英语泛读教程（高等教育出版社）

How Do You Know It's Good?

by Marya Mannes

Do you love art? Can you tell which art pieces are good and which are not? Are there any standards for judging arts? Read the following article and see how Marya Mannes answers such questions.

Suppose there were no critics to tell us how to react to a picture, a play, or a new composition of music. Suppose we wandered innocent as the dawn into an art exhibition of unsigned paintings. By what standards, by what values would we decide whether they were good or bad, talented or untalented, successes or failures? How can we ever know that what we think is right?

For the last fifteen or twenty years the fashion in criticism or appreciation of the arts has been to deny the existence of any valid criteria and to make the words "good" or "bad" irrelevant, immaterial, and inapplicable. There is no such thing, we are told, as a set of standards, first acquired through experience and knowledge and later imposed on the subject under discussion. This has been a popular approach, for it relieves the critic of the responsibility of judgment and the public of the necessity of knowledge. It pleases those resentful of disciplines, it flatters the empty-minded by calling them open-minded, it comforts the confused. Under the banner of democracy and the kind of equality which our forefathers did not mean, it says, in effect, "Who are you to tell us what is good or bad?" This is the same cry used so long and so effectively by the producers of mass media who insist that it is the public, not they, who decides what it wants to hear and see, and that for a critic to say that this program is bad and this program is good is purely a reflection of personal taste. Nobody recently has expressed this philosophy more succinctly than Dr. Frank Stanton, the highly intelligent president of CBS television. At a hearing before the Federal Communications Commission, this phrase escaped him under questioning:" One man's mediocrity is another man's good program."

There is no better way of saying "No values are absolute." There is another important aspect to this philosophy of laissez faire: It is the fear, in all observers of all forms of art, of guessing wrong. This fear is well come by, for who has not heard of the contemporary outcries against artists who later were called great? Every age has its arbiters who do not grow with their times, who cannot tell evolution from revolution or the difference between frivolous faddism, amateurish experimentation, and profound and necessary change. Who wants to be caught flagrante delicto with an error of judgment as serious as this ? It is far safer, and certainly easier, to look at a picture or a play or a poem and to say " This is hard to understand, but it may be good," or simply to welcome it as a new form. The word "new"—in our country especially — has magical connotations. What is new must be good; what is old is probably bad. And if a critic can describe the new in language that nobody can understand, he's safer still. If he has mastered the art of saying nothing with exquisite complexity, nobody can quote him later as saying anything.

But all these, I maintain, are forms of abdication from the responsibility of judgment. In creating, the artist commits himself; in appreciating, you have a commitment of your own. For after all, it is the audience which makes the arts. A climate of appreciation is essential to its flowering, and the higher the expectations of the public, the better the performance of the artist. Conversely, only a public ill-served by its critics could have accepted as art and as literature so much in these last years that has been neither. If anything goes, everything goes; and at the bottom of the junkpile lie the discarded standards too.

But what are these standards? How do you get them? How do you know they're the right ones? How can you make a clear pattern out of so many intangibles, including that greatest one, the very private I?

Well for one thing, it's fairly obvious that the more you read and see and hear, the more equipped you'll be to practice that art of association which is at the basis of all understanding and judgment. The more you live and the more you look, the more aware you are of a consistent pattern — as universal as the stars, as the tides, as breathing, as night and day — underlying everything. I would call this pattern and this rhythm an order. Not order — an order. Within it exists an incredible diversity of forms. Without it lies chaos — the wild cells of destruction — sickness. It is in the end up to you to distinguish between the diversity that is health and the chaos that is sickness, and you can't do this without a process of association that can link a bar of Mozart with the corner of a Vermeer painting, or a Stravinsky score with a Picasso abstraction; or that can relate an aggressive act with a Franz Kline painting and a fit of coughing with a John Cage composition.

There is no accident in the fact that certain expressions of art live for all time and that others die with the moment, and although you may not always define the reasons, you can ask the questions. What does an artist say that is timeless; how does he say it? How much is fashion, how much is merely reflection? Why is Sir Walter Scott so hard to read now, and Jane Austen not? Why is baroque right for one age and too effulgent for another?

Can a standard of craftsmanship apply to art of all ages, or does each have its own, and different, definitions? You may have been aware, inadvertently, that craftsmanship has become a dirty word these years because, again, it implies standards — something done well or done badly. The result of this convenient avoidance is a plentitude of actors who can't project their voices, singers who can't phrase their songs, poets who can't communicate emotion, and writers who have no vocabulary — not to speak of painters who can't draw. The dogma now is that craftsmanship gets in the way of expression. You can do better if you don't know how you do it, let alone what you're doing.

I think it is time you helped reverse this trend by trying to rediscover craft: the command of the chosen instrument, whether it is a brush, a word, or a voice. When you begin to detect the difference between freedom and sloppiness, between serious experimentation and egotherapy, between skill and slickness, between strength and violence, you are on your way to separating the sheep from the goats, a form of segregation denied us for quite a while. All you need to restore it is a small bundle of standards and a Geiger counter that detects fraud, and we might begin our tour of the arts in an area where both are urgently needed: contemporary painting.

I don't know what's worse: to have to look at acres of bad art to find the little good, or to read what the critics say about it all. In no other field of expression has so much double-talk flourished, so much confusion prevailed, and so much nonsense been circulated: further evidence of the close interdependence between the arts and the critical climate they inhabit. It will be my pleasure to share with you some of this double-talk so typical of our times.

