原文:http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU1MDQwNTgzMg==&mid=2247491550&idx=1&sn=2b57ab0137af2230861133a95c0e4c6b&chksm=fba04c79ccd7c56f82316934dfbe195c19ce6b2726073e63f96ff84222fab3e8988c8a742385#rd
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导读
朱利安·布里姆:阿尔罕布拉宫的回忆
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听力|精读|翻译|词组
Passion plays
激情弹奏
英文部分选自经济学人20200822期逝者版块
Obituary: Julian Bream
逝者:朱利安·布里姆
Passion plays
激情弹奏
Julian Bream, champion of the classical guitar and the lute, died on August 14th, aged 87
朱利安·布里姆,古典吉他和鲁特琴倡导者,于8月14日辞世,享年87岁。
Almost as soon as he started his long love affair with the guitar, Julian Bream was aware he was doing something disreputable. When he was caught as a teenager practising Bach in the Royal College of Music, he was warned not to bring that instrument into the building again. It lowered the tone. Signing on to do his National Service in an army band, he was told he could play piano and cello, fine, but the guitar only “occasionally”. Audiences clapped long and hard when he performed in the Wigmore Hall at 18, in 1951, but as he toured round Britain in the mid-1950s, sleeping in his Austin van to save on hotels, not many came to hear him. The guitar was not a proper instrument, somehow. Its voice was too soft to carry over an orchestra. The electric version was for pumped-up rock ’n’ rollers, the non-electric for holidays in Spain. And from Spain, the spiritual and historical home of the guitar, came the loudest scorn of all. An Englishman playing a guitar, said one virtuoso, was a kind of blasphemy.
几乎在他与吉他的漫长恋情伊始,朱利安·布里姆就知道这份爱恋拿不上台面。十几岁时,他被发现在皇家音乐学院用吉他练习巴赫的作品,学院警告他不准再把吉他带进学院大楼。吉他降低了学院的格调。在他报名军乐队入伍服兵役时,他被告知可以演奏钢琴和大提琴,这两样没问题,但吉他只能“偶尔”弹。1951年,18岁的布里姆在威格摩尔音乐厅的表演赢得了观众经久不息的热烈掌声;然而在50年代中期,当他在英国巡演时,却没有多少人来听他演奏,而他还得为了节约住宿费在自己的奥斯汀货车里过夜。怎么说呢,吉他不算是像样的乐器。吉他的声音太轻柔,在管弦乐队里传不远、没什么存在感。电吉他属于癫狂的摇滚乐手,而非电吉他则适合在西班牙度假时弹奏。但从西班牙——吉他的精神家园和历史发源地,却传来了最响亮的奚落声。某位吉他演奏大师说,一个英格兰人弹吉他,简直就是对神灵的亵渎。
But this Englishman, almost as devoted to cricket and dogs as to music, was in love, and nothing was going to deter him. His life’s passion was to restore the guitar’s reputation as a serious instrument, to bring its acres of repertory to the public, and to open their eyes to its beauty. He offered a different approach, clarity and a certain coolness, against the emotional vibrato of the Spanish style. To get the message across he toured the world, picked up four Grammys in the process, encouraged the building of guitars in England, and asked the best composers of the day—Benjamin Britten, William Walton, Michael Tippett, Hans Werner Henze—to write pieces for an instrument they had never considered before. His methods of persuasion were chummy and larky, as might be expected of a South Londoner, proudly born in Battersea between the power station and the dogs’ home: convivial drinks, invitations to his farmhouse in Dorset, races round the lanes in his classic cars, demonic table-tennis games. And they worked.
