Passage A Music does not always gain by association with words. Like images, words can excite the deepest emotions but are inadequate to express the emotions they excite. Music is more adequate, and hence will often seize an emotion that may have been excited by images or words, deepen its expression, is how words can gain by being set to music.
But to set words to music—as in opera or song—is in fact to mix two arts together. A striking effect may be produced, but at the expense of the purity of each art. Poetry is a great art; so is music. But as a medium for emotion, each is greater alone than even the plot or scenery, but upon its emotional range—a region dominated by the musical element.
Passage B Throughout the history of opera, two fundamental types may be distinguished: that in which the music is primary, and that in which there is, essentially, parity between music and other factors. The former, sometimes called “singer’s opera”—a term which has earned undeserved contempt—is exemplified by most Italian operas, while the limited, and a fuller participation of music was required to establish opera on a secure basis.
In any event, in any aesthetic judgment of opera, regardless of the opera’s type, neither the music nor the poetry of the libretto should be judged in isolation. The music is good not if it would make a good concert piece but if it serves the particular situation in the opera in It is this union—further enriched and clarified by the visual action—that results in opera’s inimitable character.
What this question is testing
Your task
Pin down exactly what the question asks about the passage — a detail, the author's view, the structure, or the main point — before looking at the choices.
Common trap
Answers that restate a true detail from the passage but don't answer the specific question being asked.
Winning move
Anticipate the answer in your own words from the passage, then find the choice that matches that prediction.
Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.