Item one: preface for a catalogue of an abstract painter:

"Time-bound meditation experiencing a life; sincere with plastic piety at the threshold of hallowed arcana; a striving for pure ideation giving shape to inner drive; formalized patterns where neural balances reach a fiction." End of quote. Know what this artist paints like now?

Item two: a review in the Art News:

"...a weird and disparate assortment of material, but the monstrosity which bloomed into his most recent cancer of aggregations is present in some form everywhere..." Then, later. "A gluttony of things and processes terminated by a glorious constipation."

Item three: same magazine, review of an artist who welds automobile fragments into abstract shapes:

Each fragment...is made an extreme of human exasperation, torn at and fought all the way, and has its rightness of form as if by accident. Any technique that requires order or discipline would just be the human ego. No, these must be egoless, uncontrolled, undesigned and different enough to give you a bang—fifty miles an hour around a telephone pole...

"Any technique that requires order of discipline would just be the human ego." What does he mean — "just be?" What are they really talking about? Is this journalism? Is it criticism? Or is it that other convenient abdication from standards of performance and judgment practiced by so may artists and critics that they, like certain writers who deal only in sickness and depravity, "reflect the chaos about them"? Again, whose chaos? Whose depravity?

I had always thought that the prime function of art was to create order out of chaos—again, not the order of neatness or rigidity or convention or artifice, but the order of clarity by which one will and one vision could draw the essential truth out of apparent confusion. I still do. It is not enough to use parts of a car to convey the brutality of the machine. This is as slavishly representative, and just as easy, as arranging dried flowers under glass to convey nature.

Speaking of which, i.e., the use of real materials (burlap, old gloves, bottletops) in lieu of pigment, this is what one critic had to say about an exhibition of Assemblage at the Museum of Modern Art last year:

Spotted throughout the show are indisputable works of art, accounting for a quarter or even a half of the total display. But the remainder are works of non-art, anti-art, and art substitutes that are the aesthetic counterparts of the social deficiencies that land people in the clink on charges of vagrancy. These aesthetic bankrupts ...have no legitimate ideological roof over their heads and not the price of a square intellectual meal, much less a spiritual sandwich, in their pockets.

I quote these words of John Canaday of The New York Times as an example of the kind of criticism which puts responsibility to an intelligent public above popularity with an intellectual coterie. Canaday has the courage to say what he thinks and the capacity to say it clearly: two qualities notably absent from his profession.

Next to art, I would say that appreciation and evaluation in the field of music is the most difficult. For it is rarely possible to judge a new composition at one hearing only. What seems confusing or fragmented at first might well become clear and organic a third time. Or it might not. The only salvation here for the listener is, again, an instinct born of experience and association which allows him to separate intent from accident, design from experimentation, and pretense from conviction. Much of contemporary music is, like its sister art, merely a reflection of the composer's own fragmentation: an absorption in self and symbols at the expense of communication with others. The artist, in short, says to the public: If you don't understand this, it's because you're dumb. I maintain that you are not. You may have to go part way or even halfway to meet the artist, but if you must go the whole way, it's his fault, not yours. Hold fast to that. And remember it too when you read new poetry, that estranged sister of music.

When you come to theater, in this extremely hasty tour of the arts, you can approach it on two different levels. You can bring to it anticipation and innocence, giving yourself up, as it were, to the life on the stage and reacting to it emotionally, if the play is good, or listlessly, if the play is boring; a part of the audience organism that expresses its favor by silence or laughter and its disfavor by coughing and rustling. Or you can bring to it certain critical faculties that may heighten, rather than diminish, your enjoyment.

You can ask yourselves whether the actors are truly in their parts or merely projecting themselves; whether the scenery helps or hurts the mood; whether the playwright is honest with himself, his characters, and you. Somewhere along the line you can learn to distinguish between the true creative act and the false arbitrary gesture; between fresh observation and stale cliché; between the avant-garde play that is pretentious drive and the avant-garde play that finds new ways to say old truths.

Purpose and craftsmanship — end and means — these are the keys to your judgment in all the arts. What is this painter trying to say when he slashes a broad band of black across a white canvas and lets the edges dribble down? Is it a statement of violence? Is it a self-portrait? If it is one of these, has he made you believe it? Or is this a gesture of the ego or a form of therapy? If it shocks you, what does it shock you into?

And what of this tight little painting of bright flowers in a vase? Is the painter saying anything new about flowers? Is it different from a million other canvases of flowers? Has it any life, any meaning, beyond its statement? Is there any pleasure in its forms or texture? The question is not whether a thing is abstract or representational, whether it is "modern" or conventional. The question, inexorably, is whether it is good. And this is a decision which only you, on the basis of instinct, experience, and association, can make for yourself. It takes independence and courage. It involves, moreover, the risk of wrong decision and the humility, after the passage of time, of recognizing it as such. As we grow and change and learn, our attitudes can change too, and what we once thought obscure or "difficult" can later emerge as coherent and illuminating. Entrenched prejudices, obdurate opinions are as sterile as no opinions at all.

Yet standards there are, timeless as the universe itself. And when you have committed yourself to them, you have acquired a passport to that elusive but immutable realm of truth. Keep it with you in the forests of bewilderment. And never be afraid to speak up.

(2395 words) TOP

课文一

你怎么知道艺术品的优劣?