但是这个英格兰人,这个像热爱音乐一样热爱板球与狗的英格兰人,已经陷入对吉他的爱恋,没有什么能够阻挡他。他毕生的热情就是要重振吉他作为一种严肃乐器的声誉,把众多的吉他曲目呈现给大众,让他们欣赏吉他之美。与西班牙演奏风格中使用饱含情感的颤音不同,他的演奏清晰又带有一丝克制。为了让更多的人知晓吉他之美,他在全世界巡演,期间参选并四次荣获格莱美奖,他还带动了英格兰的吉他组装制作,并邀请当时最好的作曲家——本杰明·布里顿、威廉·沃尔顿、迈克尔·蒂皮特和汉斯·维尔纳·亨策——专门为吉他谱曲,而吉他是这些作曲家之前从未考虑过的乐器。他是南伦敦人,以出生在巴特西区发电站和狗狗慈善之家之间的区域为傲。他劝说这些作曲家的方式可能就正如大众对南伦敦人的想象,做法亲切又好玩:开怀畅饮,到他多赛特的农舍做客,开着他的古董车在赛道上角逐,让人欲罢不能的乒乓球赛。这些都奏效了。
In effect he had two lives. One was the gregarious whirl of jet planes, hotels, parties and interviews, when he would throw himself around in his chair with the sheer joy of talking guitars. The other was rapt communion with the object of his love. No one had taught him how to play, beyond basic scales and chords as a child. He had picked up technique for himself, and was continually stretching and perfecting it. Practice demanded at least four hours a day, but he also took long sojourns away from the stage to study, play alone and gather his thoughts. To learn Britten’s “Nocturnal after John Dowland”, which was nearly beyond him, he immured himself in a shepherd’s hut on Robert Graves’s estate in Majorca. To make recordings, he would use an empty chapel near his house, at night, with no one else there save a producer and one sound engineer. This intense need for privacy inevitably flowed over into his performances, he and his guitar alone and barely moving in the spotlight, his body bent low over the instrument, coaxing the strings to express more, wincing when they did not, opening his mouth with delight, closing his eyes, until he was almost surprised on finishing to find an audience there.
其实,他过着两种生活。一种是在交际场上游走,穿梭于喷气式飞机、酒店、派对以及采访。受访时,他会自在地坐在椅子上,陶醉于谈论吉他的快乐中。另一种则是全身心沉浸在与心爱之物的交流当中。小时候,除了基本的音阶、和弦,没人教过他如何弹奏吉他。他自己学会了弹奏技巧,并不断探索延伸及完善它。他一天至少要练4个小时,但他也会长时间远离舞台去学习、独自演奏、整理思绪。布里顿所作《约翰道兰夜曲改编曲》的难度几乎超出他能力范围,而为了学会这首曲子,他把自己关在马略卡岛上罗伯特·格雷夫斯庄园的牧羊人棚屋里潜心练习。为了录制唱片,他会在夜间使用家附近的一所空教堂,只带上一个制作人和一个音响工程师。这种对隐私的强烈需求也不可避免地体现在了他的表演中:在聚光灯下只有他和吉他,他抱着吉他几乎一动不动;他躬身靠近吉他,耐心地拨动琴弦以求更有表现力,没做到时则会皱眉蹙额;他开心地张着嘴,闭着眼演奏;这样一直持续到演奏结束,他睁开眼近乎惊讶地发现台下还有一群观众。
注:
布里顿的《夜曲》创作于1963年,献给伟大的英国吉他家布里姆,于约翰·道兰的歌曲《来吧,沉睡》而作。
Where had this passion come from? Partly from his father, who played in a dance band and left his own guitar lying about at home; partly from the burning anguish of Django Reinhardt and the Quintette du Hot Club de France; partly from watching Andrés Segovia, the greatest Spanish master of the age, closely through clenched binoculars at a London concert. Still quite young, he had followed his father’s repair of a battered Ramírez guitar, discovering the instrument’s inner life. He could tell later, simply from playing for a few minutes, how the internal bars were spaced, or what adjustment, perhaps a thousandth of an inch, was needed in the bridge saddle. He mourned lost loves: the little singing guitar made for him by José Romanillos in 1973, which after a decade had started to lose its vitality, as they all did; the noble Hauser and the Bouchet, an absolute pearl, stolen from his car in the 1960s. But the instrument’s character flaws did not escape him either. The guitar might be a great wooer, so suggestive in its fullness and complexity of tone; it could also be obstinate and shallow, a deceiver.
