时间:2019-01-13 作者:英语课 分类:VOA标准英语2012年(八月)


英语课

 



New Documentary Revives American Pioneer Music


The Little House on the Prairie television series is perhaps the best-known adaption of the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories. The show aired for eight seasons beginning in 1974 and has since been translated into 18 languages.


“Her work, her books, her stories are quintessentially American," explains actor Dean Butler, who played Laura Ingall’s husband, Almonzo Wilder on the series. Butler later produced a documentary about the author’s life and books.


“They’re about discovery and struggle and triumph over adversity. They’re about family and about making your way in the world,” Butler says.


This year, he produced a television special entitled “Pa’s Fiddle 1: The Music of America.” The show is part documentary, part recorded-live performance.


"Pa’s Fiddle" is based on the 127 songs mentioned in the Little House stories, mostly fiddle tunes 2 played by the family patriarch Charles “Pa” Ingalls like “Arkansas Traveler” or “Devil’s Dream.”


Butler hadn’t thought about the books’ musical legacy 3 until he attended a lecture on the subject by musicologist Dale Cockrell.


“As he was weaving the narrative 4 of these songs, and the way that they were embedded 5 into the books, I just loved the way he told the stories,” Butler explains.


That polished presentation was the result of a decade of scholarship. Cockrell, a professor at Vanderbilt University, had already published a 425-page reference book on the Little House songs, seven books of sheet music, and nearly 50 musical recordings 6 on 3 CDs.


Cockrell stumbled on the songs when he began reading the "Little House" books to his eight-year-old son. He realized that nowhere had he seen a fuller portrait of popular music from a crucial era.


“Just about any form of popular music that would have been heard and enjoyed by audiences from the 1860s to the 1880s - the genre 7, the category at least - is included in the books,” he says.


Cockrell says it’s a legacy he fears Americans are losing touch with.


“Maybe being a historian I’m prejudiced," he admits, "but I think to understand who we are as musical beings now, we need to understand who we were as musical beings then.”


One thing that songs like “Oft in the Stilly Night" and Wilder’s stories help 21st century audiences understand, Cockrell says, is that 19th century pioneer life was a dangerous, unrelenting struggle.


“These aren’t superheroes. The dog dies. The children die. The houses burn down. The crops get destroyed. They’re often picking up and moving on because of defeat,” notes Cockrell.


Defeat perhaps, but never despair. As Wilder herself wrote, “There's no great loss without some small gain.”




n.小提琴;vi.拉提琴;不停拨弄,乱动
  • She plays the fiddle well.她小提琴拉得好。
  • Don't fiddle with the typewriter.不要摆弄那架打字机了。
n.曲调,曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 );调整;(给收音机、电视等)调谐;使协调
  • a potpourri of tunes 乐曲集锦
  • When things get a bit too much, she simply tunes out temporarily. 碰到事情太棘手时,她干脆暂时撒手不管。 来自《简明英汉词典》
n.遗产,遗赠;先人(或过去)留下的东西
  • They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
  • He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。
n.叙述,故事;adj.叙事的,故事体的
  • He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
  • Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。
a.扎牢的
  • an operation to remove glass that was embedded in his leg 取出扎入他腿部玻璃的手术
  • He has embedded his name in the minds of millions of people. 他的名字铭刻在数百万人民心中。
n.记录( recording的名词复数 );录音;录像;唱片
  • a boxed set of original recordings 一套盒装原声录音带
  • old jazz recordings reissued on CD 以激光唱片重新发行的老爵士乐
n.(文学、艺术等的)类型,体裁,风格
  • My favorite music genre is blues.我最喜欢的音乐种类是布鲁斯音乐。
  • Superficially,this Shakespeare's work seems to fit into the same genre.从表面上看, 莎士比亚的这个剧本似乎属于同一类型。
学英语单词
7-Hydroxybiopterin
abieninic acid
Adrastus
agriotypes
amaldi
augural
barn (of livestock)
belch
bifurcatio
body of catalyst
bugologist
Bushuikha
child-care centre
circular conical surface
co-geoid
coast radar station
combinatory possibility
complex inheritance
comprise network
conductor tube
controlled energy-flow machine
corrisif
Corynebacterium fimi
crystallographic space group
cyclotropia
drizzlier
drocode
egofaggotry
fairing cap
fastness to dry-cleaning
Fermi age
float-actuated recording liquid-level instrument
fluorescent brightenning agent
forbidding subgraph
fore-sign
Fort Leonard Wood
fuct
giant hydronephrosis
gump-stump
hard-facing rod
heat alarm
heat distortion test
hydrourterosis
intranasal injection
invoicer
kupfferite (antholite)
lever floor weigh bridge
linear processing
lone flight
lubricators
maximum loading trim angle
metasphaeria musae
nessun dorma
newly-increased purchasing power
octaeterid
Ogose
oligomerised
on this side
once-fired ware
operations security
outblot
over specialization
over-conquer
page swapping
parcellation
predicated mean value
presignifies
prior checking
programmer's manual
pulchrum
quantum electrochemistry
quasi-equivalence
raw material supply
rewarding by merit
rising main
safety flare
Salix phanera
Securities Advisory Council
semiconductor freezer
semimicro
settling-tank
siphon injection
site-assembled
slam-dunker
soap-dodger
squirrel-cage armature
storage dump
sublight
sugar boogers
system fan
the pit
thymol-blue
timing chip
tooth-combs
torula rubra
transprocess
two tier bargaining
unholinesses
uniform reference
variance work in process
warning distance
windshield towel