I thought if I skipped it might help my nerves, but I'm actually having a paradoxical reaction to that, so that was a bad idea. (Laughter)
嗯..我想着我如果跳过这段会使我缓解下情绪 不过我对刚才鼓掌有个矛盾的反应 所以..嗯..不太好.(笑声)
Anyway, I was really delighted to receive the invitation to present to you some of my music and some of my work as a composer, presumably because it appeals to my well-known and abundant narcissism. (Laughter) And I'm not kidding, I just think we should just say that and move forward. (Laughter)
不过呢,作为一个作曲家 我非常高兴能得到这样一个机会 去向你们展示一些我们音乐作品 因为这正符合我出名和很强的自恋倾向 我没开玩笑,我认为我应该说出来 然后继续前进
So, but the thing is, a dilemma quickly arose, and that is that I'm really bored with music, and I'm really bored with the role of the composer, and so I decided to put that idea, boredom, as the focus of my presentation to you today. And I'm going to share my music with you, but I hope that I'm going to do so in a way that tells a story, tells a story about how I used boredom as a catalyst for creativity and invention, and how boredom actually forced me to change the fundamental question that I was asking in my discipline, and how boredom also, in a sense, pushed me towards taking on roles beyond the sort of most traditional, narrow definition of a composer.
不过呢,我马上就面临一个难题 就是我玩音乐都玩的无聊了 而且我对于作曲家这个工作也不感兴趣了 因为我决定将无聊作为 我今天演讲的主题 我会跟你们分享我的一些音乐,不过我希望 我通过讲一个故事的方式来做 是一个我如何用无聊作为催化剂 来带给我创造力和想象力的, 以及无聊如何强迫去改变我曾再 这个领域中一直问自己的问题 并且无聊如何促使我 走向了超越最传统, 最狭窄定义的作曲家
What I'd like to do today is to start with an excerpt of a piece of music at the piano. (Music) Okay, I wrote that. (Laughter) No, it's not — (Applause) Oh, why thank you. No, no, I didn't write that. In fact, that was a piece by Beethoven, and so I was not functioning as a composer. Just now I was functioning in the role of the interpreter, and there I am, interpreter. So, an interpreter of what? Of a piece of music, right? But we can ask the question, "But is it music?" And I say this rhetorically, because of course by just about any standard we would have to concede that this is, of course, a piece of music, but I put this here now because, just to set it in your brains for the moment, because we're going to return to this question. It's going to be a kind of a refrain as we go through the presentation.
我想以一段在 钢琴上的音乐开始 (音乐) 对,这就是我作的.(笑声) 哈,其实不是---(鼓掌) 噢,谢谢你们. 没没,那不是我作的. 实际上,那是贝多芬的作品 因此我刚才不算是个作曲家 刚才我只是一个解释者 对,我就是解释者 解释者解释什么呢? 一段音乐,对吧? 不过我想问这个问题:"这是不是音乐呢?" 这是个修辞的问法,因为 不管怎么说刚才那个 当然是一段音乐 不过我先这个问题放在这里 先放你们的脑子里搁一会儿 因为我们会回到这个问题中的 在整个演讲中会是 一种重复
So here we have this piece of music by Beethoven, and my problem with it is, it's boring. I mean, you — I'm just like, a hush, huh -- It's like -- (Laughter) It's Beethoven, how can you say that? No, well, I don't know, it's very familiar to me. I had to practice it as a kid, and I'm really sick of it. So -- (Laughter) I would, so what I might like to try to do is to change it, to transform it in some ways, to personalize it, so I might take the opening, like this idea -- (Music) and then I might substitute -- (Music) and then I might improvise on that melody that goes forward from there -- (Music) (Music)
所以我这有一段贝多芬的音乐 不过呢,这段音乐很无聊 你想嘛..这就跟--嘘,嘘,你看--(笑声) 那可是贝多芬啊.你怎么能那样说? 嗯..我不知道. 这段音乐对我来说太熟悉了. 小时候我就练习它..现在我都快吐了,所以呢--(笑声) 因此我想做的是改变它 以某种方式进行转变,对它进行个性化设计 所以就像是这样-- (音乐) 我还可以加上--(音乐) 然后我还可以临时演奏 这一段----(音乐) (音乐)
So that might be the kind of thing -- Why thank you. (Applause) That would be the kind of thing that I would do, and it's not necessarily better than the Beethoven. In fact, I think it's not better than it. The thing is -- (Laughter) -- it's more interesting to me. It's less boring for me. I'm really leaning into me, because I, because I have to think about what decisions I'm going to make on the fly as that Beethoven text is running in time through my head and I'm trying to figure out what kinds of transformations I'm going to make to it. So this is an engaging enterprise for me, and I've really leaned into that first person pronoun thing there, and now my face appears twice, so I think we can agree that this is a fundamentally solipsistic enterprise. (Laughter) But it's an engaging one, and it's interesting to me for a while, but then I get bored with it, and by it, I actually mean, the piano, because it becomes, it's this familiar instrument, it's timbral range is actually pretty compressed, at least when you play on the keyboard, and if you're not doing things like listening to it after you've lit it on fire or something like that, you know. It gets a little bit boring, and so pretty soon I go through other instruments, they become familiar, and eventually I find myself designing and constructing my own instrument, and I brought one with me today, and I thought I would play a little bit on it for you so you can hear what it sounds like.
