音乐书评译介丨《室内乐：聆听指南》

「今日荐书」《室内乐：聆听指南》收录了来自56位作曲家的192首作品，即使是最为挑剔最具学术素养的读者也会为之吸引。本书并非传统的“聆听指南”，作者凯勒通过介绍音乐背后的故事来帮助读者理解音乐本身的内涵。这些故事是为了给读者在听音乐时提供一个参考框架。了解作曲家创作某个作品时的生活，我们就能更好地理解这首作品为什么听起来是这样的。

Chamber Music: A Listener's Guide

书评《室内乐：聆听指南》

By Amanda Mark

Listener’s guide. The term conjures images of page after page of mind-numbingly dry note-by-note descriptions of measure after measure of music either that no one has ever heard before or that everyone has heard and could sing back upon request. Sounds like a fun read, right?

“聆听指南”，这个名词让人联想到的是一页又一页干巴乏味的音乐分析，一个小节又一个小节，一个音符挨着一个音符。分析的这些音乐要么是闻所未闻，要么是妇孺皆知张口能唱的。听起来还算有点意思，是吗？

Happily, with James Keller’s new catalogue of chamber music, we the readers (and listeners) get the stories behind the music, instead of a boring analysis of said music. And not just really popular music. The author created a balanced mix between the extremely well known (J. S. Bach or Aaron Copland) and the more obscure composers (Mikhail Glinka and Jacques Ibert).

令人高兴的是，詹姆斯·凯勒（James Keller）这本关于室内乐的新书会把音乐背后的故事展示给我们这些读者（和听众），而不是对其进行枯燥无味的分析。而且书中涉及的不只是人们耳熟能详的音乐，作者不仅收录了极负盛名的作曲家的作品，比如.巴赫或艾伦·科普兰(Aaron Copland），也收录了相对名气较小的作曲家的作品，比如米哈伊尔·伊万诺维奇·格林卡（Mikhail Glinka）和雅克·伊贝尔（Jacques Ibert）。

Mr. Keller also picked a solid representation of musicians from a wide range of genres, time periods, and countries. While significantly more rare than their male counterparts, even the lady composers of chamber music have a strong showing here, with discussions on Ruth Crawford Seeger, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Clara Wieck Schumann, and Joan Tower. Featuring 192 works by 56 individual composers, Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide offers something to tempt even the most discriminating and academic individual.

凯勒先生还挑选了来自不同流派、不同时期和不同国家的具有代表性的音乐家的作品。相对于男性作曲家的数量而言，写室内乐的女作曲家可谓寥若晨星，但即使是她们的作品在本书中都有醒目的位置，露丝·克劳福德·西格（Ruth Crawford Seeger）、范妮·门德尔松·亨塞尔（Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel）、克拉拉·维克·舒曼（Clara Wieck Schumann）和琼·陶尔（Joan Tower），这些人的作品在书中都有讨论。《室内乐：聆听指南》收录了来自56位作曲家的192首作品，即使是最为挑剔最具学术素养的读者也会为之吸引。

Mr. Keller’s book is a compilation of essays that he has written over the course of his career. In the introduction to the work, the author explains that many of them began life as program notes. Like a lot of catalogue or reference works, sometimes these can tend to be overly technical. The essays in this book, however, read more like short stories.

凯勒先生的这本书是他在职业生涯中写下的一系列文章的汇编。作者在前言中解释说，其中很多文章最初曾是他给曲目做的注解。像这样编目类的书籍有很多会过于专业，但这本书中的文章读起来却更像一个个小故事。

The stories are meant to give the reader a frame of reference in which to hear the work. By knowing what the composer’s life was like at the time of the composition, we can better understand why the work sounds like it does. Knowing why the piece was created in the first place or who the composer’s patrons were at the time the piece was composed/commissioned can explain why it has a certain flavor or instrumentation. Was it created specifically for a competition or did it win after the fact? Keller’s book covers all this and more.

这些故事是为了给读者在听音乐时提供一个参考框架。了解作曲家创作某个作品时的生活，我们就能更好地理解这首作品为什么听起来是这样的。了解最初这首作品是为什么而作，或者为谁（或受谁委托）而作，我们就会理解为什么它会有这样的风格或这样的乐器编排。它是专为某场比赛而作的吗，演奏者在其后获胜了吗？凯勒的书涵盖了所有这些，甚至更多。

For example, all of us (or most of us, anyway) have heard of Samuel Barber’s popular “Adagio for Strings.” But it has been somewhat forgotten that the work actually began life as the second movement for the composer’s “String Quartet, Op. 11,” which Barber himself described as a “knock-out.” Stories like this abound throughout the guide.

比方说，我们所有人（或者至少多数人吧）都听过赛谬尔·巴伯（Samuel Barber）脍炙人口的《柔板》，但是却忘记了这首作品是他《弦乐四重奏》（Op.11）中的第二乐章，巴伯自己形容该曲“超棒”。这样的故事在《指南》中比比皆是。

This book probably does not work well as a straight read-through, unless the reader is a true chamber music aficionado. Fortunately it is arranged in alphabetical order by composer for easy reference.Thank you, James Keller, for the great stories about many interesting pieces of music. Now if this book just came in paperback, so this reviewer could take it with her to the concert hall . . .

除非读者是室内乐真爱粉，否则这本书也许不太适合从头读到尾。但是好在它是把作曲家按照姓名的字母顺序排列的，查找起来很容易。谢谢你，詹姆斯·凯勒，为我们带来了很多有趣的音乐作品背后的超棒故事。恩，如果这是本平装书的话，我就可以带着她进音乐厅了。

Amanda Mark is a classically trained pianist who studied under Jean-Louis Haguenaeur at Indiana University’s renowned School of Music. She heads the publishing division of Rustic Records in Nashville and works with the Nashville Public Library as a co-founder of the Popmatic Podcast and as a reviewer of various books and music media.

阿曼达·马克（本文作者）是一位受过古典音乐训练的钢琴家，曾在印第安纳大学著名的音乐学院师从让-路易·哈格纳尔。她是纳什维尔乡村唱片公司的出版部主管，与纳什维尔公共图书馆合作创办了Popmatic播客，并担任各种书籍和音乐媒体的评论员。

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