John Adams on Composing and Creative Freedom (Ep. 166)
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
大家好，欢迎回到《与泰勒对话》。
I’m very honored tonight to be chatting with John Coolidge Adams, arguably America’s greatest living composer.
今晚我非常荣幸能够与约翰·柯立芝·亚当斯交谈，他可以说是美国在世最伟大的作曲家。
He recently has premiered a new opera, Antony and Cleopatra.
他最近首演了一部新歌剧《安东尼与克利奥帕特拉》。
I am also the proud owner of a new compact disc boxed set called Collected Works, which I believe is about 40 compact discs, and a Blu-ray of Nixon in China.
我还自豪地拥有一套名为《全集》的新盒装光盘，我相信它大约有 40 张光盘，还有一张尼克松在中国的蓝光光盘。
John, welcome.
约翰，欢迎。
Thank you.
谢谢。
Now, as you know, Antony and Cleopatra — it’s one of Shakespeare’s messiest plots, especially starting in act 2.
现在，如您所知，《安东尼和克利奥帕特拉》——这是莎士比亚最混乱的情节之一，尤其是从第二幕开始。
You’ve got what, 40 characters and 42 scenes?
你有什么，40 个角色和 42 个场景？
How do you handle that operatically?
你在操作上如何处理这个问题？
Well, the first thing to do with a behemoth like that is to, shall we say, wrestle it to the ground.
嗯，对付这样的庞然大物，我们应该说，首先要做的就是把它摔倒在地。
With Shakespeare, the plays are long.
莎士比亚的戏剧很长。
I don’t think Antony and Cleopatra is as long as Hamlet, but it’s a big, big sprawling epic that is both political and personal.
我不认为《安东尼与克利奥帕特拉》像《哈姆雷特》那么长，但它是一部非常非常庞大的史诗，既具有政治性，又具有个人性。
And it being an opera, we’re really mostly focused on the interpersonal relationships.
作为一部歌剧，我们实际上主要关注人际关系。
The reason I chose this opera was because on the one hand, it’s about world politics.
我之所以选择这部歌剧，一方面是因为它是关于世界政治的。
It’s the rise of one civilization and the decline of another.
这是一种文明的崛起和另一种文明的衰落。
But it’s also very intimate because it’s about people who are caught up in the maelstrom and have very, very powerful intimacy, as well as being political figures.
但它也非常亲密，因为它讲述的是那些陷入漩涡并具有非常非常强大的亲密感的人，以及政治人物。
There’s a lot of very rapid action and not many soliloquies.
有很多非常快速的动作，没有太多的独白。
Does that make writing an opera based around the story harder or easier?
这会让根据这个故事写一部歌剧变得更难还是更容易？
Oh, writing an opera is hard no matter what.
唉，写歌剧无论如何都很难。
I once said to the great architect Frank Gehry, “You’re lucky you can farm out the electrical and the plumbing and the concrete to someone else, but we composers, we have to do everything.”
我曾经对伟大的建筑师弗兰克·盖里说：“你很幸运，你可以将电力、管道和混凝土外包给别人，但我们作曲家，我们必须做一切。”
In this case, I did the libretto, the vocal writing, the sketching, and the instrumentation, and I even did the computer setting of the full score.
在这个例子中，我做了剧本、声乐创作、草图和配乐，甚至还做了总谱的电脑设置。
I was at this for pretty much four years.
我在这方面工作了将近四年。
If I think about Verdi’s Shakespeare operas, it feels to me they require near-perfect performances.
如果我想到威尔第的莎士比亚歌剧，我觉得它们需要近乎完美的表演。
I love James Levine doing Otello, but a lot of other recordings don’t quite work for me, or I love von Karajan doing Falstaff, but everything has to be perfect.
我喜欢詹姆斯·莱文（James Levine）演绎的《奥赛罗》（Otello），但很多其他录音不太适合我，或者我喜欢冯·卡拉扬（von Karajan）演绎的《福斯塔夫》（Falstaff），但一切都必须完美。
Are you worried that with your opera, the combination of Shakespeare, the complex musical, all the roles, that it will be nearly impossible for other people to do it as well as, in essence, you’re doing it now?
你是否担心你的歌剧，莎士比亚的结合，复杂的音乐剧，所有的角色，其他人几乎不可能做到，本质上，你现在正在做？
For lack of a better word, I write classical music.
由于找不到更好的词，我写古典音乐。
And the term classical music, of course, has an odor for younger people because they associate it with older music or older people.
当然，古典音乐这个词对年轻人来说有一种味道，因为他们将其与古老的音乐或老年人联系起来。
But it’s actually a very thrilling thing to do because, when you write a score, you are essentially making a recipe for something, and it changes with every performance.
但这实际上是一件非常令人兴奋的事情，因为当你写乐谱时，你本质上是在为某件事制定一个配方，并且它会随着每次表演而变化。
It’s not like a recording by a pop group that’s always going to be the same.
它不像流行乐队的唱片那样总是一样的。
Hence, every different iteration of a work of mine is different.
因此，我的作品的每一次不同的迭代都是不同的。
Different singers and different conductors and different violinists — they give a completely new point of view on something.
不同的歌手、不同的指挥家和不同的小提琴家——他们对某件事给出了全新的观点。
The pieces are constantly being reborn.
这些作品不断重生。
Was Elizabeth Taylor the perfect Cleopatra?
伊丽莎白·泰勒是完美的克利奥帕特拉吗？
So sensual, so luscious.
如此感性，如此甘美。
Is she your mental Cleopatra?
她是你心目中的克利奥帕特拉吗？
I looked at some of the classical actresses.
我看了一些古典女演员。
You can go on YouTube and see different performances.
你可以去 YouTube 观看不同的表演。
The greatest one is Janet Suzman, who’s actually a South African actress.
最伟大的是珍妮特·苏兹曼（Janet Suzman），她实际上是一位南非女演员。
I think she was active in the early 1960s or so.
我认为她活跃于 20 世纪 60 年代初期左右。
But ultimately, I follow my own vision.
但最终，我遵循自己的愿景。
And what drew me to these two characters, Antony and Cleopatra, was the fact that they were older people.
安东尼和克利奥帕特拉这两个角色吸引我的原因是他们都是老年人。
One could say they’d been there, done that.
可以说他们曾经去过那里，做过那件事。
Each of them had a background.
他们每个人都有背景。
Each of them actually had had children by other people.
他们每个人实际上都曾与其他人生过孩子。
So, in a way, this is a story about older people.
所以，在某种程度上，这是一个关于老年人的故事。
I’m reminded of the great Edward Albee play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
我想起了爱德华·阿尔比的伟大戏剧《谁害怕弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫？》
There’s just some really, really knock-down, drag-out fights between these two people, but in the end they love each other.
这两个人之间确实发生过一些非常非常激烈的持久战，但最终他们彼此相爱。
I guess my model was just my own life, my parents, people that I’ve known, people who’ve had difficulties in their relationships and who’ve somehow managed to find love.
我想我的榜样就是我自己的生活，我的父母，我认识的人，那些在人际关系中遇到困难并设法找到爱情的人。
How old are Antony and Cleopatra in your vision?
你想象中的安东尼和克利奥帕特拉多大了？
Well, this takes place roughly around 30 BC.
嗯，这大约发生在公元前 30 年左右。
If you were 40 years old, you were old back then.
如果你40岁了，那时你就老了。
People didn’t have very long lifespans.
人们的寿命并不长。
We don’t know for sure, but it seems like Cleopatra was probably at that time in her early 30s, maybe mid-30s, and Antony was probably, we’re guessing, maybe 10 years older.
我们不确定，但看起来克利奥帕特拉当时可能 30 岁出头，也许 30 多岁，而我们猜测，安东尼可能比她大 10 岁。
But people lived fast and intense in those days.
但那时人们的生活又快又紧张。
If you didn’t get along with your cousin, you hired an assassin.
如果你和你的表弟合不来，你就雇了一个刺客。
Life was very brutal, and to survive took great determination and ingenuity and craftiness.
生活是非常残酷的，要生存需要极大的决心、聪明才智和狡猾。
What does the opera draw from Debussy?
这部歌剧借鉴了德彪西的哪些内容？
Most of my earlier operas had a lot of set pieces — choruses or big chunks of wonderful poetry by Alice Goodman, who wrote my first libretti for Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer.