基本上就是这样---谢谢. (鼓掌) 这就是我想做的事情 这不必要比贝多芬的要好 实际上我觉得的确没贝多芬的好.不过呢---(笑声) 对我来说更有趣,不是很无聊 我也就更倾向于我自己,因为 我必须很快对于下一步做出决定 当贝多芬的调调在我脑子的走过 我在尝试去找到我想要 做出的转变 因为呢这对于我来说很意思 我的确为我自己创造一些东西, 现在我的图片出现第二次了,所以我觉得我们可以说 这实际上是一个唯我论的实业.(笑声) 不过这很吸引人,有意思 但过了一段时间,我又觉得无聊了, 我觉得钢琴没意思了,因为 我太熟悉了,它的音调宽度实际 很狭窄,至少当你在弹键盘的时候, 而如果在你把它点燃后 你又不去听它,就更无聊了. 所以很快呢,我把所有 的乐器都玩了一遍,它们都变得对我来说很熟悉 到了最后我开始自己设计和制作 乐器,今天我就带来了一个 我可以给你们演奏一段 你可以听听是什么样子
(Music)
(音乐)
You gotta have doorstops, that's important. (Laughter) I've got combs. They're the only combs that I own. (Music) They're all mounted on my instruments. (Laughter)
你肯定得有钩环嘛,这很重要.(笑声) 我还有梳子,这些我唯一拥有的梳子.(音乐) 他们都在我的乐器上固定着.(笑声)
(Music)
(音乐)
I can actually do all sorts of things. I can play with a violin bow. I don't have to use the chopsticks. So we have this sound. (Music) And with a bank of live electronics, I can change the sounds radically. (Music) (Music) Like that, and like this. (Music) And so forth.
我其实可以做很多. 我可以用 一个小提琴的弓来演奏. 我不需要用筷子 所以呢我就有这样的声音.(音乐) 有着这一堆电子设备 我可以急剧地改变声音.(音乐) (音乐) 比如说这样.(音乐) 以及等等.
So this gives you a little bit of an idea of the sound world of this instrument, which I think is quite interesting and it puts me in the role of the inventor, and the nice thing about — This instrument is called the Mouseketeer ... (Laughter) and the cool thing about it is I'm the world's greatest Mouseketeer player. (Laughter) Okay? (Applause) So in that regard, this is one of the things, this is one of the privileges of being, and here's another role, the inventor, and by the way, when I told you that I'm the world's greatest, if you're keeping score, we've had narcissism and solipsism and now a healthy dose of egocentricism. I know some of you are just, you know, bingo! Or, I don't know. (Laughter)
因此呢,你可以大概了解下这个乐器的声音 我认为这很有趣 而且我还变成了发明家,而这个 乐器呢就叫做米老鼠小人...(笑声) 最酷的呢 就是我是这个世界最好的米老鼠小人演奏家(笑声) 对吧?(鼓掌) 所以说呢, 这就是作为发明家 的一大好处,顺便说下 我当给你说我是世界上最好, 如果你记得话,我们已经有自恋主义和唯我主义了 现在呢是一股自我中心主义情结 我知道你们其中一些人 "哈,对!" 好吧.其实我也不知道.(笑声)
Anyway, so this is also a really enjoyable role. I should concede also that I'm the world's worst Mouseketeer player, and it was this distinction that I was most worried about when I was on that prior side of the tenure divide. I'm glad I'm past that. We're not going to go into that. I'm crying on the inside. There are still scars.
