraphrase. The first one has been done as an example.
Tip: the phrasing in the article is often more precise, more vivid, or more idiomatic than the paraphrase.
| # | Paraphrase | Language from the text |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | produced a large amount of music (used to describe composers of the 1780s) | writing bucketloads of music |
| 2 | an extremely small part of everything that was written | |
| 3 | controlled and shaped by only three composers | |
| 4 | she regularly performed for the empress | |
| 5 | her list of compositions is large and impressive | |
| 6 | not only adequate, but outstandingly so | |
| 7 | people who actively tried to undermine her credibility | |
| 8 | the failure of later organisations to continue funding the right conditions | |
| 9 | both performed and recorded again and again | |
| 10 | how often something is performed or recorded creates a sense of familiarity | |
| 11 | false beliefs that have become deeply embedded in my thinking without my realising | |
| 12 | despite the enormous efforts of many people working in this field | |
| 13 | the constraints imposed by commercial and academic institutions are gradually weakening | |
| 14 | the essential first step towards making the music available in its modern form |
Part B: Using the Language
Choose three of the items you identified in Part A and write original sentences of your own using the same language in a new context. Then choose one of the following prompts and write a response of 150–200 words, drawing on at least three items from your mining activity. Email your response to Ben for feedback if you’d like.
Prompt options:
- To what extent do you agree that the music we consider “great” says more about historical power structures than about artistic merit?
- “Familiarity is the enemy of discovery.” Discuss this idea in relation to how we engage with art and culture.
- Consider a field other than music in which you feel important voices or works have been unjustly overlooked. What factors led to that neglect, and what might be done to address it?
This week in the Dev Sesh…
We’ll draw on the language from the mining activity and practice using it in more creative and varied ways, before considering what Martines’ story has to tell us about memory and legacy in general.