玛丽亚·曼尼丝

你喜欢艺术吗？你能说出哪些艺术品好哪些不好？是否存在评价艺术的标准？读一读下面这篇文章，看看玛丽亚·曼尼丝如何回答这样的问题。

设想没有评论家告诉我们，对一幅画，一个剧本或一段新乐曲怎样反应。设想我们无意间步入一个未署名油画的画展。我们依据什么标准，依据什么价值来评判它们是优是劣，是天才的还是没有天才的，是成功还是失败?我们又怎能知道自己的想法是正确的?

近15或20年来，在艺术批评与欣赏上，流行否认任何合理标准的存在，认为“好”与“坏”是无关紧要、无足轻重、无可适用的字眼。我们被告知，根本不存在先通过知识与经验获得，然后加在讨论的对象上的一套标准。这种方法一直受到欢迎，因为它解除了评论家评判的责任，公众也无须知识。它迎合那些不愿受规则约束的人，把头脑空空者奉承为思路开阔，并使不知所措的人得到安慰。在民主平等之旗的掩护下——当然不是我们祖先所说的那种平等——它实际是在说：“你是谁，要来告诉我们什么是好，什么是坏?”这与大众传媒制作者的一贯伎俩如出一辙。他们坚持认为，由公众而不是由他们决定听什么和看什么，而评论家说这个节目好而这个节目不好，这纯粹是个人趣味的反映。关于这一点，哥伦比亚广播电视公司聪明绝顶的总裁弗兰克·斯丹坦博士表达得极为简明透彻。最近在联邦通讯委员会的一次听证会上，他在接受询问时脱口而出：“一人眼里的平庸之作，却是另一人的佳作。”

最妙不过的说法是：“没有一个标准是绝对的”。造成这种放任观念的另一重要因素是：畏惧感——所有艺术形式的观察者们都有唯恐猜错的担心。这种担心极易遇到，谁没有听说当初饱受世人指摘的艺术家后来被称为大师？每个时期都有一些评判者，他们不和时代一起前进，无法区分进化和革命，风行一时的时尚、业余的实验与深刻的必然的变化之间的区别。谁愿意作出这样严重的判断错误而贻笑大方?安全得多，当然也容易得多的做法是：看着一幅画，一个剧本或一首诗，说道：“它很难懂，但也许很好”；或者干脆把它当作新形式加以欢迎。“新的”这个词——尤其在我们这个国度——具有魔力般的涵义。凡是新的都是好的；而旧的则极可能是不好的。如果评论家能用无人理解的语言描述新事物，那么他就更为安全。倘若他掌握了说话的艺术，用精巧复杂的言辞，却什么也没说，日后就无人能够说他曾经说过什么。

但是我认为，所有这一切实质上都是对评判责任的背弃。艺术家在创作中表现自己，而你则在欣赏中有自己的承诺。毕竟还是观众成就了艺术。欣赏的气氛对于艺术的繁荣不可或缺。公众的期望愈高，艺术家的表现就愈好。相反，只有被评论家误导的社会，才会在这几年把既不是艺术也不是文学的东西当做艺术和文学接受。如果一件东西没有了，一切也就没有了，而在废物堆最底层的是被抛弃的标准。

但这些标准究竟是什么?你怎样得到它们?你如何知道它们是正确的?你又如何能在这许多不可捉摸的东西，包括最不可捉摸的自我本身，理清出一个清晰的模式?

首先，很明显，你愈是多读、多看、多听，你将愈训练有素，实践建立在所有的理解与判断之上的联想艺术。愈是见多识广，愈能深刻意识到一个连贯一致的规律——犹如星辰、潮汐、呼吸、白昼黑夜一般具有普遍性——存在于万事万物中。我把这一规律与这一节奏称为一种秩序。并非仅仅是秩序，而是一条法则。其中是变化万千的各种存在形式，其外则是混乱——疯狂的毁灭因素——和病态。最终应由你来区分健康的多样性与病态的混乱，而不运用联想的过程是无法做到的。没有联想的过程，你就不能将莫扎特乐曲的一节和维米尔油画的一角，斯特拉文斯基的乐谱与毕加索的抽象画，或者一个挑衅性的行为与弗兰茨·克兰的油画，一阵咳嗽声与约翰·凯奇的作品联系起来。

某些艺术表现形式是永恒的，而另一些却转瞬即逝，这并非偶然现象。尽管你不一定总要解释原因，但你可以提出问题。艺术家说了些什么永恒的东西?他怎样说这些?有多少是时尚，多少纯是反映?为什么如今沃尔特·司各特的作品如此难读，而简·奥斯丁却不是这样?为什么巴洛克艺术风格适合某一时期，而另一时期却显得过于炫目辉煌?