这种激情从何而来?部分源于他的父亲,他父亲在一个舞会伴奏乐队里做乐手,父亲自己的吉他就随意摆在家里;部分源于强哥·莱恩哈特和法国热乐五重奏所表现出的强烈的痛苦;还有一部分源于观看当代最伟大的西班牙大师安德烈斯·塞戈维亚的演奏——在伦敦的一场音乐会上,他紧握着双筒望远镜仔细观看大师。在他还很小的时候,就跟着父亲修理了一把破损的拉米雷斯吉他,发现了这种乐器内在生命。后来,他只用弹几分钟,就能知道吉他内部的音梁是怎么排列的,或者琴桥上需要做什么调整,可能只是千分之一英寸的微调。他会为失去的心爱之物哀悼:例如一把何塞·罗曼尼洛斯1973年为他制作的弹唱小吉他——这把小吉他和这类其他的小吉他一样,十年后开始失去生命力;又如在20世纪60年代从他车上被盗走的一把高贵的豪瑟吉他和一把绝对称得上是珍宝的布谢吉他。但吉他这种乐器固有的特征缺陷也没能瞒得过他。吉他可以是个出色的追求者,它饱满、复杂的音色引人遐想;但它也可能是顽固的、是肤浅的,是个骗子。
注:
1.赫尔曼·豪瑟一世(1882-1952)被认为是最优秀的德国吉他制作大师,也是迄今为止世界上最有代表性的吉他制作大师之一。他继承并发展了托列斯的制作传统,并以他特有的“日尔曼人的工程原则”加以实现。
2.罗伯特·布谢曾经为布里姆制作过三把吉他,其中第二把布里姆最喜欢。在他所著的A Life on the Road一书中, 他是这样评价的:“He made three instruments for me, the second one being an absolute pearl. It had a beautiful sound, and a sustaining quality throughout its whole register like a small eighteenth century organ. I treasured that instrument like no other.”
In that respect he seemed to love the lute even more. This, too, he rescued from ignorance and virtual obsolescence, revelling in its repertory of songs and sad airs from Tudor and Elizabethan times. (He supposed that, like all jesters, he was a melancholy person underneath.) Again, he taught himself to play, starting as a boy on a lute picked up by his father, dodgily, for a couple of quid on Charing Cross Road. He persevered with this new enterprise of plucking with his nails rather than fingering, and formed a consort of period instruments to revive the music, mostly, of Dowland and Thomas Morley. The tenor Peter Pears teamed up with him for lute songs. Against the democratic guitar, played from street corner to (now, at last) concert hall, the lute struck him as more beautiful, more aristocratic, more honest. It was also guarded by scholars, who criticised his technique until, in his usual style, he shut himself away and worked out mutually, just man, instrument and many packs of Gauloises, what needed to be done.
在这一点上,他似乎更爱鲁特琴一些。和吉他一样,他把鲁特琴从被忽视和过时中解救了出来,沉迷于鲁特琴的很多保留曲目和来自都铎和伊丽莎白时代的悲伤的咏叹调(他认为自己就和所有弄臣一样,内心忧郁悲伤。)和学吉他一样,他自学鲁特琴。从孩提时代,他就用他爸买的琴练习,那把琴是他爸机智地只用了几英镑就从查令十字街买回来的。他坚持进行着这项新的弹奏事业,用指甲拨弦而不是用手指弹奏,还组了一个古乐器演奏团,重现那个年代的乐曲(大部分是道兰和托马斯·莫利所作)。男高音彼得·皮尔斯和他合作,共同演绎用鲁特琴伴奏的歌曲。吉他亲民,无论在街角还是在音乐厅(现在总算可以了)都可以演奏;而鲁特琴则不同,鲁特琴给他一种更加美妙、更加高贵、更加真挚的印象。同样有一批学者对鲁特琴墨守成规,他们批判他的演奏技巧;直到布里姆像往常一样将自己隔绝起来,在只有他、乐器和一包包高炉香烟的空间里,他们共同探索需要做些什么。
One great attraction of the lute was its relative Englishness. The spirit that lived in it, and had done since the wood was first fashioned from the tree, was one he instinctively understood. All through, though, he knew that the spirit of the guitar had been infused in Spain. There was no getting away from this, nor from the country whose language he never spoke but whose music made up most of his life. So in 1985 he tipped his English hat to it, with an eight-part TV series called “¡Guitarra!” in which he described the history of the instrument, went to bars, smoked cigars and played in Spanish cloisters, villas and castles, looking perfectly at home.
