托福听力TPO12听力文本(Conversation+Lecture)

　　TPO 12 Conversation 2

　　Narrator :  Listen to a conversation between a student and a Department Secretary.

　　Student :  Hi. Miss Andrics.

　　Secretary :  Hi Bret, how are you?

　　Student :  I'm fine; except I have a question about my paycheck.

　　Secretary :  Sure. What' up?

　　Student :  Well it's already been several weeks at the end of the semester my check was supposed to go directly into my bank account but there haven't been any deposits.

　　Secretary :  That's odd.

　　Student :  Yea, I thought graduate teaching a system for automatically put on the payroll at the beginning of the semester.

　　Secretary :  They are. Let's see did you complete all the forms for the payroll?

　　Student :  I filled in whatever they sent me, and I returned like the end of August.

　　Secretary :  Hum, well, you definitely should have been paid by now. At least two pay periods have passed since then

　　Student :  I asked the bank and they didn't know anything. Who should I talk to about this, payroll?

　　Secretary :  I'm going to contact them for you. There was a problem in processing some of the graduate students' payroll paper work. 'Cause their computer program crashed after all the information was processed. And some people's information couldn't be retrieved.

　　Student :  Hum. But why didn't any one let me know?

　　Secretary :  I don't know how they work over there, 'cause they couldn't even figure out whose information was missing. And this isn't the first time, seems like something like this happens every semester.

　　Student :  So how do I find out if my information was lost?

　　Secretary :  I will contact them tomorrow morning to see if you're in the system. But you're probably not.

　　Student :  What then will let me to do?

　　Secretary :  Sorry but you will need to fill out those forms again and then I will fax them over the payroll office.

　　Student :  And then what… Well, what I really need to know is how long till I get the money, I'm already a month behind my bills and my tuitions due soon.

　　Secretary :  That'll get you into the system the same day they receive your paper works. So if you do that tomorrow, you'll get paid next Friday.

　　Student :  That's a long time from now. Will that pay checking include all the money I am owed?

　　Secretary :  It should. I will double check with the payroll department.

　　Student :  And another thing, Is there any way I could get paid sooner, I have been teaching all these weeks…

　　Secretary :  I know that's not fair but I don't think they can do anything; all the checks are computed automatically in the system. They can't just write checks.

　　Student :  But there is another one to make mistakes. They've never told me!

　　Woman :  I understand how you feel and if I were you, I'd be upset too. I'll tell you what: when I call them, I will explain the situation and ask them if there is any way you can be paid sooner. But I have to tell you that base on past experiences you shouldn't count on it.

　　Student :  (Sigh) I understand thanks. I know it's' not your fault and that you're doing everything you can.

　　Secretary :  Well, what I CAN do is make sure that your first check for total amount the university owes you.

　　Student :  That'll be great! Thank you. I will be on campus about 10 tomorrow morning and I will come back to see you then.

　　TPO 12 Lecture 3 Music history

　　Narrator :  Listen to part of a lecture in a music history class. The professor has been discussing Opera.

　　Professor :  The word opera means work, actually it means works. It's the plural of the word opus from the Latin. And in Italian it refers in general to works of art. Opera Lyric or lyric of opera refers to what we think of as opera, the musical drama. Opera was commonplace in Italy for almost thousands of years before it became commercial as a venture. And during those years, several things happened primarily linguistic or thematic and both involving secularization. Musical drama started in the churches. It was an educational tool. It was used primarily as a vehicle for teaching religion and was generally presented in the Latin, the language of the Christian Church which had considerable influence in Italy at that time. But the language of everyday life was evolving in Europe and at a certain point in the middle ages it was really only merchants, Socratics and clergy who can deal with Latin. The vast majority of the population used their own regional vernacular in all aspects to their lives. And so in what is now Italy, operas quit being presented in Latin and started being presented in Italian. And once that happened, the themes of the opera presentations also started to change. And musical drama moved from the church to the plaza right outside the church. And the themes again, the themes changed. And opera was no longer about teaching religion as it was about satire and about expressing the ideas of society your government without committing yourself to writing and risking imprisonment or persecution, or what have you. Opera, as we think of it, is of course a rather restive form. It is the melodious drama of ancient Greek theater, the term 'melodious drama' being shortened eventually to 'melodrama' because operas frequently are melodramatic, not to say unrealistic. And the group that put the first operas together that we have today even, were, they were…well…it was a group of men that included Gallo Leo's father Venchesil, and they met in Florence he and a group of friends of the counts of the party and they formed what is called the Camarola Dayir Bardy. And they took classical theater and reproduced it in the Renaissance's time. This…uh…this produced some of the operas that we have today. Now what happened in the following centuries is very simple. Opera originated in Italy but was not confined to Italy any more than the Italians were. And so as the Italians migrated across Europe, they carried theater with them and opera specifically because it was an Italian form. What happened is that the major divide in opera that endures today took place. The French said opera auto-reflect the rhythm and Kevin of dramatic literature, bearing in mind that we are talking about the golden age in French literature. And so the music was secondary, if you will, to the dramatic Kevin of language, to the way the rhythm of language was used to express feeling and used to add drama and of course as a result instead of arias or solos, which would come to dominated Italian opera. The French relied on that what is the Italian called French Word 1 or French Word 2 in English. The lyrics were spoken, frequently to the accompany**nt of a harpsichord. The French said you really cannot talk about real people who lived in opera and they relied on mythology to give them their characters and their plots, mythology, the past old traditions, the novels of chivalry or the epics of chivalry out of the middle Ages. The Italian said, no this is a great historical tool and what a better way to educate the public about Neo or Attalla or any number of people than to put them into a play they can see and listen to. The English appropriated opera after the French. Opera came late to England because all theaters, public theaters were closed, of course, during their civil war. And it wasn't until the restoration in 1660 that public theaters again opened and opera took off. The English made a major adjustment to opera and exported what they had done to opera back to Italy. So that you have this circle of musical influences, the Italians invented opera, the French adapted it, the English adopted it, and the Italians took it back. It came to America late and was considered to elites for the general public. But Broadway musicals fulfilled a similar function for a great long while. George Champon wrote about opera, "If an extraterrestrial being or two appear before us and say, what is your society like, what is this Earth thing all about, you could do worse than take that creature to an opera." Because opera does, after all, begin with a man and a woman and any motion.