是否存在一个技巧标准，能够适用于所有时代的艺术，还是每个时代对标准都有各自不同的定义?你也许已不经意地意识到，这些年“技巧”已变成不入流的字眼，因为它含有“标准”的意思——即作品完成得好不好。这种方便的逃避的结果，导致了大量不能发出声音的演员，不会解释歌曲涵义的歌手，不能交流感情的诗人，词汇贫乏的作家——更不用说不会作画的画家。现在的教条是，技巧阻碍表达。不必说你不知道自己在做什么，如果你不知道怎样去做，那么你就能做得更好。

我认为，到了你帮助扭转这一潮流的时候了，方法是努力重新发现技巧：掌握选择的工具，无论是画笔、字词还是声音。当你开始觉察自由与草率，严肃的实验与自我疗法，技艺与即兴，力量与暴力之间的区别时，你就逐渐能够将山羊与绵羊区分开来，而这种区分形式我们竟阔别已久。所有你需要重新拥有的，不过是几条标准和能够看穿骗局的盖氏测量仪，而我们可以在急切需要这两者的领域——当代绘画开始艺术之旅。

我不知道什么更糟糕：不得不面对大面积的拙劣艺术，为的是发现些许可取之处，还是阅读评论家对此说的一切。其他任何一个表现领域都不会象画界一样如此盛行煞有其事的言谈，流行如此多的废话：艺术与艺术生存的评论氛围之间紧密地相互依赖的进一步证据。我将很乐意和你共享我们时代典型的故弄玄虚的东西。

第一则：一个抽象派画家画册目录的前言：

“受时间约束的沉思体验一种生活；具有挚情与可塑的虔诚，拜倒在女神玄秘之门下；执着追求一种描述内部冲动的纯粹的思想概念，形式化的图案虚构出神经中枢的平衡。”引录完毕。知道该画家画的象什么了吗？

第二则：《艺术新闻》上的一段评论。

“……怪诞的迥然不同的物质混合，但是怪异发展成他最近加剧的癌变，到处以某种形式出现……”接着，后面，“为辉煌的便秘所终止的事物与过程的暴饮暴食。”

第三则：摘自同一杂志，评论一位将汽车碎片焊接成抽象的形状的艺术家。

“每一碎片……被制成人类愤怒的一个极端，精疲力竭，一路争斗，具有似乎是偶然获得的正确形式。任何需要秩序与管束的技巧都只是人类的自我。不,这些必须是无自我的，无法控制的，未经设计的，迥然相异的，以给你一次重击——围绕电线杆时速50英里……”

“任何需要秩序与管束的技巧都只是人类的自我。”“只是”一词是什么意思？他们究竟在谈论什么？这是新闻写作吗？是评论吗？或是许多艺术家、评论家随便背离表演与评判标准的方式？与那些描述病态与堕落的作家相似，这些艺术家和评论家“反映他们四周的混乱。”我又要问了，谁的混乱？谁的堕落？

我过去一直认为，艺术的首要功能是于混乱中创造秩序——当然此处秩序的含义不是一丝不乱，一成不变，传统守旧或人工巧饰，而是指清楚明了，意志与构想能够藉此从表面的混乱中发现根本的真理。现在我仍这样认为。用汽车的零件来表现机器的非人道是不够的。这和把干花压在玻璃下展现自然一样生搬硬套，一样简单。

谈到这些，即以真实的材料（粗麻布，旧手套、瓶盖）代替颜料，去年一位评论家评价现代艺术博物馆的一次组合展览会时，这样说道：

“置于这次展览会上无可争议的艺术品，占展品总数的1/4甚至1/2。但其余的全是非艺术的，反艺术的及艺术的替代品——社会缺陷的美学对应物。正是那些缺陷使人们因流浪而陷入牢狱之灾。这些美学意义上的破产者头上没有合法的意识形态遮风蔽雨，口袋中无钱支付一顿像样的智慧之餐，更不要说精神三文治了。”

我引用约翰·凯纳迪载于《纽约时报》上的这段评论，作为将对有思想的公众的责任置于在知识分子小圈子里受欢迎之上的那种批评的一个例子。凯纳迪有勇气直抒已见，有能力阐述清楚：两项他的行业明显缺少的素质。

仅次于绘画，我认为音乐领域的欣赏与评价是最困难的。仅仅听过一次，是不大可能对新乐曲作出评判的。有的乐曲初听时象混乱的片断，再听两遍也许会有清晰的整体感。也许不会。听众唯一的救助，还是来自经验与联想的直觉，这直觉使他能够分别意图与偶然，设计与实验，伪称与确信。当代音乐与它的姐妹艺术绘画一样，大多都仅仅是创作者自身片断的反映——专注于自我与象征，忽略与他人的交流。总之，艺术家会对公众说：如果你不理解我的作品，是因为你愚钝。我以为你不愚钝。你可以对艺术家作出稍微甚至相当程度的让步，但假如你必须完全妥协，那就是他的错，不是你的错。务必坚持这一点。品读新诗时，也要记住，诗歌是音乐的被陌生化了的姐妹。

在这次极其仓促的艺术之旅中，当抵达戏剧这站时，你能够在两个层次上考察。你可以应用期待和纯真，沉湎于舞台上演绎的生活，如果演的好就激动，如果演的不好就厌倦；应用观众机制的一部分——用沉默或大笑表示好感，以咳嗽或骚动发泄不满。或者，你可以应用某些评判方法，这些方法能提高，而不是减少你的欣赏乐趣。

你可以问自己，演员是真正进入了角色，还是仅仅在自我展示？布景有助还是妨碍情绪的表达？剧作家对他自身、对他笔下的人物，对你是否真诚？沿着这一思路，你将逐渐学会区分真正创造性的演出与虚饰的武断的姿态，区分新鲜的观察与陈词滥调；区分矫揉造作的前卫戏剧和以全新方式诠释固有真理的前卫戏剧。

