The vast majority of extant music from the medieval period is recorded

Question

The vast majority of extant music from the medieval period is recorded on manuscripts. The production of medieval manuscripts was very costly, because all manuscripts were painstakingly copied by hand onto an expensive form of parchment. As a result, few people were able to produce or own them, and the Catholic Church, which had literate scribes as well as considerable wealth, produced and maintained most manuscripts during the Middle Ages. Any medieval music not recorded on manuscripts has now been lost to history. Most of the medieval music still in existence is sacred music.

The claims made in the above passage, if true, best support which of the following statements?

(A) The greatest music of the medieval period was sacred music, and for this reason it was recorded on manuscripts.

(B) Because the Church did not value popular music, the scribes were not allowed to copy it onto manuscripts.

(C) As the Catholic Church was the center of medieval life, popular music paralleled sacred music very closely.

(D) In addition to the Church, many wealthy aristocratic households held large numbers of music manuscripts.

(E) Because the Church primarily recorded sacred music on manuscripts, historians are unable to confidently describe medieval popular music.

Bunuel · Accepted Answer

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

The Correct Answer: 
E In question 3, the student is asked to select a statement that is supported by the claims made in the passage. To do this, the student must infer from what is stated directly. Based on these claims, answer choice (E) is the only one that fulfills this requirement. The passage states quite clearly, “Any medieval music not recorded on manuscripts has now been lost to history. Most of the medieval music still in existence is sacred music.” If most extant medieval music is sacred music, and any music not recorded on manuscripts has been lost to history, then it follows that most popular music was not recorded on manuscripts and thus has been lost to history. It can safely be inferred from this fact that historians do not know much about popular medieval music because they have almost nothing to study. Answer choice (E) is correct.

The Incorrect Answers: 
A Answer choice (A) is incorrect because the passage does not offer an evaluative judgment on the music that is still extant, nor does it suggest anywhere that sacred music was recorded because it was the “greatest music” of the period. Historians might rightly debate this issue, but the passage does not discuss it or imply anything about it.

B As with answer choice (A), the passage does not imply answer choice (B). The passage describes facts about the way medieval music was recorded and about what medieval music still exists, but it does not provide an answer to why most of the extant music from the Middle Ages is sacred music. Therefore, in no place in the passage does the author suggest that the Church recorded only medieval music because it did not value popular music. Answer (B) should be eliminated immediately.

C While answer choice (C) might very well be true, the substance of this statement is not discussed at all in the passage and cannot be inferred from any statement made within it. Answer (C) is thus irrelevant and should be eliminated immediately.

D The passage does indicate that the Church was not necessarily the only institution to have the means of affording manuscripts: “As a result, few were able to produce or own them, and the Catholic Church, which had literate scribes as well as considerable wealth, produced and maintained most manuscripts during the Middle Ages.” This suggests logically that other institutions such as the aristocracy might very well have been able to produce and maintain some of the manuscripts. But nowhere does the passage discuss the contents of aristocratic households or that aristocrats might have held large numbers of manuscripts, so this statement cannot be inferred from the passage

winterschool · Answer

The vast majority of extant music from the medieval period is recorded on manuscripts. The production of medieval manuscripts was very costly, because all manuscripts were painstakingly copied by hand onto an expensive form of parchment. As a result, few people were able to produce or own them, and the Catholic Church, which had literate scribes as well as considerable wealth, produced and maintained most manuscripts during the Middle Ages. Any medieval music not recorded on manuscripts has now been lost to history. Most of the medieval music still in existence is sacred music.

The claims made in the above passage, if true, best support which of the following statements?

