從香港國際現代音樂節 2002的閉幕音樂會看香港未來藝術文化的政策

前言: 這一篇樂評，雖說是舊作，但我所提出，及所擔心的問題，在今天 2011 年的香港音樂界裡，仍是隱隱可見。難道自由創作的風氣，真的是隨著回歸而告終? 希望各音樂界同工，能從這篇文章反思一下自身的創作立場。謝謝!

從香港國際現代音樂節 2002的閉幕音樂會看香港未來藝術文化的政策

最近，文化委員會發表了一份關於未來香港文化藝術發展的文件，名為諮詢文件2002，其中提出了香港未來的文化定位，並且指出所有香港的藝術發展應在中華文化的基礎上進行創作，以確立香港人對民族文化和其中華民族身份的認同，這才應該是香港未來藝術發展的主要方向。可是，這項建議，卻引起了各界藝術工作者的擔憂。如果政府的定位政策得以落實，這可能影響了藝術創作的自由。因為大部份的支助將會由於中華文化身份認同這個政策的緣故，落在那些只與中國文化有關的藝術創作身上，而忽略了開拓國際視野，發展多元化的藝術，及建立香港本土自已獨特的藝術文化，並違背了創作自由這個基本的藝術原則。香港現代音樂的發展，也因這份諮詢文件，而難以獨善其身。

究竟政府應該為香港未來文化藝術的發展定位與否，實在頗具爭議。然而，在十月十九日晚，香港中樂團在大會堂音樂廳，為香港國際現代音樂節 2002而演出的一場閉幕音樂會中，卻給了我們一個關於未來香港現代音樂創作，或藝術發展的定位問題的啟示。

在這場音樂會裏，全部六首作品的作曲家都是接受西方音樂技巧的訓練。他們自已的創作也大部份是以西方現代音樂為主。可是，他們這次卻為中樂團寫作中國風格的音樂。當然，筆者在這裏，並不是要討論他們的作品是否能成功表現出中華民族的音樂風格; 可是，無可否認的是，這六首作品都是以中國，或民族文化為基礎而創作的。作曲家都自發地嘗試將一些中國音樂，或民族文化的元素放進他們的現代音樂創作裏面，表現出承先啟後的創作精神。例如，林樂培的問蒼天，他用的是聖詠序曲的曲體，雖屬於一種西方的音樂曲體，但音樂的古樂器聲，調子，卻是古氣盎然，充滿中華民族遠祖的風采。聽眾是很難否認作品中的中國元素。

另一首由羅永輝創作的現代中國音樂作品潑墨仙人，就更能表現出作品是含有中華文化的元素在內。這首作品的琵琶部份，很明顯是從一些古琵琶曲，如武曲，十面埋伏的演奏方式移植借用過來的。而琵琶與樂隊的組合，卻以現代音樂的手法，利用聲響去捕捉潑墨仙人這幅畫的藝術精神，及古人的飄逸情懷。毫無疑問，羅氏的這個音樂創作，也表現出他自覺地從中國文化的基礎上，去進行其現代音樂的藝術創作。

至於鐘耀光的永恆之城和郭文景的滇西土風兩首，可說是完全植根於中國及民族民化的基礎上而寫作的。永恆之城是21 世紀香港中樂團國際作曲大賽的冠軍作品。音樂處處能揉合西方現代的作曲技巧和傳統的中樂元素，是一首典形的中國現代音樂創作。而部文景的滇西土風兩首則是取材於中國的小數民族的音樂元素，去創作一首全新的音樂作品。這也是中樂團的委約作品。由於音樂材料是現成的民族音樂元素，這更能體現作曲家在從事現代音樂創作時，對於繼承中國民族音樂特點的重視。

說到陳明志的刮風的日子，雖然全曲的寫作手法相當西方音樂式的前衛，以音層性的音響為主，不似是以中國文化為基礎的創作; 但是，聽眾不要忘記，這首作品卻探索了中國傅統樂器的各種演奏技巧的可能性，拓展了民族樂器在現代音樂中的表現。這首音樂作品，也算是承傳於中華文化的一項現代發展。