意图与技巧——目的与方式——这些是你在一切艺术领域进行评判的关键。画家在一块白画布上加了宽宽的一道黑条，黑条的边上滴着颜料，试图表达什么意思？是说明暴力？还是自画像？如是是其中之一，他是否使你信服？或者，是不是自我的一种姿态或一种治疗形式？如果它使你震惊，震惊你的什么？

那么这幅画着花瓶中鲜花的紧凑的小油画是什么意思？画家是否赋予鲜花新意？它与其他数以万计的鲜花画是不是有所不同？它是不是具有超越画面之外的生命力或意义？它的形式与纹理中是否有些令人愉快的东西？问题并不在于作品是抽象的还是表现的，是“现代的”还是传统的。无情的一点是，问题在于它是否优秀。这是必须根据直觉、经验及联想由你自己作出的决定。它需要勇气与独立。而且，还包含评判错误的风险，和随着时间推移认识到做出了错误评判后所需要的虚怀若谷。随着年岁渐长，学识益多，我们的态度也可能改变，先前认为费解或晦涩的，日后也许会显出连贯性与启示性。固有的偏见、执拗的观点与没有观点一样贫瘠可怜。

然而存在着与宇宙本身一样永恒的标准。当你遵循标准时，你已获得了通往那难寻却不变的真理之国的护照。身处迷惑之林时要保管好它。并且永远不要害怕直陈已见。

Text 2

How We Listen to Music?

by Aaron Copland

We all listen to music according to our separate capacities. But, for the sake of analysis, the whole listening process may become clearer if we break it up into its component parts, so to speak. In a certain sense we all listen to music on three separate planes. For lack of a better terminology, one might name these: (1) the sensuous plane, (2) the expressive plane, (3) the sheerly musical plane. The only advantage to be gained from mechanically splitting up the listening process into these hypothetical planes is the clearer view to be had of the way in which we listen.

The simplest way of listening to music is to listen for the sheer pleasure of the musical sound itself. That is the sensuous plane. It is the plane on which we hear music without thinking, without considering it in any way. One turns on the radio while doing something else and absent-mindedly bathes in the sound. A kind of brainless but attractive state of mind is engendered by the mere sound appeal of the music.

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck on the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room — proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

The surprising thing is that many people who consider themselves qualified music lovers abuse that plane in listening. They go to concerts in order to lose themselves. They use music as a consolation or an escape. They enter an ideal world where one doesn't have to think of the realities of everyday life. Of course they aren't thinking about the music either. Music allows them to leave it, and they go off to a place to dream, dreaming because of and apropos of the music yet never quite listening to it.

Yes, the sound appeal of music is a potent and primitive force, but you must not allow it to usurp a disproportionate share of your interest. The sensuous plane is an important one in music, a very important one, but it does not constitute the whole story.

There is no need to digress further on the sensuous plane. Its appeal to every normal human being is self-evident. There is, however, such a thing as becoming more sensitive to the different kinds of sound stuff as used by various composers. For all composers do not use that sound stuff in the same way. Don't get the idea that the value of music is commensurate with its sensuous appeal or that the loveliest sounding music is made by the greatest composer. If that were so, Ravel would be a greater creator than Beethoven. The point is that the sound element varies with each composer, that his usage of sound forms an integral part of his style and must be taken into account when listening. The reader can see, therefore, that a more conscious approach is valuable even on this primary plane of music listening.

The second plane on which music exists is what I have called the expressive one. Here, immediately, we tread on controversial ground. Composers have a way of shying away from any discussion of music's expressive side. Did not Stravinsky himself proclaim that his music was an "object," a "thing," with a life of its own, and with no other meaning than its own purely musical existence? This intransigent attitude of Stravinsky's may be due to the fact that so many people have tried to read different meanings into so many pieces. Heaven knows it is difficult enough to say precisely what it is that a piece of music means, to say it definitely, to say it finally to that everyone is satisfied with your explanation, but that should not lead one to the other extreme of denying to music the right to be "expressive."

My own belief is that all music has an expressive power, some more and some less, but that all music has a certain meaning behind the notes and that that meaning behind the notes constitutes, after all, what the piece is saying, what the piece is about. This whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, "Is there a meaning to music?" My answer to that would be, "Yes." And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be, "No." Therein lies the difficulty.

Simple-minded souls will never be satisfied with the answer to the second of these questions. They always want music to have a meaning, and the more concrete it is the better they like it. The more the music reminds them of a train, a storm, a funeral, or any other familiar conception the more expressive it appears to be to them. This popular idea of music's meaning — stimulated and abetted by the usual run of musical commentator — should be discouraged wherever and whenever it is met. One timid lady once confessed to me that she suspected something seriously lacking in her appreciation of music because of her inability to connect it with anything definite. That is getting the whole thing backward, of course.

Still, the question remains: How close should the intelligent music lover wish to come to pinning a definite meaning to any particular work? No closer than a general concept, I should say. Music expresses, at different moments, serenity or exuberance, regret or triumph, fury or delight. It expresses each of these moods, and many others, in a numberless variety of subtle shadings and differences. It may even express a state of meaning for which there exists no adequate word in any language. In that case, musicians often like to say that it has only a purely musical meaning. They sometimes go farther and say that all music has only a purely musical meaning. What they really mean is that no appropriate word can be found to express the music's meaning and that, even if it could, they do not feel the need of finding it.