不过这个角色的确很有意思 我还应该说我还是世界上最差的米老鼠小人演奏家 而我最担心的就是 我在我终身占有东西上我是有优先地位的 不过我现在已经不是 我在内心里哭.还有伤痕呢.
Anyway, but I guess my point is that all of these enterprises are engaging to me in their multiplicity, but as I've presented them to you today, they're actually solitary enterprises, and so pretty soon I want to commune with other people, and so I'm delighted that in fact I get to compose works for them. I get to write, sometimes for soloists and I get to work with one person, sometimes full orchestras, and I work with a lot of people, and this is probably the capacity, the role creatively for which I'm probably best known professionally. Now, some of my scores as a composer look like this, and others look like this, and some look like this, and I make all of these by hand, and it's really tedious. It takes a long, long time to make these scores, and right now I'm working on a piece that's 180 pages in length, and it's just a big chunk of my life, and I'm just pulling out hair. I have a lot of it, and that's a good thing I suppose. (Laughter)
不过我想说的是所有这些实业 都使我变得多才多艺, 而且他们都是独自的实业 所以很快我想和其他交流 我很高兴我可以给其他人作曲 我有时候给独奏者作曲 有时候给整个管乐团作曲,我和很多人在合作 而这就是我的角色创造力 我其实就是以这个最出名的 对于我作为一个作曲家的谱子 有些是这样 有些是那样 我这些都是我手做的,很麻烦 花很长很长时间才做出来 现在我正在作一个180 页长的谱子 这占用我生活很大部分,我就不停地揪头发 不过我头发挺多,所有这是好事.(笑声)
So this gets really boring and really tiresome for me, so after a while the process of notating is not only boring, but I actually want the notation to be more interesting, and so that's pushed me to do other projects like this one.
不过最后我又觉得无聊了 但一段时间后乐谱又变得无聊了, 而我想要乐谱变得更有趣 因此我就错了一些其他的工程
This is an excerpt from a score called "The Metaphysics of Notation." The full score is 72 feet wide. It's a bunch of crazy pictographic notation. Let's zoom in on one section of it right here. You can see it's rather detailed. I do all of this with drafting templates, with straight edges, with French curves, and by freehand, and the 72 feet was actually split into 12 six-foot-wide panels that were installed around the Cantor Arts Center Museum lobby balcony, and it appeared for one year in the museum, and during that year, it was experienced as visual art most of the week, except, as you can see in these pictures, on Fridays, from noon til one, and only during that time, various performers came and interpreted these strange and undefined pictographic glyphs. (Laughter)
这是其中一个乐谱的一部分 "符号的形而上学" 整个谱子有72英尺那么长 是一组疯了一般的图像式的谱子 让我们放大一下.你可以看到 这其实非常细节化. 这些我都是通过先打草稿,平尺, 法式曲线(译者注: 一种曲线模型), 以及用我的双手制作的 而这72英尺长其实是分成了 12个6英尺宽的在Cantor 艺术中心博物馆大厅 的各处阳台上都有摆放 在这个博物馆里放了一年 在这一年,通常这些谱子都是用作视觉艺术品 除了你在这个图片里可以看到, 只有在每个周五,从正午到1点, 许多演奏家就出来然后开始演奏这些 奇怪的图形字符.(笑声)
Now this was a really exciting experience for me. It was gratifying musically, but I think the more important thing is it was exciting because I got to take on another role, especially given that it appeared in a museum, and that is as visual artist. (Laughter) We're going to fill up the whole thing, don't worry. (Laughter) I am multitudes. (Laughter)
这对我来说十分激动人心 音乐上给予我满足,不过我认为更重要的 是我承担了另外一个角色 在这个博物馆中, 我其实是个视觉艺术家.(笑声) 我们一会儿要把这个填满呢,别担心.(笑声) 我非常多才多艺的.(笑声)
So one of the things is that, I mean, some people would say, like, "Oh, you're being a dilettante," and maybe that's true. I can understand how, I mean, because I don't have a pedigree in visual art and I don't have any training, but it's just something that I wanted to do as an extension of my composition, as an extension of a kind of creative impulse.
