Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Easy

PT6 S1 P3 Q15 Explanation

Early Music Advocacy

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsLocal PurposeHumanities

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Passage

In recent years the early music movement, which advocates performing a work as it was performed at the time of its composition, has taken on the character of a crusade, particularly as it has moved beyond the sphere of medieval and baroque music and into music from the late eighteenth and early to scholars. Nevertheless, the early music approach to performance raises profound and troubling questions.

Early music advocates assume that composers write only for the instruments available to them, but evidence suggests that composers of Beethoven’s stature imagined extraordinarily high and low notes as part of their compositions, even when they recognized that such notes could not be played on instruments available at the time. In the require playing a note that was probably frustrating for Beethoven himself to have had to play.

In addition, early music advocates often inadvertently divorce music and its performance from the life of which they were, and are, a part. The discovery that Haydn’s and Mozart’s symphonies were conducted during their lifetimes by a pianist who played the chords to keep the orchestra together has given rise to early denial of the fact that our concepts of musical intensity and excitement have, quite simply, changed.

What this question is testing

Local Purpose

Your task

Identify why the author included the referenced detail at that point in the passage — its function, not its content.

Common trap

Answers that merely repeat or summarize the topic of the detail instead of describing the role it plays.

Winning move

Ask what job the detail does for the paragraph, then for the passage's broader point.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
15.

In the second paragraph, the author discusses Beethoven’s first piano concerto primarily

Answer choices

  1. Opposite: in response to1% picked this

    illustrate how piano music began to change in response to the extended range of pianos that became

    This example is showing how piano music was writing stuff for an extended range of piano before those pianos even existed, not in response to them existing.

  2. Wrong Purpose: failed to anticipate1% picked this

    illustrate how Beethoven’s work failed to anticipate the changes in the design of instruments that were about to

    As soon as we hit "failed" we should probably stop reading this answer. The author wasn't trying to say anything negative about Beethoven. The author is showing how Beethoven's desire to hear a high F-sharp clashes with the early music advocates' desire to perform music just as it was heard in its original time. But in this clash, the author is mad at the early music advocates, not at Beethoen.

  3. Out of Scope: revisions3% picked this

    suggest that early music advocates commonly perform music using scores that do not reflect revisions made to the music years

    This is not an example where Beethoven originally composed a concerto and then years later revised it to have a high F-sharp. The original score had a high F-natural, but the author is saying "Beethoven would have wanted that to be a high F-sharp, if only existing pianos could produce that note". The point the author is making is that early music people often perform music that is true to the original score, rather than true to the composer's wishes.

  4. Correct94% picked this

    illustrate how composers like Beethoven sometimes composed music that called for notes that could not be played on

    Why this is right

    This is by far our best meaning match for the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph. Early music advocates assume composers wrote only for the instruments available to them. The author is rebutting that, showing that composers sometimes wrote music that called for notes (like a high F-sharp) that could not be played on currently available instruments.

    Skill tested: Local Purpose · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

  5. Opposite1% picked this

    provide an example of a piano composition that is especially amenable to being played on pianos available at the

    The whole point of the Beethoven example is that the composition was NOT amenable to pianos available at the time. He wanted a high F-sharp and pianos available at the time did not have that note.

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