(A)  The greatest music of the medieval period was sacred music, and for this reason it was recorded on manuscripts.   Correct

it support last line and first line of argument

(B) Because the Church did not value popular music, the scribes were not allowed to copy it onto manuscripts.  Incorrect

dont know Church did not value popular music, additional info

(C) As the Catholic Church was the center of medieval life, popular music paralleled sacred music very closely.  Incorrect

dont know Catholic Church was the center of medieval life

(D) In addition to the Church, many wealthy aristocratic households held large numbers of music manuscripts.  Incorrect

cant say wealthy aristocratic households held large numbers of music manuscripts
 
(E) Because the Church primarily recorded sacred music on manuscripts, historians are unable to confidently describe medieval popular music.  Incorrect

dont know that historians are unable to describe medieval music

suhanisinghal · Answer

could you please explain why the answer would be a and not c?

rocky620 · Answer

1. Producing manuscripts was costly
2.  Church  had literate scribes and wealth, and  maintained MOST manuscripts .
3.  MOST  of the medieval  music still in existence is sacred music .

Since any medieval music not recorded on manuscripts has now been lost to history, so as per point 2 & 3 we can infer that church mainly copied sacred music.

(A) The greatest music of the medieval period was sacred music, and for this reason it was recorded on manuscripts.... Incorrect. There is no mention of popularity of music. It might be the case that the people who had wealth to copy the music on manuscripts favored sacred music. Those people can/cannot form the majority. Hence we cannot infer this for sure.

(B) Because the  Church did not value popular music , the scribes were not allowed to copy it onto manuscripts...... Correct. Although the highlighted part is very strong, we can connect this option to bridge the gap between point 2 & 3.

(C) As the Catholic Church was the center of medieval life, popular music paralleled sacred music very closely...... Incorrect. It cannot be said for sure that church was the center of medieval life. Even if it were the case, the second part of the option " popular music paralleled sacred music very closely " does not provides any relation to the 3rd point in the analysis.

(D) In addition to the Church, many wealthy aristocratic households held large numbers of music manuscripts...... Incorrect. We cannot deduce 3rd point in the analysis.

(E) Because the Church primarily recorded sacred music on manuscripts, historians are unable to confidently describe medieval popular music..... Incorrect. The first part is ok. But the ability of historians to distinguish popular music from sacred music cannot be questioned.

IMO Option B

IanStewart · Answer

This question is asking us to draw an inference - not a logically airtight inference, but a plausible inference from the information provided.

The stem distinguishes two types of medieval music: sacred music and popular music. It tells us the only music that survives today was music written on manuscripts. It also tells us the Church produced most of those manuscripts. And it tells us most of the surviving music was sacred music.

So naturally, it follows that most of the music in the Church's manuscripts was sacred music, and not popular music, and since unrecorded music is "lost to history", historians don't have much information about the unrecorded music, which was popular music. So answer E is correct.

I'd add, though I doubt it will be helpful very often, that you can confidently rule out an answer like A in any similar question, probably without even reading the stem. If an inference reads "Brahms was the greatest composer who ever lived" or "cubism is the greatest form of painting" or makes any similar value judgment about art, it's either the wrong answer, or it's a prep company question. There is no quantity of evidence that would ever support a conclusion like that, since conclusions like that are not based on evidence; they're based on subjective opinion.

rocky620 · Answer

IanStewart  Sir,
The last sentence of the argument is " Most of the medieval music still in existence is sacred music "

Lets assume that 100 manuscripts of recorded music exist with us. Of these 51 are sacred and 49 are popular. The sacred music is still in majority. But if we see that we do have 49 popular music manuscripts (as identified by historians), how can we be so sure that historians do not have information about popular music to identify correctly?

Kindly help.

ShreyaSharma02 · Answer

The Correct Answer: 
E: The student is asked to select a statement that is supported by the claims made in the passage. To do this, the student must infer from what is stated directly. Based on these claims, answer choice (E) is the only one that fulfills this requirement. The passage states quite clearly, "Any medieval music not recorded on manuscripts has now been lost to history. Most of the medieval music still in existence is sacred music." If most extant medieval music is sacred music, and any music not recorded on manuscripts has been lost to history, then it follows that most popular music was not recorded on manuscripts and thus has been lost to history. It can safely be inferred from this fact that historians do not know much about popular medieval music because they have almost nothing to study.  Answer choice (E) is correct.