因此有些人会出来说 "你其实全都对这些一知半解." 或许这没错.我可以理解 因为我在视觉艺术上没有什么血统 我也没什么训练,只不过这是我一个 作曲的一个扩充 作为一种具有创造力的冲击
I can understand the question, though. "But is it music?" I mean, there's not any traditional notation. I can also understand that sort of implicit criticism in this piece, "S-tog," which I made when I was living in Copenhagen. I took the Copenhagen subway map and I renamed all the stations to abstract musical provocations, and the players, who are synchronized with stopwatches, follow the timetables, which are listed in minutes past the hour.
但是我可以理解这个问题:"那这到底是不是音乐呢?" 对此其实没有传统的说法. 我也可以理解那种间接的批判 "S-tog" 这是当时我在哥本哈根住的时候我作的 我把哥本哈根的地铁地图拿来 然后我重新命名了所有的站台,都变成了音乐的音符 然后被秒表计时的演奏家 就跟着时间表,这些都是以分钟内来计算的
So this is a case of actually adapting something, or maybe stealing something, and then turning it into a musical notation.
所以这是实际上改造一个东西, 或者说偷窃也行. 然后把它变成一副乐谱
Another adaptation would be this piece. I took the idea of the wristwatch, and I turned it into a musical score. I made my own faces, and had a company fabricate them, and the players follow these scores. They follow the second hands, and as they pass over the various symbols, the players respond musically. Here's another example from another piece, and then its realization.
另外一个改造是这样的 我把一个腕表变成了音乐谱子 我做了我自己的脸型,然后叫一个公司生产出来 然后演奏家就按着这些谱子演奏 当他们通过各种各样的符号时, 他们的演奏出来是不同的 这儿有另外一个例子 以及我得到的结论
So in these two capacities, I've been scavenger, in the sense of taking, like, the subway map, right, or thief maybe, and I've also been designer, in the case of making the wristwatches. And once again, this is, for me, interesting.
所以在这些例子中,我是一个清道夫 将地铁地图拿来 或者小偷吧,我还是个设计师 因为我做了腕表 这些还是非常有趣
Another role that I like to take on is that of the performance artist. Some of my pieces have these kind of weird theatric elements, and I often perform them. I want to show you a clip from a piece called "Echolalia." This is actually being performed by Brian McWhorter, who is an extraordinary performer. Let's watch a little bit of this, and please notice the instrumentation.
另外一个我想要的角色是演出艺术家 一些我们的作品都有奇怪的剧场元素 我经常演奏他们,我想给你们看个我演奏 "Echolalia"的片子 这实际上是被Brian McWhorter演奏的 他是个很棒的演奏家 让我们看一点,尤其注意乐器部分
(Music)
(音乐)
Okay, I hear you were laughing nervously because you too could hear that the drill was a little bit sharp, the intonation was a little questionable. (Laughter) Let's watch just another clip.
好吧,我听到你们在偷偷笑 因为你听到了这段有点刺耳 音调很奇怪.(笑声) 让我们看另外一个
(Music)
(音乐)
You can see the mayhem continues, and there's, you know, there were no clarinets and trumpets and flutes and violins. Here's a piece that has an even more unusual, more peculiar instrumentation.
你可以听到这还是挺刺耳的, 而且这里面没有单簧管或者喇叭 或者笛子或者小提琴. 这有一个更不寻常的段子,使用更奇特的乐器
This is "Tlön," for three conductors and no players. (Laughter)
这是"Tlon", 是由三个指挥家没有演奏家来完成的
This was based on the experience of actually watching two people having a virulent argument in sign language, which produced no decibels to speak of, but affectively, psychologically, was a very loud experience.
这是根据两个人在用 图形语言进行激烈争吵的经历而编来的 这里面没有可以说出来的细节 不过这心理上还是非常吵闹的
So, yeah, I get it, with, like, the weird appliances and then the total absence of conventional instruments and this glut of conductors, people might, you know, wonder, yeah, "Is this music?"
因此,有着这些奇怪的设备 却毫无传统乐器 和这一大堆指挥家,人们可以会问 "这是不是音乐呢?"