我早期的大部分歌剧都有很多布景——爱丽丝·古德曼的合唱或大段精彩的诗歌，她为《尼克松在中国》和《克林霍夫之死》写了我的第一个剧本。
We have in those operas real soliloquies and arias and choruses.
在这些歌剧中我们有真正的独白、咏叹调和合唱。
But in this case, in Antony and Cleopatra, I really wanted to make what I call a musical drama, and the interaction between the characters — it’s quicksilver.
但在《安东尼与克利奥帕特拉》这部电影中，我真的很想拍一部我所谓的音乐剧，以及角色之间的互动——就像水银一样。
It’s really fast.
真的很快。
It’s like one of those Preston Sturges 1930s fast-moving, fast-evolving dramas, and I didn’t really have a model for that in the operatic repertoire.
这就像 1930 年代普雷斯顿·斯特奇斯 (Preston Sturges) 的一部快速发展、快速发展的戏剧，而我在歌剧剧目中并没有真正的模型。
The closest I could think of was the way Claude Debussy treated the great play Pelléas et Mélisande, which is by a Belgian playwright, Maeterlinck.
我能想到的最接近的是克劳德·德彪西对待比利时剧作家梅特林克的伟大戏剧《佩利亚斯与梅丽桑德》的方式。
What made Debussy’s opera so radical and so revolutionary was that he treated this story and kept it whole and just musicalized the text.
德彪西的歌剧之所以如此激进和革命性，是因为他处理了这个故事并保留了它的完整性，只是将文本音乐化了。
What have you drawn from Janáček?
你从雅纳切克身上得到了什么？
I’ve been compared to Janáček, but I have to say, I actually don’t know his work very well, so I can’t answer that question very clearly.
我曾被拿来与雅纳切克作比较，但我不得不说，我其实不太了解他的作品，所以我不能很清楚地回答这个问题。
Is there any Benjamin Britten vocal music that you truly love?
有没有您真正喜欢的本杰明·布里顿声乐？
I’m a fan of Benjamin Britten, but not particularly of his vocal music.
我是本杰明·布里顿的粉丝，但不是特别喜欢他的声乐。
I know, for listeners in England, that’s just an outrage to say that.
我知道，对于英国的听众来说，这样说是一种愤怒。
But I find most setting of the English language in the classical tradition rather a little bit pretentious and a little bit stiff.
但我发现大多数英语语言在古典传统中的设置都有点自命不凡，有点僵硬。
My inspirations have always been great popular music, whether it was Ella Fitzgerald or Stevie Wonder or Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan.
我的灵感一直是伟大的流行音乐，无论是艾拉·菲茨杰拉德、史蒂夫·旺德、乔尼·米切尔、鲍勃·迪伦。
Just the way a great pop artist treats the English language — that’s been my model, not Benjamin Britten.
就像伟大的波普艺术家对待英语的方式一样——这是我的榜样，而不是本杰明·布里顿。
Not even Handel, even though I love Handel, but it’s just a form of musicalized speech that doesn’t interest me.
甚至亨德尔也不是，尽管我喜欢亨德尔，但这只是一种音乐化的演讲形式，我对此不感兴趣。
Stephen Sondheim — how well does he set texts in English?
斯蒂芬·桑德海姆 — 他用英语编写文本的能力如何？
I grew up in a musical family.
我在一个音乐家庭长大。
My father played the clarinet and the saxophone, and my mother was a very talented singer and actress.
我的父亲演奏单簧管和萨克斯管，我的母亲是一位非常有才华的歌手和演员。
She didn’t have any formal training, but when I was a kid, I would go to performances of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter — those shows that the local theater groups would put on.
她没有受过任何正规训练，但当我还是个孩子的时候，我会去看罗杰斯和汉默斯坦、科尔·波特的表演——那些当地剧团会上演的节目。
In fact, I was even in one of them.
事实上，我什至是其中之一。
I was the little Polynesian boy in South Pacific, and my mother sang “Bloody Mary.”
我是南太平洋的波利尼西亚小男孩，我的母亲唱着“血腥玛丽”。
I absorbed that, as they say, with my mother’s milk.
正如他们所说，我用母乳吸收了它。
It was just such a part of my musical DNA.
这就是我音乐 DNA 的一部分。
Even though I’m more of a “classical composer,” that really is the deepest part of my identity as a theatrical composer.
尽管我更像是一名“古典作曲家”，但这确实是我作为戏剧作曲家身份的最深层部分。
I have some questions about your other works, my favorites.
我对你的其他作品（我最喜欢的作品）有一些疑问。
On the Transmigration of Souls — compositionally and orally, why does it sound so different from your other works?
《论灵魂的轮回》——从作曲和口语上看，为什么它听起来和你其他的作品那么不同？
How would you explain that?
你会如何解释这一点？
Well, I like to think that every single one of my pieces is different.
嗯，我喜欢认为我的每一件作品都是不同的。
I have often said the one thing I never want to do is brand myself, produce the same predictable piece.
我经常说我永远不想做的一件事就是给自己贴上品牌标签，生产出同样可预测的作品。
A lot of artists fall into that, especially if they’re successful.
很多艺术家都会陷入这种困境，尤其是当他们成功的时候。
Every piece of mine is very different from its predecessor or the one that follows it.
我的每一件作品都与其前作或后续作品有很大不同。
In the case of the piece that you mentioned, On the Transmigration of Souls — this was a request from the New York Philharmonic to compose a memorial piece which was going to be performed exactly a year after the World Trade Center attacks on September 11th.
就你提到的那首《论灵魂的轮回》来说——这是纽约爱乐乐团要求创作一首纪念曲，该曲将在9月11日世贸中心袭击事件整整一年后上演。
It was not an assignment that I was terribly happy about because I had other plans, and it seemed like it was going to be a very difficult subject matter to deal with, this terrible tragedy and all those people who were killed.
这并不是一项令我非常高兴的任务，因为我还有其他计划，而且似乎这将是一个非常难以处理的主题，这场可怕的悲剧和所有遇难的人。
But I came up with the idea of what I called a memory space, where the various texts and words and phrases could float, so to speak, in musical space.
但我提出了所谓的记忆空间的想法，可以说，各种文本、单词和短语可以漂浮在音乐空间中。
The listener would enter into that space the way you might enter into, let’s say, a big cathedral in Europe and just be alone and experience your emotions and your thoughts as they unite with these musical objects.
听众会进入那个空间，就像你进入欧洲的一座大教堂一样，独自一人，体验你的情感和思想，因为它们与这些音乐对象结合在一起。
The musical objects came from all different things.
音乐对象来自各种不同的事物。
The texts that I put together came from little handmade signs that family members left around Ground Zero, hoping that they would find their loved ones.
我整理的文字来自家庭成员在归零地周围留下的手工制作的小标牌，希望他们能找到亲人。
I went to a site online where people would sign in and leave a little memory card, remembering someone who had died, and just a long list of the names of the people that had passed away as a result of those attacks.
我访问了一个在线网站，人们会在那里登录并留下一张小存储卡，记住死去的人，以及因这些袭击而去世的人的名字的一长串名单。
When something is commissioned from you, do you feel that more creativity is pulled from you, that there’s a certain constraint imposed on you and you’ve got to come up with something?
当你委托做某件事时，你是否觉得你的创造力被剥夺了，你受到了某种限制，你必须想出一些东西？
I’m lucky enough in that I don’t have to follow some prescribed request, or if there is a prescribed request, I simply don’t accept it.
我很幸运，因为我不必遵循某些规定的要求，或者如果有规定的要求，我干脆不接受。
If I want to do something, whether it’s a concerto or an opera or a string quartet — I even wrote a show once with two dozen pop songs — I do that, and then I look around for somebody to commission it.
如果我想做点什么，无论是协奏曲、歌剧还是弦乐四重奏 —— 我什至用两打流行歌曲写过一次演出 —— 我会这样做，然后我会四处寻找有人委托它。
The violinist Leila Josefowicz — what makes her such a perfect performer of your works?
小提琴家莱拉·约瑟夫维奇（Leila Josefowicz）——是什么让她成为您作品的完美演奏家？
Leila is a very special person.
莱拉是一个非常特别的人。
She has immense energy, and that energy is combined with a wonderful sensitivity, a lyricism.