因此，藉著回顧這一場音樂會裏的各首音樂作品，我們不難發現，在華人作曲家的音樂創作裏，是有一隻 ‘無形的手’ 在背後調節著他們的藝術創作方向，亦即是他們的藝術文化的定位。 他們無論是出於有意，或是無意，華人音樂創作者都會探索，寫作一些與他們的民族文化身份認同的音樂藝術創作，他們不約而同的植根於中國音樂的傳統，從而探索現在，發展將來。他們大都相信，成功的現代音樂創作，或多或少都跟自已的民族文化有關。他們絕對樂於把中華民族，或傳統文化有關的音樂元素，融合在自已的音樂創作裏。所以，對於香港未來的現代音樂藝術發展方向，實在不需要文化委員會以，甚麼文化身份認同，或是甚麼中華文化的基礎上發展香港的藝術文化作為定位的政策。這種過度強調，缺乏闡釋及監管的指引方式，常常因用白紙黑字記錄下來而成為了硬性規條。很多時候，這些所為指引更很容易被一些不懂藝術的官員所濫用，或個人政治性的取向的影響，造成了創作自由被扼殺的嚴重後果。這難怪當諮詢文件一推出，就引起了香港藝術工作者，包括作曲家們的擔憂。恐怕我們本來多姿多彩，各種各色的的現代音樂花園，會因政府政策的間接拑制，變成了只能孤芳自賞，只擁有單一種花的音樂花園。這是香港現代音樂的悲哀，也是香港整體藝術文化的悲哀。

所以，政府與其發出指引，變成了變相干預了香港未來文化藝術的自由發展，不如讓藝術創作上這隻 ‘無形的手’去自行發揮作用，適當地調節著作曲者自已的藝術文化定位與取向。我們深信，這隻 ‘無形的手’會像經濟學上，阿當史密斯所論到的供求定律一樣，會給予香港現代音樂，一個自由的創作空間或 ‘市場’，從而發展一種既植根於中華文化的基礎上，但又屬於香港自已的獨特音樂藝術文化的創作。再者，我們不應忘記，香港已經回歸了，成為中國領土的一部份。無論香港的藝術文化發展成怎麼樣子，就算是不中不西，或是中西合壁，也是屬於我們中華民族，或是中國藝術文化的一個不可分割的部份，所有的音樂創作和各類的藝術，根本無須刻意地作民族身份的認同。

因以，政府應放棄以中國，或民族文化為主位中心，去為香港未來藝術文化而定位的建議，讓各項藝術的創作，包括現代音樂的創作，在這隻自由的 ‘無形的手’ 中繼續自由運作，順其自然地發展。不然的話，這個所謂藝術文化定位的指引，就只會變成另一隻 ‘無形的手’，不是調節，而是在背後操控，為香港未來藝術的發展，帶來了一場無可挽回的嚴重災難。

David Leung (theorydavid)

2002 (published in In-school Journal)

2011-04-12 (re-published)

聆聽 -- 透視音樂理論的一個層面

前言: 身為一位音樂理論的導師，我一直都很喜歡探究 music theory 如何與聆聽扣上關係。這個題目也有很多知名的研究學者發表過有影響力的文章。當然我這個入們漢也不想在這裡班門弄斧。所以，我這篇文章只算是評論這些大師的研究心得，讓有興趣的讀者對這題目有些了解。

正文:

Perception: A Perspective from Music Theory

Music and cognitive psychology seem to be inseparable. Since music is for listening, it involves human perception. On the one hand, musicians aim to discover the musical structure to gain better interpretation and understanding of actual compositions. On the other hand, cognitive psychologists tend to be more interested in exploring mental theories of how musical events may be perceived. But does music theory and music analysis relate to cognitive science? Nicholas Cook’s article attempts to distinguish the discipline of music theory from that of cognitive psychology. According to Cook, they are radically two different branches of study. He blames that cognitive or information theory places too much emphasis on psychoacoustical studies but overlooks the meaning and cultural value of music. Cook argues that there are potential pitfalls in applying general psychological theories to music without taking into account what listeners actually hear, and why. Listeners usually do not listen to music according to large-scale structures. In addition, Cook points out that studies on the recognition of intervals, chord progressions, and key centers are merely tests of ear training, but not to be considered as the significance of music.

Although cognitive experiments have been carried out attempting to prove that untrained listeners do not listen to music in the same way that musicians do, and what matters to them is not the same as what matters to music theorists. However, according to Cook, these experiments only reflect that interviewers’ responses are mainly a matter of playing game of language. The finding that the musicians and non-musicians are not bound by the same rule in listening is not an adequate basis for saying anything about how they perceive music in their own ways. 

Cook also asserts that the next question showing the fallacy of cognitive theory of music is that no listeners tend to hear the tonal structure of music. Of course, there are a few exceptions to this. Composers, sometimes, would pay attention to the tonal structure of a composition. Milton Babbit, was being told in a story, that he could hear in his first time of the wrongly performed tone-row series in a serial composition. Boulez’s enigmatic tone-row series in Le Marteau is also another example to show the weakness of cognitive theory of music. Compositional grammar designed by Boulez is more or less different from listening grammar enhanced by listeners. If the composition is atonal, its tonal structure is less to be considered by general listeners. On the contrary, Cook’s experiment shows that the compositions by tonal composers have more psychological effects on the listeners and they can hear the change of tonal areas in the work. However, the radical question remains: do listeners hear the large-scale tonal structure of a work? Music theory seems to possess a hierarchy of analytical system in music: large-scale and smaller-scale analysis. However, Meyer criticizes such a hierarchy of analytical theory in music. The so-called deepest level of Schenkerian structure, the Ursatz, is simply an abstraction. It, perhaps, does not exist in perception.