But let's move on to a piece where clearly I'm behaving myself, and that is my "Concerto for Orchestra." You're going to notice a lot of conventional instruments in this clip. (Music) (Music)
不过我们先看一个我在表现我的片子吧 我是我的"管弦乐音乐会" 你看到很多传统的乐器 (音乐) (音乐)
This, in fact, is not the title of this piece. I was a bit mischievous. In fact, to make it more interesting, I put a space right in here, and this is the actual title of the piece. Let's continue with that same excerpt. (Music)
这其实不是它的标题 我刚有点淘气,实际上我多加一个空格 这才是它的标题 让我们继续 (音乐)
It's better with a florist, right? (Laughter) (Music) Or at least it's less boring. Let's watch a couple more clips. (Music)
我肯定会是个好的种花人,对吧?(笑声)(音乐) 其实不是很无聊啊.让我们再多看几个 (音乐)
So with all these theatric elements, this pushes me in another role, and that would be, possibly, the dramaturge. I was playing nice. I had to write the orchestra bits, right? Okay? But then there was this other stuff, right? There was the florist, and I can understand that, once again, we're putting pressure on the ontology of music as we know it conventionally, but let's look at one last piece today I'm going to share with you.
因此这使我承担上另一个角色 那就是剧作家 我做的很不错,写那些管弦乐的东西,没错吧? 不过那还是其他东西,对吧? 还有个种花人,我理解那个 我们还是在给音乐这个概念施压 正如我们通常认定的一样 好吧,我们来看今天的最后一个
This is going to be a piece called "Aphasia," and it's for hand gestures synchronized to sound, and this invites yet another role, and final one I'll share with you, which is that of the choreographer. And the score for the piece looks like this, and it instructs me, the performer, to make various hand gestures at very specific times synchronized with an audio tape, and that audio tape is made up exclusively of vocal samples. I recorded an awesome singer, and I took the sound of his voice in my computer, and I warped it in countless ways to come up with the soundtrack that you're about to hear. And I'll perform just an excerpt of "Aphasia" for you here. Okay? (Music) So that gives you a little taste of that piece. (Applause)
这个叫做"Aphasia" 这是跟音乐同步的手势 这使我变成另外一个角色,也是最后一个 也就是编舞者 这个谱子是这样的 去指导我作为演奏家 去在不同时间打出不同手势 与放的磁带同步,而那个磁带里 都是声音的样本 我录下了一个超棒的歌手 然后我在我电脑里使用了他的声音 我用了无数的方法把它改变 成了这样.你们马上会听到 我就为你演奏一部分,可以吧? (音乐) 这差不多就是那种感觉.(鼓掌)
Yeah, okay, that's kind of weird stuff. Is it music? Here's how I want to conclude. I've decided, ultimately, that this is the wrong question, that this is not the important question. The important question is, "Is it interesting?" And I follow this question, not worrying about "Is it music?" -- not worrying about the definition of the thing that I'm making. I allow my creativity to push me in directions that are simply interesting to me, and I don't worry about the likeness of the result to some notion, some paradigm, of what music composition is supposed to be, and that has actually urged me, in a sense, to take on a whole bunch of different roles, and so what I want you to think about is, to what extent might you change the fundamental question in your discipline, and, okay, I'm going to put one extra little footnote in here, because, like, I realized I mentioned some psychological defects earlier, and we also, along the way, had a fair amount of obsessive behavior, and there was some delusional behavior and things like that, and here I think we could say that this is an argument for self-loathing and a kind of schizophrenia, at least in the popular use of the term, and I really mean dissociative identity disorder, okay. (Laughter) Anyway, despite those perils, I would urge you to think about the possibility that you might take on roles in your own work, whether they are neighboring or far-flung from your professional definition.
好吧,刚才那个比较奇怪 那这是不是音乐呢?这是我想说的. 我最终决定了,那个问题是问的不对的 这不是重点 重点是,"是不是有趣呢?" 于是我开始思考这个问题,而不去想这是不是音乐 不去担心我所做东西的定义 我允许我的创造力 去向那些我认为有趣的方面去推进我 我不会担心结果 对于一些观点,或者范例的影响 以及音乐作品应该是什么样 这样以来,我实际上被激励了 我承担了一大堆角色 因此我想让你们思考的是, 你可能会改变你的领域中 的基本问题, 我最后还是想在这里做个注脚 因为,我意识到 前面一些心理学的缺陷, 以及很多的着迷的行为 还有些妄想的行为 我觉得我们应该说这是对自弃 和精神分裂症的辩论 至少通俗语言是这么说 其实我的意思是多重人格分裂症.(笑声) 好了,不说那些了,我会建议你们 去想想你可以承担的角色 在你自己的领域,不管是靠近 还是远离你的专业定义
And with that, I thank you very much. (Applause)
因此,我非常感谢你们.(鼓掌)
(Applause)
(鼓掌)