她拥有巨大的能量，这种能量与美妙的敏感度和抒情性相结合。
I could say this — it sounds a little indecent, but she’s the perfect package for my kind of music.
我可以这么说——这听起来有点不雅，但她是我这种音乐的完美组合。
She can absolutely groove, get things going in a wonderful, powerful rhythm, but she also has a very deep emotional sensitivity.
她绝对可以律动，让事情以美妙而有力的节奏进行，但她也有非常深刻的情感敏感性。
She’s played four major works of mine, one of which I composed specifically for her.
她演奏了我的四首主要作品，其中一首是我专门为她创作的。
Not just the regular violin, but she plays a piece of mine, called The Dharma at Big Sur, which is for electric violin, an instrument with six strings that can sound like a regular violin but also can sound like Jimi Hendrix rocking out.
不仅仅是普通的小提琴，她还演奏了我的一首作品，名为 The Dharma at Big Sur，这是为电小提琴而作的，这是一种有六弦的乐器，听起来既像普通小提琴，又像吉米·亨德里克斯 (Jimi Hendrix) 的摇滚乐。
In your mind, is there a perfect version of your violin concerto?
您心目中的小提琴协奏曲有完美的版本吗？
As I said earlier, every performer brings something special.
正如我之前所说，每个表演者都会带来一些特别的东西。
If I said there was a perfect version of it, that would probably discourage anyone from taking it up.
如果我说它有一个完美的版本，那可能会阻止任何人接受它。
Certainly, Leila’s performances and her recordings thrill me.
当然，莱拉的表演和录音让我兴奋不已。
But the other day, I received a video link of a performance by another violinist, Clara Kang, a Korean German violinist playing a piece of mine that no one except Leila has to this point dared play, and that was a revelation itself.
但有一天，我收到了另一位小提琴家克拉拉·康（Clara Kang）表演的视频链接，她是一位韩裔德国小提琴家，正在演奏我的一首作品，除了莱拉（Leila）之外，迄今为止没有人敢演奏，这本身就是一个启示。
Why would Jesus have been drawn to a withered hand?
为什么耶稣会被一只枯干的手吸引呢？
Pardon?
赦免？
Why would Jesus have been drawn to a withered hand?
为什么耶稣会被一只枯干的手吸引呢？
You’ve asked that question.
你已经问过这个问题了。
What’s the answer?
答案是什么？
You’re mentioning a very early piece of mine called Christian Zeal and Activity, which dates way back into the 1970s.
你提到了我很早的一篇文章，名为《基督教热忱与活动》（Christian Zeal and Activity），它的历史可以追溯到 20 世纪 70 年代。
That was a period of avant-garde, experimental music.
那是一个前卫、实验音乐的时期。
I found an old hymn book.
我找到一本古老的赞美诗书。
I think it was a Salvation Army hymn book, and I found it in a used bookstore.
我认为这是一本救世军赞美诗书，我在一家旧书店找到的。
The hymns were all classified: Easter, “Christ Is Risen,” Advent, et cetera.
这些赞美诗都被分类为：复活节、“基督复活”、降临等等。
Then there was a section called “Christian Zeal and Activity,” which I thought was a wonderful phrase.
然后有一个部分叫做“基督徒的热心和活动”，我认为这是一个很棒的短语。
I composed the piece, and basically what I did was to take the very popular old hymn, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and I slowed it up to almost unrecognizable slowness, just like an iceberg slowly melting.
我创作这首曲子时，基本上就是采用那首非常流行的老赞美诗《前进的基督教士兵》，然后我把它放慢到几乎无法辨认的缓慢程度，就像一座冰山慢慢融化一样。
Then I made a recording of a Sunday morning revivalist preacher talking about Jesus and the man with the withered hand.
然后我录制了一位周日早上复兴派传教士谈论耶稣和枯手的人的录音。
There was something very musical about the way he kept repeating the term withered hand.
他不断重复“枯手”这个词的方式很有音乐性。
It was a very American-sounding little clip — I guess you could call it a found object — and I mixed that in with the slowed-down hymn.
这是一个听起来非常美国式的小片段 ——我想你可以称它为“发现的物体”—— 我将其与缓慢的赞美诗混合在一起。
You’ve also done an oratorio, El Niño.
你还创作了一部清唱剧《厄尔尼诺》。
What do you see as the overall role of Christianity in your body of work?
您认为基督教在您的作品中的总体作用是什么？
I grew up going to church.
我从小就去教堂。
My mother went to church, I think mostly because she loved to sing in the choir.
我母亲去教堂，我想主要是因为她喜欢在唱诗班唱歌。
She was brought up as a Catholic, and then we started going to the Episcopal Church and ended up in the Unitarian Church, which is a very New England thing, which is where I grew up, in New England.
她是作为天主教徒长大的，然后我们开始去圣公会教堂，最后去了一神论教堂，这是一个非常新英格兰的事物，也是我在新英格兰长大的地方。
I’m not a practicing Christian.
我不是一个虔诚的基督徒。
I don’t go to church, but I’m very drawn to some of these biblical stories because they’re archetypal.
我不去教堂，但我对其中一些圣经故事很感兴趣，因为它们是原型。
They reflect, in myth and symbolism, the deepest of our human experience.
它们以神话和象征意义反映了我们人类最深刻的经历。
In the case of El Niño, an oratorio that I wrote for the millennium — it’s about birth.
就厄尔尼诺现象而言，我为千禧年写的清唱剧——它是关于出生的。
On the surface, it’s a story of the nativity, of Mary conceiving and giving birth to Jesus, and the flight into Egypt, but it’s also a larger story.
从表面上看，这是一个关于耶稣诞生、玛丽怀孕并生下耶稣以及逃往埃及的故事，但它也是一个更大的故事。
It’s about birth, and particularly about the women’s experience of it.
它与出生有关，尤其是与女性的生育经历有关。
For that, my collaborator, Peter Sellars, and I found a lot of texts by women, particularly by Hispanic women from Mexico and Chile, that told first-hand the experience of birth.
为此，我和我的合作者彼得·塞拉斯发现了很多女性的文字，尤其是来自墨西哥和智利的西班牙裔女性的文字，这些文字讲述了第一手的分娩经历。
And I like doing that because Handel’s Messiah, which of course treats the same material, just comes from the Bible.
我喜欢这样做，因为亨德尔的弥赛亚当然处理相同的材料，只是来自圣经。
And that’s all guys talking about it, and really, what do they know about labor and the pain of parturition and motherhood?
这就是所有人都在谈论的事情，实际上，他们对分娩以及分娩和母亲的痛苦了解多少？
I think that makes my oratorio quite different.
我认为这使我的清唱剧非常不同。
Why can’t other people conduct Shaker Loops well?
为什么其他人不能很好地进行 Shaker Loops？
Did I say that?
我有这么说过吗？
You said that once, yes.
你曾经说过一次，是的。
I think it’s in your autobiography.
我想这是在你的自传里。
Or have they learned how to conduct it since then?
或者从那时起他们就学会了如何进行？
Oh, yes.
哦是的。
Shaker Loops is a piece for strings.
Shaker Loops 是一首弦乐曲。
And the very first version of that, I wrote in an experimental way, where the conductor would indicate, as we went along, the changes just by holding up fingers.
第一个版本是我以实验的方式写的，指挥家会在我们进行时通过举起手指来指示变化。
I could do it, and I was able to do a satisfying performance of it, but when another conductor did it, the shape was strangely out of focus.
我可以做到，而且我能够对其进行令人满意的表演，但是当另一位指挥这样做时，形状就奇怪地失焦了。
It’s not that the other conductor was incompetent.
这并不是说另一位指挥不称职。
It was just that I had a very specific way of wanting to do it.
只是我有一种非常具体的想做的方式。
So in the later version of it, I froze everything into more traditional notation.
所以在后来的版本中，我将所有内容都冻结为更传统的符号。
That flexibility is no longer there, but on the other hand, the form of the piece is very satisfying.
那种灵活性已经不复存在，但另一方面，作品的形式却非常令人满意。
What do you think of how your music is sometimes used in video games, like Sid Meier’s Civilization?
您如何看待您的音乐有时被用于电子游戏（例如《席德·梅尔的文明》）中？
I don’t do video games.
我不玩电子游戏。
I know that my music is used in some of them because I get requests for licensing, but I’m not a video-game guy.