Applying linguistic theory to analyze music, according to Cook, is also problematic. Grammar by definition is a finite set of rules that will generate all and only well-formed sentences in a given language. Music works do not possess unalterable set of rules in nature. We may often hear someone claims that Bach always broke the rules or rules are made by man, not man by rule. Hence composers always show no interests in following compositional rules. As a result, there are many factors that militate against the usefulness of explaining music in terms of strict grammars. Even though purporting to analyze musical sound, the transformational theory of music, as Cook claims, is better treated as a game of ear-training for musicians, rather than a real psychological perception of music.

In short, although Cook points out that there is a pitfall of mistranslation of different theories from different disciplines into music theory, he hasn’t suggested an infallible theory of music that can bind musical sound, psychological cognition and cultural parameters together. It is widely known that musical meaning is not confined to psychological cognition or political and socio-cultural associations solely. Different theories can more or less improve our understanding of music in a particular aspect. No matter developing theories from linguistic, scientific, acoustic, psychological, transformational, rhetorical, cultural, topical or aesthetic disciplines, each successful theory can contribute to the understanding of one of the most abstract form of art, music, in the world.

David Leung (theorydavid)

2011-04-07 (published)

玩盡規則 -- 在寫作上應用修辭手法 -- 陳 sir 的一個有意思的回應

前言: 早前收到 Spencer Chan 的一個回應，覺得很有見地。 而且，他提及一部有關新詩寫作的新書。近日，我也收到蕭才子的簡單回應。查實我還以為他像 BT一樣消聲匿跡，早已忘記到我的網誌流灠。我想他是詩人，可能有看過這本新書，所以順道在這裡將陳 sir 的回應文章轉載，希望與各位朋友分享一下玩盡規則的樂趣。


正文:

Spencer Chan 已針對您的文章「玩盡規則 -- 在寫作上應用修辭手法」留下新意見：

我的一位詩人朋友陳永康先生曾說過：語文要學的是「規範」，而文學要學的，是怎樣去「犯規」。這個文字gag 實在是一針見血。
語文的目的是溝通，只要讀者能看得明，那便無需再有其他額外的要求了。但文學呢？若只達到溝通目的的話，還未觸及到文學的邊皮。
但「犯規」其實都有其「規範」的，若無止境的「犯規」，連最基本與讀者交流的作用都失效的話，這個「犯規」便是一個嚴重的破壞了。當然，有時，無止境的犯規都可表達一種藝術姿態，John Cage 的 4'33"就是一個很好的例子了。
怎樣在「規範」之中「犯規」並帶有個人印記，正就是最考工夫的地方。很多人自以為只要將一段文字柝散成一行行便是懂寫新詩，這就是一個天大的誤解。就正因為這個原因，新詩看似人人都懂得寫，但不是個個可以成為詩人。
在「犯規」與「規範」之間遊走，跟Leung Sir 在這篇文章所說的，實在有異曲同工之妙。是一個工匠(或技師)還是藝術家，就看他在rules 之上還可以怎樣雕花，怎樣加入個人印記了。
Leung sir 這兩篇文章實在寫得好，讀者若能用心地看，必能獲益良多。
(容許我在這裡賣一個廣告，上面提及的那位詩人朋友陳永康的新作「新詩讀寫基本法」已經出版(匯智出版社出版)，這是我所知的第一本系統介紹新詩的讀寫方法的一本著作，實在難得，值得推介！)

轉載自陳 sir 的回應文章

2011-04-03

Music Theory Workshop -- 後浪漫風格的和聲語研究

致各同學，朋友:

梁 sir 準備在五月開辦一個新的中等程度和聲理論課程，詳細請看下面課程簡介。如有興趣報讀的同學們，可以先給我 email 一個，留下通訊方法。如果有足夠同學人數可以開課，我會跟大家進一步聯絡。就算以前就某一個課程已留下 email 的同學，因現在是一個新課程，所以也請大家再留一次，以作安排。一般來說，我是不會打擾大家的。如果想進修一下 harmony 和分析樂曲的知識，這些不用趕考試的課程是很適宜的。

謝謝!

