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Difficulty: MediumResolving Referential Phrases

In the philosophy of music, formalists argue that the aesthetic value of a musical composition resides entirely in its structural properties—its harmony, rhythm, melody, and thematic development. Conversely, expressionists maintain that music's primary function is the communication of human emotion. A particularly robust iteration of the expressionist framework, famously championed by the theorist Charles Leonhard, goes beyond the mere claim that music evokes feeling in the listener. Leonhard contends that a musical work actually embodies the genuine, lived emotional state of its composer at the exact time of creation. According to this view, when an audience experiences a melancholic symphony, they are directly perceiving and communing with the composer's own melancholy.

However, subsequent critics have identified a significant vulnerability in Leonhard's biographical account of musical meaning. It is entirely possible, and widely documented in historical archives, for a composer to write a joyous, triumphant fanfare while suffering from profound personal grief, or to compose a tragic, mournful requiem while experiencing a period of great personal happiness and stability. The documented capacity of a skilled composer to deliberately manipulate established musical conventions—such as major and minor keys, tempo, and instrumentation—to produce a specific affective state in the listener, wholly independent of their own lived emotional experience, poses a severe challenge to Leonhard's central thesis. Indeed, this incongruity suggests that musical meaning is heavily reliant on a system of established cultural codes and structural expectations rather than serving as a transparent, unmediated window into a composer's psychological condition.

The phrase "this incongruity" in the final sentence of the passage refers to which one of the following?

  1. A
    The documented capacity of a skilled composer to deliberately manipulate established musical conventions to produce a desired affective state.
  2. B
    The foundational theoretical conflict between formalist interpretations of aesthetic value and expressionist claims about emotional communication.
  3. The documented reality that the emotional character of a musical work can directly contradict the lived emotional state of the composer at the time of its creation.Answer
  4. D
    The theoretical premise held by Leonhard that a composer's genuine emotional state frequently contradicts the feelings evoked in an audience.
  5. E
    The divergence between the emotional state a composer intends to evoke using cultural codes and the actual emotion experienced by the audience.

Answer

The documented reality that the emotional character of a musical work can directly contradict the lived emotional state of the composer at the time of its creation.
The correct answer accurately traces the referent of 'this incongruity' to the preceding sentences, which describe the fundamental mismatch between a composer's actual emotional state (e.g., profound personal grief) and the contrasting emotional character of the music they produce (e.g., a joyous, triumphant fanfare). The phrase 'this incongruity' points directly to this paradoxical disconnect.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Locate the target phrase 'this incongruity' in the final sentence of the passage.
The phrase appears in the sentence: 'Indeed, this incongruity suggests that musical meaning is heavily reliant on a system of established cultural codes...'
Establishing the exact location is required to trace the anaphoric reference back to the preceding context.
2
Analyze the immediately preceding sentences to identify what contradiction or mismatch has just been described.
The previous sentences describe how a composer can write a joyous fanfare while experiencing grief, or a tragic requiem while experiencing happiness.
An 'incongruity' refers to a state of being out of place or mismatched. The text sets up a clear contrast that fulfills this definition.
3
Synthesize the contextual clues to determine the exact referent of the phrase.
The 'incongruity' is the fundamental disconnect between the composer's actual lived emotional experience and the contrasting affective state produced by their music.
Referential phrases in dense prose often encapsulate a multi-clause concept rather than pointing to a single noun.
4
Evaluate the answer choices to find the one that accurately paraphrases this synthesized concept.
The correct answer accurately captures this disconnect without distorting the passage's meaning or attributing the viewpoint to the wrong party.
Distractors will attempt to confuse the referent with other conflicts mentioned in the passage or use familiar wording that describes something else.

Key Concept

Resolving Referential Phrases
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Resolving Referential Phrases

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