我知道其中一些游戏使用了我的音乐，因为我收到了许可请求，但我不是电子游戏爱好者。
I did authorize the use of a piece of mine, Harmonielehre.
我确实授权使用我的作品《Harmonielehre》。
They used the whole opening, I don’t know, 20 bars or something.
他们用了整个开口，我不知道，20 个酒吧什么的。
But when I went online to look at it, I noticed that they’d electronically transposed it up a step and added a thrash drum set to it.
但当我上网查看时，我注意到他们以电子方式将其调高了一个台阶，并添加了一套鞭打鼓。
My music wasn’t quite trashy enough, so they had to trash it up some more.
我的音乐还不够垃圾，所以他们不得不再垃圾一些。
How do you avoid what Harold Bloom called the anxiety of influence?
你如何避免哈罗德·布鲁姆所说的影响焦虑？
Harold Bloom was a very great literary critic, sometimes a little bit of a windbag, but his writings on Coleridge and Shelley, and especially on Shakespeare, were very important to me.
哈罗德·布鲁姆是一位非常伟大的文学评论家，有时有点夸夸其谈，但他关于柯勒律治和雪莱，尤其是莎士比亚的著作对我来说非常重要。
He had a phrase that he coined, the anxiety of influence, which is interesting because he himself was not a creator.
他有一个词，他创造的，影响的焦虑，这很有趣，因为他本人不是创造者。
He was a critic, but he intuited that we creators, whether we’re painters or novelists or filmmakers or composers — that we live, so to speak, under the shadow of the greats that preceded us.
他是一位批评家，但他直觉地认为，我们是创造者，无论我们是画家、小说家、电影制作人还是作曲家，可以说，我们生活在先辈伟人的阴影之下。
If you’re a poet, you’ve got all this great literature behind you, whether it’s Shakespeare or Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson.
如果你是一位诗人，那么你背后就有所有这些伟大的文学作品，无论是莎士比亚、沃尔特·惠特曼还是艾米莉·狄金森。
And likewise for me, I’ve got really heavyweight predecessors in Beethoven, in Bach, in Mahler, in Stravinsky.
对我来说同样如此，我有贝多芬、巴赫、马勒、斯特拉文斯基等真正重量级的前辈。
Maybe that’s what he meant, just the anxiety of, is what I do even comparable with this great art?
也许这就是他的意思，只是担心，我所做的事情能与这件伟大的艺术相媲美吗？
Another thing is, if I have an idea, has somebody already thought of it before?
另一件事是，如果我有一个想法，之前有人已经想到过吗？
Those are the neurotic aspects of my life, but I’m no different than anybody else.
这些是我生活中神经质的方面，但我和其他人没有什么不同。
We just have to deal with those concerns.
我们只需要处理这些问题。
Are you more afraid of Mozart or of Charles Ives?
你更害怕莫扎特还是查尔斯艾夫斯？
I’m not afraid of either of them.
我不怕他们中的任何一个。
I love them.
我爱他们。
I obviously love Mozart more than Charles Ives.
我显然比查尔斯·艾夫斯更喜欢莫扎特。
Charles Ives is a very, very unusual figure.
查尔斯·艾夫斯是一个非常非常不寻常的人物。
He was almost completely unknown in most of the 20th century until Leonard Bernstein, who was very glamorous and very well known — Bernstein brought him to the public notice, and he coined this idea that Charles Ives was the Abraham Lincoln of music.
在 20 世纪的大部分时间里，他几乎完全不为人所知，直到非常有魅力、非常知名的伦纳德·伯恩斯坦 (Leonard Bernstein) 才让他进入了公众的视野，他创造了查尔斯·艾夫斯 (Charles Ives) 是音乐界的亚伯拉罕·林肯 (Abraham Lincoln) 的观点。
Of course, Americans love something they can grasp onto like, “Oh, yes, I can relate to that.
当然，美国人喜欢他们可以抓住的东西，比如，“哦，是的，我能理解这一点。
He’s the Abraham Lincoln of music.”
他是音乐界的亚伯拉罕·林肯。”
Charles Ives was a hermit.
查尔斯·艾夫斯是一位隐士。
He worked during the day in an insurance firm, at which he was very successful, but spent his weekends and his summer vacations composing.
他白天在一家保险公司工作，工作非常成功，但周末和暑假都用来作曲。
His work is very sentimental, also very avant-garde for its time.
他的作品非常感伤，在当时也非常前卫。
I’ve conducted quite a few of his pieces.
我指挥过他的不少作品。
They are not, I have to admit, 100 percent satisfying, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Ives never heard these pieces, or hardly ever heard them.
我必须承认，它们并不是百分百令人满意，我认为这很大程度上与艾夫斯从未听过这些作品或几乎从未听过这些作品有关。
When you’re composing, you have to hear something and then realize, “Oh, that works and that doesn’t.” I think the fact that Ives — maybe he was just born before his time.
当你作曲时，你必须听到一些东西，然后意识到，“哦，这可行，但那不行。”我认为事实上艾夫斯——也许他只是提前出生了。
He was born in Connecticut in the 1870s, and America at that time just was still a very raw country and not ready for a classical experimental composer.
他于 1870 年代出生于康涅狄格州，当时的美国还是一个非常原始的国家，还没有为古典实验作曲家做好准备。
You seem to understand everything in music, from Indian ragas to popular songs, classical music, jazz.
你似乎了解音乐中的一切，从印度拉格音乐到流行歌曲、古典音乐、爵士乐。
Do you ever worry that you have too many influences?
你是否担心自己受到太多影响？
When I was a kid, it was very hard to get ahold of a recording of something.
当我还是个孩子的时候，很难找到一些东西的录音。
In those days, there was something called the Schwann Catalog of recorded music, and I used to get it at the music store.
那时候，有一种叫做《施万录制音乐目录》的东西，我常常在音乐商店买到它。
It might be one recording of Mahler’s sixth symphony.
这可能是马勒第六交响曲的一张录音。
That seems hard to believe these days, but in 1963, a lot of that music was very rare, and I had to send away for it and wait months.
如今这似乎令人难以置信，但在 1963 年，很多音乐都非常罕见，我不得不寄出去并等待数月。
So when I got it, it was really, really special.
所以当我拿到它的时候，它真的非常非常特别。
Today, everything is available at all times.
今天，一切都随时可用。
All you have to do is have a subscription to Spotify or Amazon Music or something, and you can access anything.
你所要做的就是订阅 Spotify 或 Amazon Music 之类的东西，然后你就可以访问任何内容。
The same goes for books.
书籍也是如此。
I have a Kindle.
我有一台 Kindle。
I have too much stuff on the Kindle.
我的 Kindle 上的东西太多了。
Nothing is special anymore.
没什么特别的了。
One has to actually make some kind of a pact with oneself to go back to that very, very personal relationship with one work or with just a group of very valuable pieces because, otherwise, we’re just flooded with so much information that we end up with very short concentration spans, and we end up with a problem of what do we really value?
一个人必须真正与自己达成某种契约，才能回到与一件作品或一组非常有价值的作品的那种非常非常个人的关系，否则，我们就会被太多的信息淹没，以至于我们的注意力集中时间非常短，我们最终会遇到一个问题：我们真正看重什么？
Earlier in your career, you fought an internal mental war against serialism and 12-tone music.
在您职业生涯的早期，您曾与序列主义和 12 音音乐进行过一场内心的精神斗争。
Take Boulez — after all these years now, today, what do you think of it as music?
以布列兹为例——这么多年过去了，今天，你认为它是怎样的音乐？
Approach it fresh.
新鲜地对待它。
Is it wonderful?
是不是很美妙呢？
Is it boring?
无聊吗？
I came of age during what I call the bad old days of contemporary music.
我是在我所说的当代音乐的糟糕旧时光中长大的。
I can’t explain why that happened, but sometime in the early part of the 20th century, a lot of very brilliant composers started writing music that was essentially inaccessible to average listeners, whether it was Schoenberg or Varèse.
我无法解释为什么会发生这种情况，但在 20 世纪早期的某个时候，许多非常出色的作曲家开始创作普通听众基本上无法理解的音乐，无论是勋伯格还是瓦雷兹。
I could name many other composers who started writing very dissonant music.
