英文自修169：音乐之美，音乐之愉

转载、注释、中文标题：武太白

原文链接：http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02sz24n

本系列文章听力MP3下载地址：

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/thought/all

导读：演讲者从自己一段不愉快的经历说起，指出音乐具有美，是一种奇迹（wonder），音乐能够形成人的社群。

Some years ago I had an internship 实习经历 which required me once a week to see the same people who didn’t like me, had no hesitation in telling me so 不惮于告诉我他们不喜欢我, and would give me the runaround for a couple of hours, leaving me physically exhausted and emotionally drained 精疲力竭. On the way home I always put on the same piece of music. For 25 minutes I’d be bathed in glory and showered in grace, and the strains of the afternoon would disappear like a river of sweat off an athlete’s back.

Music can do that. It can’t make things happy, but it can still make them beautiful. It can sweep you up into a fountain, where your tiny droplet of misery is engulfed 包围 by a plume of refreshment.

The hymn writer John Mason recalled St Augustine’s peerless 无与伦比的 words, ‘God is an infinite circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.’ That led him to write this spectacular description of God: ‘Thou art a sea without a shore, a sun without a sphere.’ That combination of wonder and beauty is what music draws us to.

When I became vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields everyone said, ‘I had no idea you knew so much about music.’ Actually I don’t – St Martin’s is famous worldwide for classical music so I ride on its reputation 借了光. But at St Martin’s it’s never just music – it’s always about beauty, truth and goodness – some desire through music to forge friendships between powerful and powerless, together to make something everyone can be proud of, that combines the joy of volunteers with the experience of professionals in a gathering where everyone’s contribution is vital, and we all need each other to be greater than the sum of our respective parts. As BBC Music Day highlights, music makes community: it’s about soul, and desire, and the heart of all things, and seeing beyond the everyday into the eternal.

A few months ago at a memorial service for an admirable man, a friend of his turned up with 850 copies of Parry’s ‘I was glad,’ written for the coronation of Edward VII in 1902. He said, ‘I thought we’d just get everyone to sing it. No rehearsal. The choir can help with the difficult bits.’ It was a crazy idea. But a beautiful one. Standing amid 800 people spontaneously shaping their four-part song, I realised we were living what the memorial was proclaiming: a much-loved man taking his place in the heavenly choir, adding his unique tenor to that of the angels, receiving the shower of God’s glory in the music of praise, entering the infinite circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. I was glad.

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