梁 sir

Music Theory Workshop 後浪漫風格的和聲匯語研究

這個課程旨在幫助學員進一步掌握調性和聲 (Tonal Harmony) 在十九世紀中後期，在各大師的音樂作品中之運用。眾所週知，由於十九世紀的作曲家為了表達含高度浪漫精神和獨特的個人風格，就在其作品中大量運用變化和絃 (Chromatic Harmony) 和遠系轉調，使傳統的和聲語不斷擴張，導致作品的調性面臨瓦解。雖然這樣產生了不少優美感人的樂曲，可是，也同時使一般音樂愛好者由於大師們的音樂語言的艱澀，以致未能理解其樂曲的原貌精神，以及背後蘊藏的深厚意義。這個課程的設計，就是基於要了解樂曲原貌這個基礎意義，跟學員以 workshop ， 即工作坊的學習方式，以數個有代表性的浪漫風格音樂大師們的作品為研究樂例，去探討他們個人獨特和聲的語與創作技巧，掀開這些樂曲的神秘面紗。

再者，經梁 sir 教學多年的觀察，學員在八級樂理課程中學過初級和聲學後，只忙於應付各種樂理考試，如八級樂理或 AMusTCL等，根本沒有靜下來消化其學得的和聲理論知識，看看它如何運用在解釋個別大師的音樂作品上。這種學習方式除了能拿一張證書或文憑外，對了解音樂和享受其美，沒有太大幫助。因此，這個課程是希望學員從分析作品的過程中，學到如何運用其學過的和聲概念和分析技巧，去對作品作一個有意義的詮釋，從以提高他們對音樂的認識和鑑賞能力。梁 sir 會引導學員在每一課堂上運用一至兩個技巧去分析和詮釋指定的樂曲或其片段，以此作為研究例證，並輔以 CD / mp3 的音樂作聆聽和思考之用。

課程題目包括:

1.    Enharmonic Modulations By Using Chromatic Harmony
2.    Diatonic Sequence and Chromatic Sequence
3.    Further  Expansion of the Harmonic Vocabulary
4.    Chords and Progressions in Special Situations
5.    Tonal Harmonic Vocabulary in the Late Nineteenth Century

6.    Color and Drama in Composition: Modal Mixture and Chromatic Mediant and Submediants

7.    Tonal and Harmonic Ambiguity
8.    Neo-Tonality: Impressionism
9.    Learning from the Masters: Chopin and Schumann
10. Learning from the Masters: Brahms and Debussy

全個課程.: 共十課，每課 2 小時

上課時間: May 4, 2011 (Wednesday)

上課地點: 旺角，通菜街，威達商業大廈，408 室。(請參閱右方地圖)

人數: 5 至 7 人 (小組)

講授語言 : 粵語及英語

何為壯美? Sublimity and Beauty in the19th Century Romanticism

前言: 當我們談到十九世紀的歐洲浪漫主義，總不免說到這時期的藝術作品的宏偉與壯麗。查實，浪漫主義，也跟各類藝術發展起來的美學觀點有著千絲萬縷的關係。其中一種美學感受，就是 sublimity，我現在翻為壯美。但凡壯美的作品，必定是宏偉與龐大的。可予人一種然生畏的感覺，就如你看著波濤洶湧的海浪，翻騰不息，那種感覺經驗，就是壯美了。


正文:


                                                       The “Sublime” and “Beauty” 

When E.T.A. Hoffmann’s imaginative criticism of Beethoven’s symphony no. 5 was published in the 19^th century, the concept of “musical sublimity” was also come across as a novel way of understanding of pure instrumental music, and symphony in particular. As Hoffmann suggests in his writing, Beethoven’s music has a power of transporting listeners to the realms of the monstrous and the unfathomable, which is different from that of Haydn’s sensational delight and Mozart’s emotional touching. Indeed this listening experience of transporting audiences to a new “realm” is somewhat similar to Fetis’s concept of aesthetic experience. For Fetis, music can present two levels of aesthetic experience to the listeners. One is commonly described as the experience of beauty, and the other, the experience of the sublime. He declared: “We listen to a piece of music……It disturbs us; it carries us away…… how beautiful, we exclaim, how great, how sublime!”

According to Elaine Sisman, a (present day) contemporary musicologist, the sublime is regarded as an aesthetic category that usually appears as a component of the elevated or grand style of rhetoric. The rhetorical modes of thought which operated in 18^th century instrumental music was a mind-set-like theory affecting the structure and design of a work, as well as the audience’s understandings of that work. But the concept of sublime has gone beyond a kind of figurative mode of speech and has been elevated to a form of aesthetic state akin to an echo of a noble mind, a grand conception and a sense of beauty. To use the term “sublime” to describe the expressive power of music shows a change of emphasis from expression as a mirror of the human emotions of Classical aesthetics to expression as the revelation of the ineffable of Romantic aesthetics. Edmund Burke further argues that sublime objects are vast in their dimensions and this “sublime” ought to be dark and gloomy, being beyond any comprehension and presenting an overwhelming but irrational experience to the listeners. The concept of vast sublimity undoubtedly leads to the notions of “sublime terror” and “monumental simplicity” that sheds a new light on understanding the music of late Mozart, Beethoven and even many Romantic musical giants afterward. As such, when the concept of sublimity was applied to instrumental music, in order to manifest the notion of “grand, monumental and terrifying design”, the simple songs were no longer appropriate to such ideal. It was the symphony, a genre which as Haydn had demonstrated, was capable of creating a form spanning hundreds of measures using mainly the logic of harmony and theme without recourse to text, was generally considered as the highest form of all arts. And the metaphysical aesthetic of 19^th century Romanticism was then fully developed under the aegis of this concept of musical sublimity and the rising importance of the musical genre -- symphony.