我可以说出许多其他开始创作非常不和谐音乐的作曲家的名字。
Later on, composers got interested in fracturing rhythms to the point where you had a composer like John Cage, who essentially devoted his life to atomizing, deconstructing all of the aspects of the musical language, both acoustically and culturally.
后来，作曲家对破碎节奏产生了兴趣，以至于出现了像约翰·凯奇这样的作曲家，他一生致力于原子化、解构音乐语言的所有方面，无论是在声学上还是在文化上。
That ran its course.
一切顺利。
The bad part of it was that it made audiences very wary of anything that was new.
不好的部分是它让观众对任何新事物都非常警惕。
Even to this day, I’m still suffering from that because an uninitiated listener will go to a concert and open the program and see, “Oh, there’s a piece by John Adams.
直到今天，我仍然深受其苦，因为一个不熟悉的听众会去听一场音乐会，打开节目，然后看到，“哦，有一首约翰·亚当斯的作品。
I don’t know who this is.
我不知道这是谁。
He’s still living, so it’s probably going to be an unpleasant experience.” That’s just something that is the result of years of very difficult, inaccessible, and very often rationally conceived contemporary music.
他还活着，所以这可能会是一次不愉快的经历。”这只是多年来非常困难、难以接近且往往是理性构思的当代音乐的结果。
At the same time that that was happening, there was this fantastic explosion of wonderful music in the pop realm.
与此同时，流行音乐领域也爆发出美妙的音乐。
I had this crisis in my life where I said to myself, “Why should I surrender the influence that great music can have to a pop artist and have to go and write serial or 12-tone music because that’s what’s required of a contemporary composer?”
我的人生经历过一次危机，我对自己说：“为什么我要把伟大音乐对流行艺术家的影响力让给流行艺术家，而不得不去写连续剧或 12 音音乐，因为这就是当代作曲家所需要的？”
I basically walked away from that, walked away from all that surrounded me when I was in college.
当我上大学时，我基本上摆脱了这些，摆脱了我周围的一切。
I had to put up with a great deal of criticism, including a lot of critics who were writing for the major newspapers and magazines.
我不得不忍受大量的批评，包括许多为主要报纸和杂志撰稿的批评者。
They had come around to thinking that the only way you could write contemporary music was this same very difficult, challenging, rigorous — whatever the adjectives that they loved to use — bracing, all these things —
他们开始认为，写当代音乐的唯一方法就是同样非常困难、具有挑战性、严谨——“无论他们喜欢使用什么形容词”——“令人振奋，所有这些东西”——
Take Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata.
以布列兹的第二钢琴奏鸣曲为例。
If you put it on, as listener, aren’t you thrilled today, in 2022?
如果你作为听众戴上它，在 2022 年的今天，你会不会感到兴奋？
You’re asking me about Pierre Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata.
你问我关于皮埃尔·布列兹的第二钢琴奏鸣曲。
I think it’s just an utterly unpleasant experience to listen to.
我认为这只是一种完全不愉快的聆听体验。
For a while, you can be dazzled by the fact that a human being can actually play that.
有一段时间，你可能会对人类实际上可以演奏这种音乐的事实感到眼花缭乱。
There are very few human beings who can do that, but .
很少有人能做到这一点，但是。
.
。
.
。
It’s interesting, Boulez wrote another piece which I think very much typifies what his attitude was.
有趣的是，布列兹写了另一篇文章，我认为这非常典型地代表了他的态度。
The piece is called, let’s see, To the Farthest Reach of the Fertile Territory.
让我们看看，这件作品的名字叫《到肥沃领土的最远的地方》。
It’s the name of a painting by the artist Paul Klee, but it represents a period in contemporary music where artists were just pushing the envelope as far as they could in terms of complexity, of density, of fracturing the language.
这是艺术家保罗·克利 (Paul Klee) 的一幅画的名字，但它代表了当代音乐的一个时期，在这个时期，艺术家们在复杂性、密度和打破语言方面尽其所能地挑战极限。
It became like a laboratory rather than seeing music as essentially an act of communication.
它变得像一个实验室，而不是将音乐本质上视为一种交流行为。
What’s your favorite Bob Dylan album?
您最喜欢鲍勃·迪伦的哪张专辑？
I still like the early ones.
我还是喜欢早期的。
I’m very fond of “John Wesley Harding.” In most cases, it’s just individual songs.
我非常喜欢“约翰·韦斯利·哈丁”。在大多数情况下，这只是个别歌曲。
I think I show my age when I talk about that period because I’m so fond of it.
我认为当我谈论那个时期时我暴露了我的年龄，因为我非常喜欢它。
It’s an interesting thing with pop music, that it’s so much linked to periods in your life, so that somebody who’s my age has a very, very strong sentimental attachment to music that you heard when you were 20.
流行音乐是一件很有趣的事情，它与你生活中的各个时期有很大的联系，所以像我这个年纪的人对你 20 岁时听到的音乐有一种非常非常强烈的情感依恋。
I don’t know, maybe this has a lot to do with your recollections of romances or revelations or the drugs you took or the lovers you had, and a lot of pop music evokes that.
我不知道，也许这与你对浪漫或启示、你服用的药物或你拥有的情人的回忆有很大关系，很多流行音乐都会唤起这些。
I don’t relate to pop music from the ’80s, for example, or from the ’90s.
例如，我不喜欢 80 年代或 90 年代的流行音乐。
I think that’s very much a general thing.
我认为这是很普遍的事情。
My parents related to music that was big in the 1930s and ’40s, so you measure by when you were born and the music you listened to.
我的父母对 20 世纪 30 年代和 40 年代流行的音乐很感兴趣，所以你可以通过你出生的时间和你听的音乐来衡量。
Sergeant Pepper or Abbey Road — which are you more likely to put on?
《佩珀中士》和《艾比路》 — 你更倾向于选择哪一个？
Let’s see.
让我们来看看。
I think Abbey Road was really just the great period.
我认为艾比路确实是一个伟大的时期。
Sergeant Pepper had a lot of provocative stuff in it.
佩珀中士里面有很多挑衅性的内容。
It had the synthesizer for the first time, and it was very frankly discussing psychedelic drugs, so it was very popular with my generation.
它第一次有了合成器，而且非常坦白地讨论迷幻药物，所以很受我这一代人的欢迎。
I think just for pure musical experiences, those albums — the White Album and Abbey Road — were really the peak of their artistic achievement.
我认为就纯粹的音乐体验而言，那些专辑——《白色专辑》和《艾比路》——确实是他们艺术成就的顶峰。
What do you see as the peak of Miles Davis’s career?
您认为迈尔斯·戴维斯职业生涯的巅峰是什么？
Miles Davis had a career like Stravinsky or like Beethoven or like Picasso.
迈尔斯·戴维斯的职业生涯就像斯特拉文斯基、贝多芬或毕加索一样。
He went through so many periods.
他经历了很多时期。
He started essentially in the bop era and then moved into a modal period when he started working with Joe Zawinul and Herbie Hancock.
他基本上是从波普音乐时代开始的，然后进入了一个模态时期，开始与乔·扎维努尔和赫比·汉考克合作。
Then his latest period — it’s really hard to find a word for it.
然后是他最近的一段时期————真的很难找到一个词来形容。
He was strongly influenced by African music, showed his identity with his own race in a very strong way that had never been done before.
他深受非洲音乐的影响，以前所未有的强烈方式展现了他对自己种族的认同。
I can’t cherry-pick anything specific.
我无法挑选任何具体的东西。
I do know that when I look at my collection of my pieces that I keep going back to, that the albums he made with Gil Evans, the Big Band albums — Miles Ahead and Sketches of Spain — those really stand out for their incredible beauty and for the lushness of the scoring.
我确实知道，当我回顾我不断回顾的作品集时，他与吉尔·埃文斯 (Gil Evans) 制作的专辑、大乐队的专辑——《Miles Ahead》和《Sketches of Spain》——这些专辑因其令人难以置信的美丽和丰富的配乐而脱颖而出。
Why isn’t Robert Ashley better known?
为什么罗伯特·阿什利（Robert Ashley）知名度不高？
To me, he’s one of the greats, but no one ever tells me to listen to Robert Ashley.
对我来说，他是最伟大的人之一，但没有人告诉我要听罗伯特·阿什利。
I knew Robert Ashley way back in the 1970s, because when I first came to California, a friend of mine said, “Oh, you have to get in touch with Bob Ashley.” At the time, Bob was teaching at Mills College, a very small college in Oakland, California.