But whatever the professional musician may hold, most musical novices still search for specific words with which to pin down their musical reactions. That is why they always find Tschaikovsky easier to "understand" than Beethoven. In the first place, it is easier to pin a meaning-word on a Tschaikovsky piece than on a Beethoven one. Much easier. Moreover, with the Russian composer, every time you come back to a piece of his it almost always says the same thing to you, whereas with Beethoven it is often quite difficult to put your finger right on what he is saying. And any musician will tell you that that is why Beethoven is the greater composer — because music which always says the same thing to you will necessarily soon become dull music, but music whose meaning is slightly different with each hearing has a greater chance of remaining alive.

Listen, if you can, to the forty-eight fugue themes of Bach's Well Tempered Clavichord. Listen to each of them, one after another. You will soon realize that each theme mirrors a different world of feeling. You will also soon realize that the more beautiful a theme seems to you the harder it is to find any word that will describe it to your complete satisfaction. Yes, you will certainly know whether it is a gay theme or a sad one. You will be able, in other words, in your own mind, to draw a frame of emotional feeling around your theme. Now study the sad one a little closer. Try to pin down the exact quality of its sadness. Is it pessimistically sad; is it fatefully sad or smilingly sad?

Let us suppose that you are fortunate and can describe to your own satisfaction in so many words the exact meaning of your chosen theme. There is still no guarantee that anyone else will be satisfied. Nor need they be. The important thing is that each one feel for himself the specific expressive quality of a theme or, similarly, an entire piece of music. And if it is a great work of art, don't expect it to mean exactly the same thing to you each time you return to it.

Themes or pieces need not express only one emotion, of course. Take such a theme as the first main one of the Ninth Symphony, for example. It is clearly made up of different elements. It does not say only one thing. Yet anyone hearing it immediately gets a feeling of strength, a feeling of power. It isn't a power that comes simply because the theme is played loudly. It is a power inherent in the theme itself. The extraordinary strength and vigor of the theme results in the listener's receiving an impression that a forceful statement has been made. But one should never try to boil it down to "the fateful hammer of life," etc. That is where the trouble begins. The musician, in his exasperation, says it means nothing but the notes themselves, whereas the nonprofessional is only too anxious to hang on to any explanation that gives him the illusion of getting closer to the music's meaning.

Now, perhaps, the reader will know better what I mean when I say that music does have an expressive meaning but that we cannot say in so many words what that meaning is.

The third plane on which music exists is the sheerly musical plane. Besides the pleasurable sound of music and the expressive feeling that it gives off, music does exist in terms of the notes themselves and of their manipulation. Most listeners are not sufficiently conscious of this third plane.

Professional musicians, on the other hand, are, if anything, too conscious of the mere notes themselves. They often fall into the error of becoming so engrossed with their arpeggios and staccatos that they forget the deeper aspects of the music they are performing. But from the layman's standpoint, it is not so much a matter of getting over bad habits on the sheerly musical plane as of increasing one's awareness of what is going on, in so far as the notes are concerned.

When the man in the street listens to the "notes themselves" with any degree of concentration, he is most likely to make some mention of the melody. Either he hears a pretty melody or he does not, and he generally lets it go at that. Rhythm is likely to gain his attention next, particularly if it seems exciting. But harmony and tone color are generally taken for granted, it they are thought of consciously at all. As for music's having a definite form of some kind, that idea seems never to have occurred to him.

It is very important for all of us to become more alive to music on its sheerly musical plane. After all, an actual musical material is being used. The intelligent listener must be prepared to increase his awareness of the musical material and what happens to it. He must hear the melodies, the rhythms, the harmonies, the tone colors in a more conscious fashion. But above all he must, in order to follow the line of the composer's thought, know something of the principles of musical form. Listening to all of these elements is listening on the sheerly musical plane.

Let me repeat that I have split up mechanically the three separate planes on which we listen merely for the sake of greater clarity. Actually, we never listen on one or the other of these planes. What we do is to correlate them — listening in all three ways at the same time. It takes no mental effort, for we do it instinctively.

Perhaps an analogy with what happens to us when we visit the theater will make this instinctive correlation clearer. In the theater, you are aware of the actors and actresses, costumes and sets, sounds and movement. All these give one the sense that the theater is a pleasant place to be in. They constitute the sensuous plane in our theatrical reactions.

The expressive plane in the theater would be derived from the feeling that you get from what is happening on the stage. You are moved to pity, excitement, or gayety. It is this general feeling, generated aside from the particular words being spoken, a certain emotional something which exists on the stage, that is analogous to the expressive quality in music.

The plot and plot development is equivalent to our sheerly musical plane. The playwright creates and develops a character in just the same way that a composer creates and develops a theme. According to the degree of your awareness of the way in which the artist in either field handles his material will you become a more intelligent listener.

It is easy enough to see that the theatergoer never is conscious of any of these elements separately. He is aware of them all at the same time. The same is true of music listening. We simultaneously and without thinking listen on all three planes.

In a sense, the ideal listener is both inside and outside the music at the same moment, judging it and enjoying it, wishing it would go one way and watching it go another — almost like the composer at the moment he composes it; because in order to write his music, the composer must also be inside and outside his music, carried away by it and yet coldly critical of it. A subjective and objective attitude is implied on both creating and listening to music.

What the reader should strive for, then, is a more active kind of listening. Whether you listen to Mozart or Duke Ellington, you can deepen your understanding of music only by being a more conscious and aware listener — not someone who is just listening, but someone who is listening for something.