David Leung (theorydavid)

2011-03-29 (published)

玩盡規則 -- 在寫作上應用修辭手法

前言: 早前寫了一篇文章關於寫作和聲應否跟隨 rules ，不講 feel。有一位 教 Flute 的老師 Spencer Chan 留言，表示同意我的平衡觀點。他評論道: "所言甚是！就正如我們中國人說中文時，雖不會理會文法，但這並不代表我們可以不合文法，只是作為中國人，文法已牢牢印在心中，隨心而發便可說出合文法的說話吧。我們雖沒有刻意使用文法，但其實已是根據文法去說我們的說話，絕不能將「我愛你」說成是「我你愛」。 無論樂器還是樂理、作曲、編曲，我們都應將 rules 熟練到可以隨心而發才去講 feel。"

在這裡，我是很感謝有讀者留言以表鼓勵。我上一篇文章，也是有發表過近似 Chan Sir 的論點。可是，我仍然想就他所說的最後一句話的意義，再加以擴展補充。我認為就算將所有音樂或和聲 的 rules 這個文法熟練，仍是不夠去發揮音樂中的神采與靈氣，表現 feeling，因為還欠了一樣東西，就是我們還要熟練到可以運用 rhetorics 去玩盡所有的 rules.

正文:

寫作文章，總離不開怎樣在循規蹈矩，奉公守法之餘表現自我個性。循規蹈矩和奉公守法是必須的，因為任何語言皆有其使用者必須遵從的模式，法則，邏輯，結構特徵成方式，或是語言要成為一種有效的表達和溝通工具的先決條件，不然的話，語言不但無法學習，更無法使用。所以，寫作音樂，和聲的法則規條，是有它的效用。

這當然並不意味這些原則和規範是寫在石頭上的鐵律，永遠都一成不變。可是，若果我們寫文章，只力求文法正確，那麼，我們最多只能做個稱職的審稿編輯，而不是個作家，或個藝術家，甚至作曲家。作家之所以是作家，不是因為他家的文章全無錯誤，而是因為他其獨特的聲音和鮮明的個性。在音樂上，亦是如此。因此，Beethoven 是 Beethoven，不會是另一個 Mozart，就算兩者都是以 tonal harmony 的法則和以 major-minor system 來寫作其音樂。這就解釋為何同學們就算學完了 Advance Harmony，也是不能完全懂得個別作曲家和其特定作品的音樂風格和特點。因為 Advance Harmony 只是 Generalized 了的一般法則。

返回我們的編輯和作家的比喻。正如作家林沛理所說，他們兩者最大的分別就是: 前者懂得如何在客觀 impersonal，屬於每一個人 communal 的文法中留下個人的印記 stamp，甚至簽名 signature, 而後者只會做文法的保安和執法者 grammar police。這就能解釋為何我們一聽第五交響曲的開頭四個音，就知是 Beethoven 留下的印記，而不是 Schubert 的。

所以，要寫得優美，寫得動人，寫得有 feel， 寫得有個人 style，無論作家又好，作曲家又好，都要懂得玩弄那些 rules，最佳的方法，就是運用不尋常的修辭法  rhetorics。

我現試以英語寫一段落，請讀者看看，評評我是否能將個人的印記，通過不落套的 rhetorical setting 去將我在暮年才以合唱指揮和總監的身份，能以音樂再度踏足表演舞台的感受，烙印在文字裡 ?

Fifty -- the promise of more than a decade of nothingness, a thinning list of closest friends to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there has been music in me, who, unlike the deadly utterance of my boss, is too stubborn ever to carry my old fading dream from age to age. As I pick up the baton guiding their wan faces, they tremble against my only deepest zest for music and the formidable stroke of fifty dies away with the reassuring pressure of their hardly murmurs. I wonder as if it is singing, though. Still I stand up to the promise through the stage in the slowly dimming light.