我早在 20 世纪 70 年代就认识罗伯特·阿什利 (Robert Ashley)，因为当我第一次来到加州时，我的一个朋友说：“哦，你必须与鲍勃·阿什利 (Bob Ashley) 取得联系。”当时，鲍勃在米尔斯学院任教，这是加利福尼亚州奥克兰的一所很小的学院。
To answer your question, I think that one of the things about Ashley is that he’s just off the grid when it comes to finding a conventional way to describe it.
为了回答你的问题，我认为阿什利的一个特点是，在寻找一种传统的方式来描述它时，他只是脱离了网格。
Some people would say that he wrote great operas, but “opera” isn’t really the word.
有人会说他写了伟大的歌剧，但“歌剧”这个词并不是真正的词。
I think maybe Bob used the term opera, but he used it in a wry way.
我认为鲍勃可能使用了歌剧这个词，但他以一种讽刺的方式使用它。
His greatest gifts were, really, this combination of his texts that he wrote, and of course, this fantastic droll manner of speaking them.
事实上，他最伟大的天赋就是他所写的文字的组合，当然，还有这种奇妙而滑稽的说话方式。
They would be accompanied usually by his longtime collaborator, Blue Gene Tyranny, who played in a sort of light, bluesy, sometimes gospel-style piano.
他们通常由他的长期合作者 Blue Gene Tyranny 伴奏，他演奏的是一种轻快的布鲁斯风格，有时是福音风格的钢琴。
But it was Ashley’s — I don’t know — this very special Americana that you associate with road movies and quiet, anonymous people talking about their relationships or their experiences in a diner or a gas station or an automobile.
但这是阿什利的——“我不知道”——这种非常特别的美国风格，你会联想到公路电影和安静的、匿名的人在餐馆、加油站或汽车里谈论他们的人际关系或经历。
That’s what makes him very special.
这就是他非常特别的原因。
For me, I don’t think of him in the musical realm.
对我来说，我不认为他是在音乐领域。
I think of him more in the literary realm.
我更多地在文学领域想到他。
Do you think Morton Feldman has gone down as the truly great eternal American composer of his time?
您认为莫顿·费尔德曼是否已经成为他那个时代真正伟大、永恒的美国作曲家？
Morton Feldman — the special thing about him was that he was absolutely unique.
莫顿·费尔德曼——他的特别之处在于他绝对是独一无二的。
I think the Latin term sui generis, which means “just born of himself” — he didn’t sound like anyone.
我认为拉丁语“suigeneris”的意思是“自己诞生”——他听起来不像任何人。
Each piece was very similar in the sense that the music tended to move very slowly in terms of time.
每首作品都非常相似，因为音乐在时间上移动得非常缓慢。
It was very delicate, very sensuous, and when you listen to a classic Feldman piece, it’s like getting into a warm bath.
它非常精致，非常感性，当你聆听费尔德曼的经典作品时，就像进入了一个温暖的浴缸。
The bath, though, is sound.
不过，浴室很不错。
It’s very erotic in a very exquisite way.
它以一种非常精致的方式非常色情。
It’s interesting because my friend Michael Tilson Thomas invited the great classical pianist Emanuel Ax to play a Feldman piece, a work for piano and orchestra, and they put it on a special program.
这很有趣，因为我的朋友迈克尔·蒂尔森·托马斯邀请了伟大的古典钢琴家伊曼纽尔·阿克斯演奏费尔德曼的一首钢琴和管弦乐队的作品，他们把它放在一个特别的节目中。
It was a program of just contemporary music.
这只是一个当代音乐节目。
It was wonderful to hear it, but I noticed that he never brought it back in the regular subscription series.
听到这个消息真是太棒了，但我注意到他从未在常规订阅系列中带回它。
He never put it on a program with Debussy or Stravinsky.
他从来没有把它放在德彪西或斯特拉文斯基的节目中。
That is still an issue with Feldman’s music.
这仍然是费尔德曼音乐的一个问题。
It requires a certain kind of listener.
它需要某种类型的听众。
It requires a certain, shall we say, suspension of expectation, and it requires a whole kind of acoustical setting.
容我们说，它需要某种程度的悬置，并且需要一种完整的声学环境。
It really, probably, doesn’t survive in the more aggressive, busy format of a standard orchestral concert.
它真的很可能无法在标准管弦乐音乐会的更具侵略性、繁忙的形式中生存。
Jefferson Airplane, the album Surrealistic Pillow.
杰斐逊飞机，专辑《超现实主义枕头》。
Is it still good music?
音乐还是好听吗？
Jefferson Airplane — I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the time.
杰斐逊飞机 — 当时我住在马萨诸塞州剑桥。
I was a student at Harvard, and I didn’t know what San Francisco was.
我是哈佛大学的学生，我不知道旧金山是什么。
I think I’d read maybe some Allen Ginsberg or Jack Kerouac, but my first musical impression of San Francisco was Jefferson Airplane.
我想我可能读过一些艾伦·金斯伯格或杰克·凯鲁亚克的作品，但我对旧金山的第一印象是杰斐逊飞机。
There were a couple of good songs, and they had a great photo on their Surrealistic Pillow album, but I can’t really list them as one of the great bands.
有几首好歌，他们的《超现实主义枕头》专辑中有一张很棒的照片，但我不能真正将他们列为最伟大的乐队之一。
Many of those bands in the 1960s and ’70s became famous because of one or maybe two songs, and then they kind of hobbled along and disappeared.
许多 20 世纪 60 年代和 70 年代的乐队因为一首或两首歌而出名，然后他们就步履蹒跚地消失了。
That really was the case with them.
他们的情况确实如此。
Now, you mentioned San Francisco.
现在，你提到了旧金山。
You first became a major orchestra conductor there, and your music has been promoted in San Francisco quite a bit — Edo de Waart.
你首先在那里成为一名主要的管弦乐队指挥，你的音乐在旧金山得到了相当大的推广 —— Edo de Waart。
Is it an accident that this happened in San Francisco, which is a highly innovative city in other ways, or is it something that, to you, organically made sense?
这件事发生在旧金山这个在其他方面具有高度创新性的城市是一个偶然，还是对你来说，这是有机的？
What is it they say?
他们说什么？
That success has to do with being prepared, and then the moment will come.
成功与做好准备有关，然后那一刻就会到来。
I’m mangling whatever the familiar saw is, but I think that I had all the tools.
我正在破坏任何熟悉的锯子，但我认为我拥有所有工具。
I had been well trained and I loved this music, and I knew it.
我受过良好的训练，我喜欢这种音乐，我知道这一点。
The opportunity came.
机会来了。
It was a young Dutch conductor who was named to succeed Seiji Ozawa as conductor of the San Francisco Symphony.
一位年轻的荷兰指挥家被任命接替小泽征尔担任旧金山交响乐团的指挥。
I met him; he liked me.
我遇见了他；他喜欢我。
He heard some of my music.
他听到了我的一些音乐。
He offered me a commission; I took it.
他向我提供了佣金；我拿走了。
The piece was a success, and things started to happen from there.
这件作品获得了成功，事情从那时开始发生。
The fact that it was San Francisco, I think, really is not critical.
我认为，这是旧金山这一事实并不重要。
It could have happened in St. Louis or Minnesota or wherever.
它可能发生在圣路易斯或明尼苏达州或任何地方。
I live here because I’m very strongly affected by the landscape, the California landscape.
我住在这里是因为我深受加州风景的影响。
Of course, now, it gets increasingly harder to live here because San Francisco itself has become taken over by tech.
当然，现在生活在这里变得越来越困难，因为旧金山本身已经被科技占领了。
And it just experiences this unpleasantly hectic urban development, which goes hand in hand with the very distressing situation of the unhoused.
它只是经历了这种令人不快的忙碌的城市发展，这与无家可归者的悲惨处境密切相关。
Then my state — part of it is burning every summer because of climate change.
然后我所在的州——每年夏天，由于气候变化，它的一部分都会燃烧。
There’s a mixture of delight and extreme disappointment about being a resident of California.
作为加州居民，我既高兴又极度失望。
What do you think it would take for American classical music to get a real, true foothold in European concert halls?
您认为美国古典音乐如何才能在欧洲音乐厅真正立足？
Now, you’ve had premieres in Europe.