The Incorrect Answers: 
A: Answer choice (A) is incorrect because the passage does not offer an evaluative judgment on the music that is still extant, nor does it suggest anywhere that sacred music was recorded because it was the "greatest music" of the period. Historians might rightly debate this issue, but the passage does not discuss it or imply anything about it.

B: As with answer choice (A), the passage does not imply answer choice (B). The passage describes facts about the way medieval music was recorded and about what medieval music still exists, but it does not provide an answer to why most of the extant music from the Middle Ages is sacred music. Therefore, in no place in the passage does the author suggest that the Church recorded only medieval music because it did not value popular music. Answer (B) should be eliminated immediately.

C: While answer choice (C) might very well be true, the substance of this statement is not discussed at all in the passage and cannot be inferred from any statement made within it. Answer (C) is thus irrelevant and should be eliminated immediately.

D: The passage does indicate that the Church was not necessarily the only institution to have the means of affording manuscripts: "As a result, few were able to produce or own them, and the Catholic Church, which had literate scribes as well as considerable wealth, produced and maintained most manuscripts during the Middle Ages." This suggests logically that other institutions such as the aristocracy might very well have been able to produce and maintain some of the manuscripts. But nowhere does the passage discuss the contents of aristocratic households or that aristocrats might have held large numbers of manuscripts, so this statement cannot be inferred from the passage.

Source/Credit: allthepapers

IanStewart · Answer

I think you're understanding "most" to mean "more than 50%", but you should read it to mean "the considerable majority". I suppose it might be technically true that "most" means "more than half", but in practice, that's almost never its intended meaning.

I don't know what the source of this explanation is, but they're going way too far here. Even the OA here in my opinion goes too far. It's one thing not to have manuscripts notating popular songs. Then maybe you can't be confident about the details of popular music, as the OA says. It's another thing altogether to say "historians do not know much about popular medieval music", as this explanation claims, because there are all kinds of other ways to learn general things about music, even if you don't know all the notes to the songs.

Kailash331 · Answer

Actually I'd disagree with you... nowhere in the passage does it say that scribes were not allowed to transcribe popular music. It's just that they didn't have the money to do it.

ZulfiquarA · Answer

It took me more than average time which is 2:41 mins  (E) 
I was confused the most between A and E but after comparing the options I could see that while there is no information regarding the sacred to be the greatest among all, there is information that the recording of music was expensive and the church had the resources to record so greater no. of them would have been by church and that makes it hard to decide which is a sacred and which is a popular music.

Crytiocanalyst · Answer

(A) The greatest music of the medieval period was sacred music, and for this reason it was recorded on manuscripts.
We are not in a position to comment on the same, the music could be different the argument doesn't talk about the generic music alone - Hence out

(B) Because the Church did not value popular music, the scribes were not allowed to copy it onto manuscripts.
Simiilar reasoning as A what the scribes copied or not are all completely subjective and cannot be discussed with the given premise

(C) As the Catholic Church was the center of medieval life, popular music paralleled sacred music very closely.
Similar reasoning these are subjective and a argument cannot be formed on the basis of the given premise

(D) In addition to the Church, many wealthy aristocratic households held large numbers of music manuscripts.
what aristrocrats have done or not is not our concern or rather we cannot infere anything about the same

(E) Because the Church primarily recorded sacred music on manuscripts, historians are unable to confidently describe medieval popular music
This is one solid ehich is left out since every music is copied we cannot or rather it becomes painstakingly difficult for the historians to deide about the same 
Hence IMO E

VerbalBot · Answer

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The vast majority of extant music from the medieval period is recorded

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The vast majority of extant music from the medieval period is recorded

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