朋友們，你們看看如何。我倒希望合唱團的成員有人明白我這個真的感受。我相信這段的英語程度不淺。可能只有 BT明白，她的英語不錯。所以，如果我們真得體會 rhetorics 的效用，我們應會明白，第一句本人用了 -- 符號去 replace verb，(玩盡文法，句法是由某作家借學過來的) 再加三個 head motive 似的 thinning。你知道 briefcase of enthusiasm 是暗指我對上班做事的熱誠嗎? metaphor 是也。nothingness 在此處是指 一事無成。stand up to 是指迎向，迎戰那往後十年的一事無成。還有，我們 recording 時是關上燈的。reasurring pressure 是對比 ，contrast 著 chorus 歌唱的 murmurs，因為他們不是專業的合唱團。

如果文字可以造出個人風格效果，音樂語言，也是一種溝通媒介，所以也定必可以。當然，音樂比較抽象，我們要更多不同的 theory，才可以幫助我們進一步了解其意義。我們也不可能以語文的修辭法，完全不變的套用到音樂上。因為音樂彙語的結構跟語文文法的結構是不同的。我早前曾淺談音樂的修辭學，可是，以我所知，現在有很多當代音樂理論家也正研究這個學科，如 Robert Hatten 的Markedness and Markedlessness，Allanbrook 的 topical theory 等。我有機會，就會跟各位談談他們的 theory 要點。


總的來說，藝術家要懂得 rules，然後要玩盡 rules, 再來印上個人簽名，才可以表達自己的 feel，音樂的神彩。


全文完.........


David Leung (theorydavid)
2011-03-25 (published)

十九世紀未的學術思想對當代藝術的影響

前言: 這也是一篇資料相當充實的文章。討論範圍相當廣泛。文體不太艱深。可是，我也不期望現在的學生哥會仔細閱讀。他們怕看文字的態度，垣白說，已到了無可救藥的地步。可是，對於喜歡藝術的朋友，我相信他們會喜歡，因為，通過這短短的文章裡，他們可以略略明白某種藝術風格，不限音樂，是如何在二十世紀與起。這是歷史學，也是社會文化學的一篇文章。



正文:

The Influence of the 19^th Century Intellectual Thoughts on the Modern Arts

The end of the 19^th century was a time of relative peace and optimistic faith in technological progress and human productivity. Industrialism provided the economic and military basis for the west’s rise to a position of dominance over the rest of the world and at the same time, took certain impact to the modern arts.

Sigmund Freud’s theories concerning the nature of the human psyche, the significance of dreams, and the dominating role of human sexuality had a revolutionary effect on the beliefs, attitudes, and morals of modern society. They were equally influential upon the arts. In literature, Proust, Kafka and Joyce are representative of the modern novelist’s preoccupation with the subconscious life and with the role of memory in shaping reality. Their fiction reflects a fascination with methods and principles of Freudian psychoanalysis. Stream of consciousness narrative and the interior monologue are among the literary techniques used by modern authors to develop plot and character. In the visual arts, Freud’s impact generated a wide variety of styles that gave free play to fantasy and dreams.

The expressionism of Munch and Kirchner, the metaphysical art of de Chirico, and the fantasies of Chagall examined the mysteries of repressed fears and desires. The dada movement spread the gospel of irrationality in randomly organized words and images. Duchamp, the most outrageous of the dada cultists, championed a nihilistic, antiart spirit that had far-reaching effects in the second half of the century. In 1924, Andre Breton launched surrealism, an international movement to liberate the life of the subconscious from the bonds of reason.

Strongly influenced by Freud, the surrealists viewed the human subconscious as a battleground of conflicting forces dominated by instincts. Miro, and Klee explored the terrain of the interior life in abstract paintings filled with playful and ominous images.

Dali, Magritte, Kahlo, and O’Keeffe manipulated illusions of the real world in ways that evoked the visionary incoherence of the dream life. In motion pictures, Dali, Bunuel, and others devised cinematic techniques that exposed the dark and unpredictable passions of the mind.

In music, Satie embraced mundane sounds with the same enthusiasm that E.E. Cummings showed for slang in poetry and Dumchamp exercised in his glorification of found objects. It was in the expressionistic monodramas of Schoenberg and the sexually charged operas of Strauss, Bartok, and Berg that Freud’s impact was most powerfully realized.

During the second half of the 19^th century, as the social consequences of the western industrialism became increasingly visible, realism came to rival romanticism both as a style and as an attitude of mind. The ideologies of 19^th century of liberalism, conservatism, Utilitarianism, socialism and communism offered varying solutions to contemporary problems of social injustice and inequity.

In the arts, realism emerged as a style concerned with recording contemporary subject matter in true-to-life terms. Such novelists as Dickens in England, Zola in France, and Twain in America, they described contemporary social conditions sympathetically and fidelity to detail.