现在，你们已经在欧洲进行了首映。
Maybe you’re somewhat of an exception to this, but it seems that American classical music is not that significant in Europe.
也许你是个例外，但似乎美国古典音乐在欧洲并不那么重要。
Well, we do live in a country where popular culture has enormous reach, and it also has enormous prestige.
嗯，我们确实生活在一个流行文化影响力巨大、声望很高的国家。
But with that said, I have to say that a lot of the greatest classical musicians alive are Americans.
但话虽如此，我不得不说，许多当今最伟大的古典音乐家都是美国人。
Either they’re American-born, like Yo-Yo Ma, or they came here and have become Americans, like Gustavo Dudamel or Yuja Wang.
他们要么出生在美国，如马友友，要么来到这里成为美国人，如古斯塔沃·杜达梅尔或王羽佳。
Despite the fact that we’re a country that’s literally controlled by popular culture, we have some of the greatest orchestras in the world, and we have very, very intelligent audiences.
尽管我们是一个真正受流行文化控制的国家，但我们拥有世界上一些最伟大的管弦乐团，我们也有非常非常聪明的观众。
I keep hearing that classical music is dead or that it’s dying, but then I go to concerts and I have these incredible experiences, whether I’m conducting or whether I’m just in the audience.
我一直听说古典音乐已经死了或者正在消亡，但当我去听音乐会时，无论我是在指挥还是在观众中，我都有这些令人难以置信的经历。
It’s always a challenge.
这始终是一个挑战。
If you go to Europe, they have the same problems there.
如果你去欧洲，他们那里也有同样的问题。
They have problems filling the halls.
他们在挤满大厅时遇到了问题。
Musicians don’t get paid as well as they do in this country.
音乐家的报酬不像在这个国家那么好。
I think this idea that classical music in America is a dying art — I don’t buy that at all.
我认为古典音乐在美国是一门垂死的艺术这一观点——我根本不相信这种说法。
Why don’t you write more for clarinet?
你为什么不为单簧管写更多的东西呢？
It was an early instrument of yours.
这是你早期的乐器。
I wanted to play the violin.
我想拉小提琴。
I grew up in a very small town in New Hampshire.
我在新罕布什尔州的一个小镇长大。
There was a music teacher who came to the public elementary school every two weeks.
公立小学有一位音乐老师，每两周来一次。
He could teach anything.
他可以教任何东西。
He could teach the piccolo or the violin or the trumpet.
他可以教短笛、小提琴或小号。
I wanted to learn the violin, but I was told I would have to wait until the fifth grade, and I was restless.
我想学小提琴，但被告知要等到五年级，我就坐立不安。
My dad played the clarinet, and I reluctantly agreed to have him be my teacher.
我爸爸吹单簧管，我勉强同意让他当我的老师。
I started playing the clarinet.
我开始吹单簧管。
I got very good, very quickly.
我变得非常好，非常快。
The clarinet was my key to getting into the music world.
单簧管是我进入音乐世界的钥匙。
While I was in college, I was a substitute clarinet player with the Boston Symphony, but it has a very small amount of literature.
当我上大学时，我是波士顿交响乐团的替补单簧管演奏家，但该乐团的文献很少。
It has a couple of great pieces by Mozart and a few by Brahms, and really, most of the rest of the music is in the classical realm.
它有莫扎特的一些伟大作品和勃拉姆斯的一些作品，实际上，其余的大部分音乐都属于古典领域。
It’s just being part of an orchestra.
这只是管弦乐队的一部分。
The most exciting thing to do if you are a clarinet player now would probably be to play Klezmer music.
如果您现在是单簧管演奏者，最令人兴奋的事情可能就是演奏克莱兹默音乐。
Helmut Lachenmann — yes or no?
赫尔穆特·拉亨曼 — 是还是不是？
I left my clarinets in the wine cellar about 30 years ago, and they’re still down there.
大约 30 年前，我把单簧管留在了酒窖里，现在它们仍然在那里。
Now, as composer of Doctor Atomic, are you looking forward to Christopher Nolan’s movie Oppenheimer?
现在，作为《原子博士》的作曲家，你期待克里斯托弗·诺兰的电影《奥本海默》吗？
Or you don’t care?
或者你不在乎？
I might watch it, but Oppenheimer has become an obsession with me.
我可能会看，但奥本海默已经让我着迷了。
I’ve read the two wonderful biographies of him that have come out in the last 10 or 15 years.
我读过过去 10 年或 15 年出版的两本精彩的他传记。
I’ve read them both numerous times.
我已经读过它们很多遍了。
Oppenheimer actually lived and taught in this city where I live — Berkeley, California.
奥本海默实际上在我居住的这座城市生活和教学——加利福尼亚州伯克利。
In many ways, he was a very special and mysterious human being.
从很多方面来说，他都是一个非常特别和神秘的人。
A great, great, brilliant scientist, but also somebody who appreciated poetry and art and music.
一位伟大、伟大、才华横溢的科学家，也是一位欣赏诗歌、艺术和音乐的人。
I have my own impression of him, and I don’t know if I’m going to go to a Hollywood movie and see somebody else’s imitation of Oppenheimer.
我对他有自己的印象，我不知道我是否会去看好莱坞电影，看到别人对奥本海默的模仿。
I might, but I doubt it.
我可能会，但我对此表示怀疑。
Are you much influenced by cinema when you think operatically?
当你以歌剧的方式思考时，你是否受到电影的影响？
Or not really?
或者不是真的？
Like most Americans, I watch a lot of movies — mostly, these days, at home.
像大多数美国人一样，我看了很多电影——现在大部分是在家里。
There are some wonderful cable series, many of which come from Scandinavia, that I like, and I’m very often asked, “Why don’t you write for films?” The reason I don’t write for films is that, in order to be an effective film composer, you have to be ready to drop everything you’re doing and just focus without sleep for three or four days on a project.
我喜欢一些精彩的有线电视系列节目，其中许多来自斯堪的纳维亚半岛，我经常被问到，“你为什么不为电影写作？”我不为电影写作的原因是，为了成为一名有效的电影作曲家，你必须准备好放下你正在做的一切，三四天不睡觉地专注于一个项目。
I have a life that is already full of things to do.
我的生活已经充满了事情要做。
I have works that I’m commissioned and I am absolutely focused on.
我有一些受委托的作品，而且我绝对专注于这些作品。
I have a life as a conductor.
我的生活是指挥家。
The few films that I have written scores for — in the end, I will spend a great deal of time working to make music that fits exactly the scene, and then it comes back, and the directors changed the scene and put the music in another place.
我写过配乐的那几部电影——最后，我会花大量的时间去制作完全符合场景的音乐，然后它回来了，导演改变了场景，把音乐放在了另一个地方。
Ultimately, it’s just very frustrating.
最终，这非常令人沮丧。
I’m not a film composer.
我不是电影作曲家。
However, there are some directors who have taken my music pieces and put them in their film scores, particularly the Italian director Luca Guadagnino, who used music of mine in several of his films.
不过，也有一些导演把我的音乐作品放进了电影配乐中，特别是意大利导演卢卡·瓜达尼诺，他在他的几部电影中使用了我的音乐。
And that’s very satisfying when a sensitive director can do that.
当一位敏感的导演能够做到这一点时，这是非常令人满意的。
But if you hear, say, that Hans Zimmer did the soundtrack to Dune, are you excited, you’ll go see it and hear it, or it’s a peripheral interest for you?
但如果你听说 Hans Zimmer 为《沙丘》创作了配乐，你会感到兴奋，你会去看它、听它，还是这对你来说只是一种次要的兴趣？
I’m almost always very frustrated by the low level of inspiration in film composing.
我几乎总是对电影创作中缺乏灵感感到非常沮丧。
I think that film composers market themselves and basically give directors what they want.
我认为电影作曲家推销自己，基本上给了导演他们想要的东西。
And a lot of the taste that even the greatest directors — people like Steven Spielberg — have is just very sentimental and, to me, rather tacky, which is why most of the film score music I like comes from France or Italy, not America.
即使是最伟大的导演——史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格这样的人——所拥有的很多品味也只是非常感伤，对我来说，相当俗气，这就是为什么我喜欢的大多数电影配乐来自法国或意大利，而不是美国。
These days now, a lot of films don’t even have a composer.
