The attribution of the choral work Lacrimae to the composer Pescard (1400 – 1474) has been regarded as tentative, since...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
The attribution of the choral work Lacrimae to the composer Pescard (1400 – 1474) has been regarded as tentative, since it was based on a single treatise from the early 1500's that named Pescard as the composer. Recently, several musical treatises from the late 1500's have come to light, all of which name Pescard as the composer of Lacrimae. Unfortunately, these newly discovered treatises lend no support to the attribution of Lacrimae to Pescard, since ______.
Which of the following most logically completes the argument?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| The attribution of the choral work Lacrimae to the composer Pescard (1400 – 1474) has been regarded as tentative, since it was based on a single treatise from the early 1500's that named Pescard as the composer. |
|
| Recently, several musical treatises from the late 1500's have come to light, all of which name Pescard as the composer of Lacrimae. |
|
| Unfortunately, these newly discovered treatises lend no support to the attribution of Lacrimae to Pescard, since ______. |
|
Argument Flow:
"The argument moves from describing a problem (not enough evidence) to what looks like a solution (more evidence found) to revealing why this apparent solution doesn't actually help solve the original problem."
Main Conclusion:
"The newly discovered treatises don't support the attribution of Lacrimae to Pescard."
Logical Structure:
"The argument sets up an expectation that more sources would strengthen the case for Pescard's authorship, then breaks that expectation by stating these sources don't help. The missing piece explains why multiple sources from different time periods don't add credibility to the claim."
Prethinking:
Question type:
Logically Completes - We need to find a reason why the newly discovered treatises from the late 1500s don't actually support the attribution of Lacrimae to Pescard, even though they all name him as the composer.
Precision of Claims
The key claims involve the quality and reliability of evidence across different time periods. We have one treatise from early 1500s (tentative evidence) and several treatises from late 1500s (seemingly stronger evidence), but there's something about the late 1500s treatises that makes them unreliable or unhelpful.
Strategy
We need to think about why having more sources saying the same thing (Pescard wrote Lacrimae) wouldn't actually make the case stronger. The logic is: even though we found more documents, there's a flaw that prevents them from being good evidence. We should look for scenarios involving:
- Problems with the reliability/independence of the late 1500s sources
- Issues with timing or access to original information
- Problems with how these later sources got their information
This tells us the early 1500s treatise made some mistakes about other composers, but this doesn't explain why the newly discovered late 1500s treatises fail to support the Pescard attribution. Even if the early treatise had some errors elsewhere, the late 1500s treatises could still provide independent confirmation about Lacrimae specifically.
This focuses on the weakness of the original early 1500s treatise, but we already knew that source was tentative. The question is asking why the newly discovered treatises from the late 1500s don't help strengthen the case. This choice doesn't address the relationship between the early and late sources.
This tells us about other Pescard works not mentioned in the early treatise, but this doesn't explain why the late 1500s treatises fail to support the Lacrimae attribution. If anything, having other confirmed Pescard works might make the attribution more plausible.
This perfectly explains the problem! If the late 1500s treatises were just copying their information from the early 1500s treatise rather than having independent sources, then we don't actually have multiple independent pieces of evidence. We're essentially still relying on that same single, tentative source from the early 1500s. Multiple sources that all trace back to the same original source don't provide the independent confirmation needed to strengthen the attribution.
This talks about what happened in the 1600s, but the argument is specifically about why the late 1500s treatises don't help support the attribution. What happened a century later doesn't explain why the newly discovered sources from the late 1500s are unhelpful.