鲁特琴的一大吸引力在于它比古典吉他更具英伦气息。这种存在于鲁特琴中的精神,自木头从树上被砍下塑形起就停留其中的精神,他可以本能地心领神会。其实,他自始至终都知道,吉他的精神源自西班牙。是没有办法回避这个根源的、也没有办法回避西班牙这个国家。布里姆一直不会说西班牙语,但西班牙的音乐却在他的生命中占有很大的分量。所以在1985年,他以英国人的身份向西班牙致意,拍了一部名为《吉他!》的八集电视系列片里。片中他介绍吉他的历史,去往酒吧,抽雪茄,然后在西班牙修道院的回廊、乡间庄园和城堡里弹奏着吉他,看起来完全就像在自己家里一样舒适自得。
注:
tip your hat/cap (to somebody): to touch or raise your hat as a greeting to someone 向某人抬帽致意;(AmE) to say or do something that shows you admire what someone has done 对某人表示赞赏
Yet perfection was always two steps off. Did he feel, an interviewer once asked him, that he had removed the tag of “blasphemy” from an Englishman playing the guitar? Had he, in fact, sanctified it? The question stunned him for a moment. Then he stammered, with his flat London vowels, “Not necessarily.”
然而完满总在两步之遥。有一次采访者问他,他是否认为自己已经让弹吉他的英国人摘下“亵渎神灵”的标签?他是不是实际上让这个身份变得神圣起来?这个问题让他愣了好一阵子,然后他结结巴巴地用他平淡的伦敦腔说:“也未必吧。”
翻译组:
Alex,不务正业的理工男
Vicky,少儿英语老师+笔译新人
Sheri,坚信可以forever young的老年人
校对组:
Fiona,口笔译小菜鸟,胡粉Lenka粉
Qianna,追求专业的非英专,很讲逻辑,英伦摇滚迷
Rachel Zhang,学理工科,爱跳芭蕾,热爱文艺的非典型翻译
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观点|评论|思考
本次感想
Ronnie,动物保护主义者
为香港武侠小说多次配乐的胡伟立曾经说:“音乐没有高低贵贱,只有好听不好听。”我们也应该报以更开放、更包容的心怀去看待音乐,乃至去看待一切的文化和艺术,流行的不一定不能成为经典。诗三百,整体分成“风”“雅”“颂”,其中最令人印象深刻,公认艺术成就最高的是“风”,这种艺术形式来自普通人民的劳动生活,反映人们热切关注的问题,用词也总是很平常,比如“一日不见,如三月兮”、“窈窕淑女,君子好逑”等等。用现在的话说,能够契合人们关注点的艺术是“有市场的”,就像《信天游》反映出改革开放初见成效,人们压抑已久的情绪终于得到释放一样,《骑上我心爱的小摩托》用简单、重复、戏谑的快餐音乐让很多忙碌疲惫的人们找到一个停顿点。
朱利安布里姆的音乐区别于西班牙传统热情奔放的弗拉明戈,也区别于英伦式的端庄,他的音乐像不太宽阔的河流,漱漱地平静地流淌,像夏日飘窗下昏暗房间里忽明忽灭的烟头,让人浮想联翩,迫不及待地想知道接下来的故事。
我们缅怀朱利安布里姆,感激他以一己之力为古典吉他正名,感激他用出众的才华打动人心。
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愿景
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