(1744 words) TOP

课文二

我们如何听音乐？

艾伦·科普兰

我们都按自己种种不同的能力听音乐。但是，为了分析的方便，如果我们将整个听的过程分成几个组成部分，这一过程就会更加清楚。在一定意义上说，我们都在三个不同的层次上听音乐。由于缺少更好的术语，我们可以这样的称呼它们：（1）感官层次，（2）表达层次，（3）纯音乐层次。将听的过程机械地分为这些设想的层面所能得到的唯一的好处，是对我们听的方法有更清楚的了解。

听音乐最简单的方式，是为了富有音乐性的声音本身所带有的纯粹的快感而听。这是感官层次。这个层次上我们听音乐并不思考，不在任何方面考虑它。一个人做别的事情时打开收音机，心不在焉地沉浸在声音之中。音乐的纯声音魅力，产生一种无需动脑却被吸引的思想状态。

你也许正坐在房间里阅读这本书。设想钢琴上响起一个音符。立刻，那个音符足以改变房间里的气氛——证明音乐中的那个声音成分是有力和神秘的东西，嘲笑它和贬低它是可笑的。

令人吃惊的事是，许多认为自己是合格的音乐爱好者的人，滥用听中的这一层次。他们去听音乐会，为的是失去自己。他们把音乐当成一种安慰或一种逃避。他们进入一个理想的世界，那里人们不用考虑日常的现实。当然，他们也不是在想着音乐。音乐准许他们离开现实，而他们到一个地方去做梦，因为音乐做梦和做关于音乐的梦，但是从没有真正地听音乐。

是的，音乐的声音魅力是一种潜在的和原始的力量，但是，千万不要让它不合比例地侵占你的兴趣。感官的层次是音乐中重要的层次，非常重要的层次，但是它并不组成整体。

没有必要在感官的层次上扯得更远。它对每一个正常的人的影响是显而易见的。然而，还有不同的作曲家使用的、对声音的不同种类更敏感的一种东西。因为不是所有的作曲家都以同样的方法使用声音材料。不要以为音乐的价值和它的感官魅力相等，也不要认为最动听的音乐是最伟大的作曲家创作的。如果那样的话，拉威尔将会是比贝多芬更伟大的创造者。这意思是说，声音成分因每一位作曲家而异，他对声音的使用构成他的风格的一个不可分割的部分，在听音乐时必须加以考虑。因此，读者可以看到，即使在听音乐的这个原始层次上，较为有意识地对待音乐也是有价值的。

音乐存在的第二个层次，是我称为的表达的层次。这里，我们立刻到了有争议的地区。作曲家们在回避任何谈论音乐的表达意义的讨论。斯特拉文斯基本人不就声称过，他的音乐是一个“客体”，一件“东西”，有自己的生命，除了自己纯音乐的存在以外没有任何别的意义？斯特拉文斯基的这一不妥协的态度，可能是由于那么多人曾试图在那么多音乐作品中读出不同意义。天知道，准确地说出一部音乐作品的意义，明确地说出来，说出它的意义后让每个人都满意你的解释，这是非常困难的。但是，这不应该使我们走到另一个极端，否认音乐“表达”的权利。

我个人相信，所有的音乐都有表达的力量，有的大一点，有的小一的点，但是所有的音乐在音符后面都有一定的意义，而音符后面的意义最终构成这一乐曲在说的东西，构成这一乐曲谈论的东西。整个问题可以非常简单地用一个问题来表述，“音乐是否有一个意义？”我对此的回答将是“有”。“你能用这么多的话将它的意义表述出来吗？”我对此的回答会是，“不能。”难就难在这里。

头脑简单的人对这第二个问题的答案永远不会满足。他们总是要音乐有一个意义，意义越具体，他们就越喜欢它。音乐越是能使他们想起一列火车，一场暴风雨，一次葬礼，或者任何熟悉的概念，这音乐在他们看来表达的东西就越多。这种对音乐意义的流行看法受到音乐评论家的刺激和鼓动，应该随时随地予以制止。一位羞怯的女士曾经对我承认，她怀疑自己在欣赏音乐的时候，十分缺少某种东西，因为她没有能力把音乐和任何明确的东西联系在一起。这当然是将整个事情又朝后推了。

问题依然是：聪明的音乐爱好者该如何把握分寸，给具体的作品一个确定意义？应该说，不要超过一个一般的概念。音乐在不同的时刻表达沉静或兴奋，懊恼或成功，愤怒或喜悦。它以无数的微妙差异和不同，表达任何一种这样的情绪，或其它许多情绪。它甚至可以表达一种意义的状态，这种状态任何语言中也没有恰当的词语来表达。在这种情况下，音乐家们常常喜欢说，它只有一个纯音乐意义。他们有时候还更进一步，说一切音乐只有一个纯音乐意义。他们真正的意思是，没有确切的词能表达音乐的意义，即使有这样的词，他们也认为没有必要去找它。

但是，无论专业的音乐家持什么观点，大多数音乐新手仍然寻找具体的词语，来表述他们的音乐反应。这就是为什么他们总是发现柴可夫斯基比贝多芬要容易“懂”。首先，对柴可夫斯基的作品比对贝多芬的作品要容易找表达意义的词。容易得多。并且，对于这位俄国作曲家，每次你听他的同一部作品时，这部作品几乎总是向你表述相同的东西，然而对于贝多芬，常常难以说出他是在讲什么。任何一位音乐家都会告诉你，这就是为什么贝多芬是更伟大的音乐家。因为，总是对你说相同事情的音乐，会很快地变成沉闷的音乐，但是每一次听都有一些微小变化的音乐，更可能保持生命力。