Photography and lithography were invented during the 19^th century; both medium encouraged artists to produce objective records of their surroundings. By the mid nineteenth century the camera was used to document all aspects of contemporary life as their compositions. In painting, Courbet led the realist movement with canvases depicting the activities of humble and commonplace men and women. Daumier employed the new technique of lithography to show his deep concern for political and social conditions in rapidly modernizing France. Manet shocked art critics by recasting traditional subjects in contemporary terms.

America’s realist painters, including Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer, recorded typically American pastimes in an unembellished, forthright manner. In music, Puccini wrote operas that captured the lives of 19^th century Europeans.

On the whole, the varieties of realism in 19^th century cultural expression reflect a profound concern reassessment of traditional western values.

Art for art’s sake was neither a movement nor a style but rather a prevailing spirit in European and especially French culture of the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Of all forms of art, there was a new attention to sensory experience rather than to moral and didactic purpose.

At the same time, advances in optics, electricity, and other areas of science and technology brought attention to matters of motions and light. Theses affected the French impressionists, led by Monet, were equally representative of the late 19^th century interest in sensation and sensory experience. These artists tried to record an instantaneous vision of their world, sacrificing the details of perceived objects in order to capture the effects of light and atmosphere.

Paralleling the radical changes in technology and art, the German iconoclast Nietzsche questioned the moral value of art and rallied superior individuals to topple old gods, that is, to reject whatever was sentimental and stale in Western tradition.

Amidst new theories of sensation and perception, the French philosopher Bergson stressed the role of intuition in grasping the true nature of durational reality. He claimed that time is the continuous progress of the past, which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advance. Time cannot be measured in such a quantitative way, it is a quality, not a substance. The application of Bergson’s theory of time to the arts of the late 19^th century can be very illuminating. The philosopher often cited the motion picture as an example of what he meant by the perception of duration. The separate frames in a motion picture film are still; but when the series is run through the projector, the mind melds them together in a continuous flow, and they appear to be animated and alive. So also are the separate colors on an impressionistic canvas, the separate scenes in a Maeterlinck play, the separate chords in  a Debussy progression-all are molded by the mind into a continuum of time.

In visual impressionism, the eye mixes the colors and in a symbolist poem, the symbolist poets devised a language of sensation that evoke feeling rather than describing experience and let the mind supplies the connecting verbs for the so-called fragments. In Maeterlinck play, the imagination gives the irrelevancies speech and action a dramatic meaning and in Debussy’s music, the ear bridges over the pregnant silences. In sculpture, the works of Degas and Rodin reflect a common concern for figural gesture and movement and left parts of the stone uncut. The postimpressionists van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat and Cezanne moved beyond the impressionist infatuation with fleeting effects. Van Gogh and Gauguin used color not as an atmospheric envelope but as a tool for personal and visionary expression. Seurat and Cezanne reacted against the formlessness of impressionism by creating styles that featured architectural stability and solid, simplified forms.

In all arts, this ceaseless flux leads toward the improvisatory, the consciously incomplete. Each work tries to be a product of inspiration rather than calculation. With visual impressionists, all pictorial substance is broken down into an airy mixture of color sprays, fleeting shadows, and momentary moods.

With industrialization came a specialization in which people were concerned more with fragments than with wholes. Industrial workers were rapidly forfeiting to the machine their place as the primary productive unit. In Mallarme’s ‘Afternoon Faune’, images unfold as sensuous, discontinuous fragments. Similar effects occur in the music of Debussy, where delicately shaded harmonies gently drift without resolution.

During the late 19^th century, atomic physicists provided a model of the universe that was both more dynamic and more complex than any previously conceived, e.g. Newton. Einstein produced his special theory of relativity, a radically new approach to the concepts of time, space and motion. Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty stated that since the act of measuring subatomic phenomena would alter those phenomena, the position and the velocity of a particle could not be measured simultaneously with any accuracy.

Therefore, at the onset of the twentieth-century, modern physics had replaced the absolute and rationalist model of the universe with one that seemed chaotic and uncertain.

Paralleling the advancement of atomic physics, Nietzsche’s new philosophical concepts also had a certain impact on the artists. He asked: ‘Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man’s?’ Agreeing with Nietzsche’s remark that history was the process by which the dead bury the living, Marinetti declared in his manifesto in 1909 that futurism was being founded to ‘deliver Italy from its plague of professors, archeologists, tourist guides and antique dealers.’ All these new intellectual points of view are also mirrored in abstract art.

In the arts, new ways of seeing and listening were being worked out. In painting, for example, the cubist system of multiple visual viewpoints was explored, whereby several sides of an object could be presented at the same time in 2-dimenional space. In sculpture, a new theory of volume was developed, whereby open holes or gaps in the surface suggested the interpenetration of several planes, and the interpenetration of several planes, and the existence of other sides and surfaces not immediately in view. In architecture, the international style used the vocabulary of steel and glass to incorporate in structure of outer and inner space.

