Lesson 2 HW RC Passage 3 Q4

[kim4956]

Question 4 reads:

Which one of the following, if true, would most clearly undermine a portion of Ringer's argument as the argument is described in the passage?

It's not clear to me why the answer is (A) for this question. Clarification greatly appreciated!

[Lucas Moreau]

Hello, kim,

This is a fairly esoteric question. I'm not surprised you had difficulty with it - so did I.

Answer choice A is correct from the first sentence about Ringer on line 41: he "argued that laws of artistic survival forced...Beethoven to turn outside Austria for creative models". This implies that Austrian pianists weren't advancing creatively in time with the development of the piano as an instrument, which is further supported by the sentence in 51: "Beethoven did respond to the advances of the Broadwood piano". This further implies that other Austrians did not.

If answer choice A is correct, then, that shows that the Austrians were not artistically behind the English artists, and that would weaken Ringer's argument that it was seeking new forms of expression that drove Beethoven to England.

Hope that helps,
Lucas Moreau

[lanereuden]

So the reason why D is wrong is that it is not part of Ringer's argument. Instead, D is part of the author's argument which is distinct from Ringer.
Yes?

[Zach Foreman]

Lane,
It was part of Ringer's description: "Ringer’s proposed London Pianoforte school did suggest a circumscribed and fairly unified group". This is questioned by the author and by Temperley. But the fact that they share stylistic elements would not undermine but support Ringer. So it is the wrong answer. Ringer said that it was a school and saying that they had similar stylistic principles would not undermine that description.