How Fast Should Beethoven’s ‘Ninth Symphony’ Be Performed?

口语:

I slip on a banana skin 我出丑了

But that’s just sour grapes 但那只是酸葡萄效应

I heard through the grapevine that they broke up 我从小道消息得知他们分手了

He is a peach 他是一个好人

He’s landed a plum job 得到一份称心如意的工作

词汇:

devoted:/dɪˈvəʊ.tɪd/ 挚爱的；忠实的，忠诚的 Lucy is devoted to her cats. 露西对她的猫十分疼爱。

oboe:/ˈəʊ.bəʊ/ 双簧管

文稿:

Ludwig van Beethoven has long been considered one of the greatest composers of classical music. Critics say that his final complete musical work, the Ninth Symphony, is possibly his best.The symphony was first performed on May 7, 1824, in Vienna, Austria. Beethoven already had lost his hearing when he was composing the Ninth. He never fully heard the performance himself. And nearly 200 years after the first performance, there is still disagreement over how fast the work should be performed. Benjamin Zander is the music director of the Boston Philharmonic, a classical music performance group he founded in 1979. The nearly 84-year-old conductor is leading the Boston Philharmonic in a performance on Friday night at Boston’s Symphony Hall. Then, on Sunday afternoon, he will do the same at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

长期以来，路德维希·范·贝多芬一直被认为是最伟大的古典音乐作曲家之一。评论家说，他最后一部完整的音乐作品《第九交响曲》可能是他最好的作品。 该交响曲于 1824 年 5 月 7 日在奥地利维也纳首演。贝多芬在创作第九交响曲时已经失去了听力。他自己从未完全听过表演。而在首次演出近 200 年后，对于这项工作应该以多快的速度进行，仍然存在分歧。本杰明·赞德 (Benjamin Zander) 是波士顿爱乐乐团的音乐总监，该乐团是他于 1979 年创立的古典音乐表演团体。这位年近 84 岁的指挥家将于周五晚上在波士顿交响乐厅带领波士顿爱乐乐团演出。然后，周日下午，他将在纽约卡内基音乐厅做同样的事情。

Zander believes that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony should sound far different than the way it is usually performed. He plans to finish the symphony in less than one hour during the performances in Boston and New York. “There’s so much information from Beethoven and so little information about how to interpret it,” Zander told the Associated Press. Zander said he sought advice from violinist and scholar Rudoph Kolisch. In the 1993 issue of The Musical Quarterly, Kolisch discussed how Beethoven marked his work using a metronome, a device that produces a steady beat to help musicians with the speed, or tempo, of musical work.

赞德认为贝多芬的第九交响曲听起来应该与通常的演奏方式大不相同。他计划在波士顿和纽约的演出期间用不到一小时的时间完成这部交响乐。 “关于贝多芬的信息太多了，但关于如何解读它的信息却很少，”赞德告诉美联社。赞德说他向小提琴家和学者鲁道夫·科利施寻求建议。在 1993 年的音乐剧季刊中，Kolisch 讨论了贝多芬如何使用节拍器标记他的作品，节拍器是一种产生稳定节拍的设备，可以帮助音乐家掌握音乐作品的速度或节奏。

Beethoven wrote in an 1817 letter that he wanted to drop musical terms like “allegro” for fast, “andante” for slow, or “presto” for extremely fast. He added, the “metronome gives us the best opportunity to do so.” In 1992, Zander’s recording with the Boston Philharmonic for the music company Pickwick International came in at 57 minutes, 51 seconds. His 2018 recording of the same music was 58 minutes, 39 seconds long. “For the recording, I really set out to be a devoted servant,” Zander said. He said he had a little statue of Beethoven and looked at it from time to time to see if it was smiling.

贝多芬在 1817 年的一封信中写道，他想放弃音乐术语，例如“快板”表示快速，“行板”表示慢速，或者“急板”表示极快。他补充说，“节拍器为我们提供了这样做的最佳机会。” 1992 年，赞德与波士顿爱乐乐团为匹克威克国际音乐公司录制的唱片时长 57 分 51 秒。他 2018 年录制的同一首音乐时长 58 分 39 秒。 “为了录音，我真的开始做一个忠诚的仆人，”赞德说。他说他有一尊贝多芬的小雕像，时不时看看它是否在微笑。

Some of the world’s most famous conductors, however, took more time with Beethoven’s Ninth in their performances. Arturo Toscanini took 65 minutes for RCA Victor with the NBC Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1952; Wilhelm Furtwängler needed 74 minutes at the Bayreuth Festival in 1951; and Leonard Bernstein stretched the music for 78 minutes during his 1989 performance with members of six orchestras to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall.After Zander’s performance at Carnegie Hall on October 10, 1983, Andrew Porter wrote in the New Yorker, “If Mr. Zander is right, we have been hearing the music of the greatest composer only in misrepresentation.”

然而，一些世界最著名的指挥家在演奏贝多芬第九交响曲时花费了更多时间。 1952 年，阿图罗·托斯卡尼尼 (Arturo Toscanini) 与 NBC 交响乐团在卡内基音乐厅为 RCA Victor 演奏了 65 分钟； 1951 年，威廉·富特文格勒 (Wilhelm Furtwängler) 在拜罗伊特音乐节上需要 74 分钟； 1989 年，伦纳德·伯恩斯坦 (Leonard Bernstein) 与六个管弦乐队的成员一起为纪念柏林墙的倒塌而将音乐拉长了 78 分钟。赞德 (Zander) 于 1983 年 10 月 10 日在卡内基音乐厅 (Carnegie Hall) 演出后，安德鲁·波特 (Andrew Porter) 在《纽约客》上写道：“如果先生. Zander 是对的，我们只是在错误的陈述中听到了最伟大作曲家的音乐。

Many conductors noted Beethoven’s loss of hearing as a reason to ignore his metronome markings. James Conlon is the music director of the Los Angeles Opera and main conductor of Italy’s Orchestra RAI. He said, “There are powerful arguments on both sides. I am not against performing Beethoven at the speeds suggested by the metronome.” He added that if the resulting performance lacks expression, emotion, and dynamics, then it should not be followed. Andrew Price regularly plays oboe with several orchestras in Boston. He said, “The hardest thing is just to keep an open mind about it…All the stuff I learned as a 20-year-old student, I had to go back and relearn it all, just to have a completely different approach.”

许多指挥家注意到贝多芬的听力损失是忽略他的节拍器标记的原因。詹姆斯康伦是洛杉矶歌剧院的音乐总监和意大利 RAI 管弦乐团的首席指挥。他说：“双方都有强有力的论据。我不反对以节拍器建议的速度演奏贝多芬。”他补充说，如果由此产生的表演缺乏表情、情感和动态，那么就不应该遵循。 Andrew Price 经常与波士顿的几个管弦乐队一起演奏双簧管。他说，“最困难的事情就是保持开放的心态......我作为一名 20 岁学生学到的所有东西，我不得不回去重新学习，只是为了有一个完全不同的方法。”