Similar developments occurred in literature and music, which found new ways of presenting materials in time dimension. In music, the so-called atonal method of composition was formulated. Such novel organizations of space and time demanded new ways of thinking about the world, new ways of looking at it, listening to it, and reading about it. Abstraction includes such various developments as cubism, futurism, the mechanical style, non-objectivism, the twelve-tone method and the international style of architecture.

From the above brief discussion, one can understand how a form of art is developed through historical course under the influences of sociol and intellectual thoughts. The emergence of Modernism in the 20th century was not a coincidence. It deeply stemmed from human life and thoughts. If one wants to uncover the veil of this artistic process, one should not avoid examinating the history of socio-culture and science in relation to that of the humanity.

David Leung (theorydavid)

2011-03-25 (published)

微模音樂風格探討 -- 分析華納序曲--萊茵河上的黃金作曲素材之運用

前言: 看來不少讀者都希望我略談一下作曲技巧的問題。我想，作曲技巧，在大多數音樂理論書都有廣泛討論，分門別類地引列出來。我也不便在這裡重覆。對我來說，最佳的作曲參巧書，就是實制的作品本身。一首 mp3，加一本總譜，就可以學習學習。不少作曲天書都有說過現代音樂裡的 Minimalism 微模風格的作品，如 Philip Glass, Terry Rily 等。可是死讀書的就只會想到這些近代作曲家和作品，如果你肯消化 Minimalism 的音樂特點，就是用最少的才料去發展最長的音樂，你可以不再盡信書中所記，反過來自己探索一下，你會發覺，遠至 Baroque，到鄰近的十九世紀浪漫風格，你也可以找到在不同時代的大師們的一些音樂處理，也是很 minimal 的，可說是 minimal 主義的先驅者。其作品的精巧程度，叫聽眾拍案叫絕。我們學寫曲的，就是要學會怎樣以最少的材料去完成最大的作品。
華格納以下這段樂曲的處理，你聽得出，看得出其功架嗎?

朋友們，學啦!

正文:

The “Minimalistic Setting” in Wagner’s Prelude of Das Rheingold

The musical extract typically shows three significant Romantic traits: sublime orchestral sonority, kaleidoscopic timbres and prolonging melodic line. The overall mood portrayed in this grand passage is extensively dramatic, profoundly poetic and sensationally moving, rather than elegantly classical or well proportionally symmetrical. Apart from the apparent Romantic appearances, however, this inspiring passage is not without having other novel features that invite further scrutiny. 

   Although the entire passage lasts nearly four minutes, the musical motion merely depends on the projection of one single element, the Eb major triad. The thematic melody, the sustaining pedal and the orchestral accompaniment are all derived from this Eb major tonic triad and are continuously repeated throughout the passage.   Here the monothematic nature is obvious. The minimal use of materials probably reminds us of Bolero by Maurice Ravel in 1928, which could be regarded as one of the precursors of the Postmodern Minimalism in the years sixty. Bolero only consists of a single Spanish dance theme and a repeated snare drum rhythmic pattern projecting throughout the whole piece. Similarly, this extract exactly reflects such conspicuous feature.
 

Another significant characteristic worthy of considering is the continuous small-scale changes within the repetitions. By adding different instruments to the texture and changing the accompanimental pattern in the inner parts, the musical tension is built up gradually. These changes not only enhance manifold timbres to avoid monotonous, but also thicken the orchestral sonority step by step, providing a gradual growth of dynamic from soft to the climatic loud tutti near the ending, as well as holding the musical tension for the entire passage. As a result, neither a single repetition of the melody nor a harmonic pattern generates the same sonic sound.   This characteristic is very similar to the art painting of Minimal style, the Coca Cola, by Andy Warhol in 1962. In Coca Cola, a matrix of many coca cola bottles of the same size is arranged, but in fact no single bottle is exactly identical.  Doubtless the small-scale change within a repeated similarity is one of the most salient attributes of Minimal Arts. The listening extract, to a certain extent, also possesses such element alike. 

In short, this musical passage comprises much novelty and innovation, despite its apparent Romantic outlook. The single Eb tonic triad successfully maintains the entire musical motion and tension. In order to keep the perceptive interest within a monothematic background, the orchestration, timbre, dynamic, harmonic pattern and texture are changing incessantly. This restless small-scale change is the key factor for the gradual growth of musical tension, building up a more complex texture and sonority until the climatic conclusion. The musical extract, therefore, can be regarded as an extraordinary example of hybridization of Romanticism and somewhat nascent Minimalism.

......Complete.....全文完。

David Leung (theorydavid)

2011-03-22 (published)