如果能够的话，你听一听巴赫的《协律钢琴曲》中的48个赋格主题。一个接一个听一听每一个主题。你很快会意识到，每一个主题都反映了一个不同的感情世界。你也会很快地意识到，一个主题越是对你显得优美，就越难发现能够使你完全满意的可以描述这段音乐的词语。是的，你肯定知道这是快乐的主题还是悲哀的主题。换句话说，你能够在你的头脑里构成一个围绕主题的情绪框架。现在更仔细地来研究这个悲哀的主题。努力弄清楚它的确切的悲哀特点。它是悲观性的悲哀，命运式的悲哀，还是含笑的悲哀？

让我们设想，你很幸运，能够用许多自己满意的词句描述你自己选择的主题。这仍然不能保证别人都会满意。他们也不需要满意。重要的是，每一个人对一个主题或一整部音乐表现的特性，都有独特的感受。如果它是一部伟大的作品，不要指望每次你听的时候它对你都是相同的意义。

当然，主题或者作品没必要仅仅表达一种情绪。把《第九交响曲》的第一主题。当为例子。很明显，它是由许多不同的成分组成的。它并不只说一件事。但是任何人听到它立刻会有一种力气感，一种力量感。这种感受到的力量，不仅仅是主题演奏的时候声音响所以有力量。这是主题本身内在的力量。主题异常的力量和活力，源于听者接受到一种印象，即一句有力的话得以表述。但是，决不要试图把它归结成为“命中注定的生命之锤”等等。麻烦就从这里开始。绝望的音乐家就说，它除了音符本身，什么意思都没有，而非专业人氏过于急着抓住一种解释，这种解释使他产生更靠近音乐意义的幻觉。

音乐的确有一个表达的意义，但是我们用再多的词语也无法说出那意思是什么，当我现在这样说的时候，也许读者已经更清楚我是什么意思。

音乐存在的第三个层次，是纯音乐层次。除了音乐令人愉快的声音和它所表达的感情，音乐的存在还在于音符本身以及对音符的安排。大多数听者对这第三个层次并非能够充分意识到。

另一方面，要说有什么区别的话,专业音乐家过分注意纯粹的音符本身的存在。他们常常犯这样的错误，过分注重笆音和断音，忘记他们正在演奏的音乐更深层次的东西。但是从外行人的角度看，就音符而言，这与其说是克服在纯音乐层次上的坏习惯问题，不如说是增加自己对正在进行的事情的了解的问题。

在街上的人以任何一种专心程度听“音符本身”时，他最有可能提到悦耳的音调。要么他听到了美妙的音乐要么没听到，通常他就到此为止。另外使他注意的可能是节奏，特别是当节奏显得令人激动时。但是如果人们有意识地想到和谐与音色，通常也会认为是理所当然的事。至于音乐有某种明确的形式，他似乎从没有想到过这一点。

对音乐的纯音乐的层次更加敏感对我们大家十分重要。说到底，正在使用的是一个实际的音乐材料。聪明的听者必须做好准备，增加对音乐材料及其变化的了解。他必需以更为清醒的方式听乐调、节奏、和音、音色。但是，他首先得遵循作曲者思路，知道一些音乐形式的知识。听所有这些成分，就是在纯音乐层次上听。

让我重复一遍，我把我们听时的三个层次机械地分开仅仅是为了更清楚起见。实际上，我们从不只在三个层次的某个层次上听。我们做的是将它们联系起来——同时在三个层次听。这不需要动脑筋，因为我们本能地这样做。

也许，和我们去剧院时发生的事作一个类比，会使这种本能的联系更清楚。在剧院，你意识到男女演员，道具和布景，声音和运动。所有这些给人一种剧院是停留的好地方的感觉。它们构成我们戏剧反应的感觉层次。

剧院的表达层次来自你从舞台上发生的事中得到的感觉。你感动得怜悯、激动或者高兴。除了正在说的具体的台词以外，就是这产生出来的一般的感情，存在于舞台上的某种情绪上的东西，与音乐中表达的特点类似。

情节与情节的发展相当于我们的纯音乐层次。戏剧家创造和发展一个人物的方式，正好和作曲家创造和发展一个主题一样。根据你对这两者中任何一个领域艺术家处理素材的了解，你才能成为更聪明的听者。

很容易看出，看戏的人从没有单独注意其中一个成分。他同时注意一切。听音乐时也是这样。我们同时不加思索地在三个层次上听。

某种意义上，理想的听者是同一时刻既在音乐之中，又在音乐之外，既评价它又欣赏它，希望它向一个方面发展同时注视它朝另一个方向发展——差不多类似于作曲家创作它的时刻；因为，为了要写他的音乐，他必须既在音乐之中，又在音乐之外，为它所吸引，又冷静地对它持批评态度。一种既主观又客观的态度包含在既创造音乐又倾听音乐之中。

读者要努力做的，是一种更为积极的听。无论你是听莫扎特还是爱灵顿公爵，只有做一个更为自觉的和清醒的听者，不是仅仅在听，而是为了什么而听的人，你才能深化对音乐的理解。