如今，很多电影甚至没有作曲家。
They have a music consultant.
他们有一位音乐顾问。
You’ll get a film, let’s say a Coen brothers film, which would be a great film, but the music comes from all different sources, maybe three or four different pop artists or whatever.
你会得到一部电影，比如说科恩兄弟的电影，这将是一部很棒的电影，但音乐来自不同的来源，也许是三四个不同的流行艺术家或其他什么。
Is it intimidating to conduct Philip Glass in front of Philip Glass?
在菲利普·格拉斯 (Philip Glass) 面前指挥菲利普·格拉斯 (Philip Glass) 是否令人生畏？
I’ve conducted quite a few of Philip’s pieces.
我指挥过不少菲利普的作品。
It’s not very difficult music to perform.
这并不是很难演奏的音乐。
A lot of the thrill of it is just in the connection with the audience because Philip’s music is very simple and very easy to access, so you get a nice buzz from, usually, a very large audience.
它的很多刺激之处就在于与观众的联系，因为菲利普的音乐非常简单且易于理解，所以通常你会从大量观众那里得到很好的嗡嗡声。
Often when I do my own music, I won’t have a full hall, but often when I do Phillip’s music, a lot of people will come, people who wouldn’t normally go to a classical concert.
通常当我做自己的音乐时，我不会有一个完整的大厅，但当我做菲利普的音乐时，很多时候会来很多人，那些通常不会去听古典音乐会的人。
I remember doing the world premiere of his 12th symphony with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Disney Hall was just absolutely packed each performance because Philip — he’s much more known, has a much wider audience.
我记得与洛杉矶爱乐乐团合作进行他的第十二交响曲的全球首演，迪士尼音乐厅每场演出都挤满了人，因为菲利普——他更出名，拥有更广泛的观众。
People recognize his name more than any other classical composer.
人们比任何其他古典作曲家都更熟悉他的名字。
When you were a young man, you wrote Leonard Bernstein a letter, and he wrote you back, of all things.
当你还是个年轻人的时候，你给伦纳德·伯恩斯坦写了一封信，他也给你回了信。
If you received a highly intelligent letter from a young man today, would you write him back?
如果今天你收到一位年轻人写来的一封高智商的信，你会给他回信吗？
Well, it depends on what the letter was.
嗯，这取决于这封信的内容。
If the letter was as snotty as the one that I wrote Leonard Bernstein, I don’t know if I’d write him back.
如果这封信像我写给伦纳德·伯恩斯坦的信一样势利，我不知道是否会给他回信。
But I was a freshman at college and just at the most obnoxious point in my life when I had very strong opinions, and Leonard Bernstein — he was who he was.
但当时我是一名大学新生，正处于人生中最令人讨厌的时刻，当时我有非常强烈的观点，而伦纳德·伯恩斯坦——他就是他。
He had written a piece that, even to this day, I find a little saccharine and certainly not a piece that I choose to listen to.
他写的一首曲子，即使到今天，我仍然觉得有点甜腻，当然不是我选择听的曲子。
I wrote to him, and I scolded him for not being more up-to-date and writing the proper kind of atonal or serial music that I thought one should do when I was 18 years old.
我写信给他，责备他没有与时俱进，没有写出我认为在我 18 岁时就应该做的无调性或连续音乐。
He wrote me back.
他给我回信。
It was amazing.
太棒了。
He said, “I have to do what I have to do.
他说：“我必须做我必须做的事。
This is me.” That was a really important thing for me to hear.
这就是我。”这对我来说非常重要。
I may have not understood it at the time, but as I grew older, I realized, yes, he was absolutely right.
当时我可能不明白，但随着年龄的增长，我意识到，是的，他是绝对正确的。
You just have to do who you are and not pretend to be somebody else or be influenced by what the supposedly proper way to make art is.
你只需要做你自己，而不是假装成别人，或者被所谓的正确的艺术创作方式所影响。
Last three questions.
最后三个问题。
First, how ambitious are you?
首先，你有多大的野心？
“Ambition” is not a very helpful term.
“野心”并不是一个很有帮助的词。
I know people who are ambitious, and you can tell because when you’re talking to them, you see in their eyes that they’re not even listening to you.
我认识一些雄心勃勃的人，你可以看出来，因为当你与他们交谈时，你从他们的眼中看到他们甚至没有在听你说话。
They’re thinking about their next move or what the world thinks of them.
他们正在考虑自己的下一步行动或世界对他们的看法。
I certainly do think about what other people think of me, whether they respond to my music.
我当然会考虑其他人对我的看法，他们是否对我的音乐有反应。
I care deeply about whether my music reaches people.
我非常关心我的音乐是否能传达给人们。
I would say I work hard.
我会说我很努力。
I do it not compulsively; I do it just because that’s what I do, but I wouldn’t call myself ambitious.
我这样做并不是强迫性的；我这样做只是因为这就是我所做的，但我不会称自己雄心勃勃。
I think maybe there was a time in my life when I was young, and I was anxious to meet people and make sure they knew about me, but I guess I’m just a little more philosophical now.
我想也许在我年轻的时候，我的生命中曾经有一段时间，我渴望见到人们并确保他们了解我，但我想我现在变得更加哲学化了。
I think if I have an important body of work and the pieces that I’ve written are good, they will continue on after I’m no longer a living, breathing specimen, and that’s really all I can ask for.
我想，如果我有重要的作品，而且我写的作品都很好，那么在我不再是一个活生生的、会呼吸的标本之后，它们还会继续下去，这就是我真正能要求的。
Now, I suspect many of my podcast listeners and readers don’t know your music.
现在，我怀疑我的许多播客听众和读者都不了解你的音乐。
For an uninitiated listener, where would you recommend they start to learn John Coolidge Adams?
对于没有经验的听众，您会建议他们从哪里开始学习约翰·柯立芝·亚当斯？
You have to send them somewhere.
你必须把它们送到某个地方。
First of all, I never use my middle name except on my tax returns.
首先，除了纳税申报单之外，我从不使用我的中间名。
I think the most easy entrance point into my music is a short orchestral piece called Short Ride in a Fast Machine, which was inspired by a terrifying car ride I had in a sports car.
我认为进入我的音乐最容易的切入点是一首简短的管弦乐作品，名为“Short Ride in a Fast Machine”，其灵感来自于我乘坐跑车的一次可怕的经历。
It’s a high-energy, enjoyable piece.
这是一部充满活力、令人愉快的作品。
Very popular piece of mine, gets a performance almost every day somewhere in the world.
我的作品非常受欢迎，几乎每天都会在世界某个地方演出。
Four minutes long, and I think that’s probably an easy way to get into my music.
四分钟长，我认为这可能是进入我的音乐的一个简单方法。
It has a lot of John Adams in it in terms of the driving pulse and colorful orchestration.
在强劲的脉搏和丰富多彩的编曲方面，它有很多约翰·亚当斯的影子。
It’s fun.
这很有趣。
Very last question.
最后一个问题。
What will you do next?
接下来你会做什么？
I am writing a piano concerto for an amazing young Icelandic pianist named Víkingur Ólafsson.
我正在为一位出色的年轻冰岛钢琴家维金古尔·奥拉夫森（Víkingur Ólafsson）写一首钢琴协奏曲。
I recently wrote a piano concerto with a funny title, Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?
我最近写了一首钢琴协奏曲，标题很有趣：魔鬼必须拥有所有好听的曲调吗？
And he and I have been performing it around the world.
他和我一直在世界各地表演。
I was so thrilled by his playing that I decided I was going to write a special piece for him.
我对他的演奏感到非常兴奋，因此我决定为他写一首特别的作品。
There’s also a great Yuja Wang recording of that piece, as you know.
如你所知，还有王羽佳录制的那首歌曲。
Yes.
是的。
John Adams, thank you very much.
约翰·亚当斯，非常感谢你。
To listeners, I’m also happy to recommend John’s autobiography, the Collected Works boxed set, John on Spotify, of course, the new opera, Antony and Cleopatra, which has been receiving very strong reviews.
我也很高兴向听众推荐约翰的自传、全集盒装、Spotify上的约翰，当然还有好评如潮的新歌剧《安东尼与克利奥帕特拉》。
John, great chatting with you.
约翰，和你聊天很开心。
Take care.
小心。
Thank you.
谢谢。