Free Practice Question
RC · Reading Comprehension
705-805
Short Passage - Social Science
Reading Passage
Jean Sibelius's Symphony No. 8 has been the source of controversy and rumor for decades. A towering figure in his native Finland, the world-renowned composer worked on the piece for about a decade following the mid-1920s, but he destroyed the primary score around the end of the Second World War. Although Sibelius claimed periodically that he was continuing to work on the symphony, he refused to release it to the public in any form, and nothing but short fragments, probably sketches he drafted as he initially conceived the work, have ever been identified among his archived manuscripts. The symphony has long been considered completely lost, although some experts have suggested that someday it may be possible to reconstruct the entire work through interpolation, allowing it to be performed. Indeed, excerpts have already been recorded. Others say that, given the nature of the surviving fragments and Sibelius's own actions, this course is undesirable, since the composer suppressed the release of a work he clearly would have viewed as inferior.
Based on the passage, which of the following does the author believe to be true about Symphony No. 8 by Jean Sibelius?
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Its publication in its entirety would ensure the international reputation of its composer.
B
Sibelius claimed he was working on the symphony even when he was not.
C
The work was never published in Sibelius's lifetime because the composer felt it lacked merit.
D
The symphony will someday be performed once experts have been able to reconstruct it.
E
If a complete copy of the symphony were discovered, it would be found to be an inferior work.
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Difficulty
705-805
Type
RC
Category