Twenty years ago, when my "Lonely Master" was released, several friends in the press and publishing industry encouraged me: Since you have written a master painting series, wouldn't it be better to simply write a music master book with a single blow? I was really impressed, and I also collected some musicians and pulled a simple outline. However, in the end, it was abandoned. The superficial reason is that I was still on the front line of running a newspaper at that time, and I was really busy with editorial work; the deep reason was that when I first got involved, I found it too difficult to write musicians and music reviews—music is the art of hearing, and it is the most abstract and difficult art in many art disciplines to describe in words. Especially to write classical music, you must spend a lot of time to listen, there is not enough auditory memory and music theory knowledge reserves, if you want to write the background of music and even the realm of musicians, it is absolutely impossible. Although I am an obsessed music enthusiast and have written a lot of music articles as a journalist, I can only be regarded as a "senior music fan" at best. Listening to music and writing music are not the same thing at all. My "shortcomings" in this regard are difficult to make up in a short period of time. In contrast, my accumulation in fine arts is thicker. Therefore, if you can write about painting subjects, you may not be able to write good music themes. People are self-aware, rather than rushing the ducks to the shelves and expending their efforts, it is better to retreat early.
It was after weighing the pros and cons and weighing them over and over again that I decided to give up this option. I still think that "retreat" at that time was a wise choice.
It is precisely because of such a consideration before, and now, when I read the manuscript of my friend Lei Jiange's "Listening to Music in the Book", it is difficult to hide my excitement, and at the same time I feel sincere admiration - after all, Lei Jianjie has overcome the difficulties that I could not catch in the past, and dedicated this successful work that describes music with words and interprets characters with music!
Brother Lei Jian and I are peers, both are from newspaper backgrounds, and they are of similar ages, and there are many similarities in their professional experience. We were taught to be a "screw" at the beginning of our career, and to make a difference wherever we screwed. Therefore, in our respective editorial departments, we have all practiced the "Eighteen Martial Arts". I once read Lei Jianjie's academic monograph "Network News" written in the 1990s, which proves that he is very proficient and advanced in the business of journalism. A few years ago, when I received a new book from him, "Analects of Languages", I felt the rigorous norms of governance and philosophical arguments after a cursory reading, and I couldn't help but be impressed by the "Guoxue" skills of this media colleague. When we met later, I talked to him about these two books, and he smiled and said that the first was written for the "company that appreciates food" and the latter was for the "major in school" (he studied philosophy in college). I asked him who he was going to write the next book for. He smiled mysteriously and said, "Of course the next one was written for myself." ”
The book written to himself is naturally this "Listening to Music in the Book". From the words of this book, I read Lei Jianjie's love and obsession with Western classical music, and his "infection" time was obviously much earlier than mine, and the depth of "addiction" was beyond my reach. We often participate in the national newspaper supplement industry together, every time I see him, he always plugs headphones to listen to music; occasionally peers chat about music-related topics, he would have been "pretending to sleep" on the side, listening to the eyes of the eyes, full of excitement, vertical and horizontal, gushing, radiant, "an old face smiling badly" (one of Lei Jian's mantras); that year I went to Chengdu on a business trip, his brother booked a ticket early, invited me to the concert hall to enjoy a concert - such an arrangement, I myself have done it once or twice: friends come from afar, and non-concerts are not enough to express my joy and joy. However, it was my turn to receive such a grand invitation, which was the first time in my life. This move not only shows brother Lei Jian's friendship with me, but also glimpses the unusual position that music occupies in his mind.
Of course, Lei Jianjie's book, like my "Lonely Master", is a "non-professional" professional writing. In the eyes of insiders, its limitations are obvious. And the cleverness of Brother Lei Jian lies in the fact that he has chosen a wonderful "entry point" - "listening to music in the book". Books are used to read, and reading and writing is the specialty of media people, so that auditory appreciation is transformed into visual reading, and then extended to rational thinking and literary description, which can be described as a unique way to avoid weaknesses. Mr. Qian Zhongshu once wrote a "Synaesthesia", in which he said: "In daily experience, vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste can often open up to each other or communicate with each other, and the various functional fields of the eye, ear, tongue, nose, and body can be demarcated regardless of the boundaries. The color seems to have a temperature, the sound seems to have an image, the cold and warm seem to have a weight, and the smell seems to have a physique. And so on, which often appear in ordinary languages. (See Qian Zhongshu's "Seven Collections of Ancient Books", p. 65) The focus of Mr. Qian's discussion is literature, and I quote this wonderful theory of him here to show that Lei Jian brother obviously understands the meaning of this, and he maximizes the role of "reading" of the eyes when discussing music, thus greatly expanding the field and space of music appreciation. Taking a piece of music as the starting point, as far as the eye can see, it can be extended to all directions, both from its previous life - or from a poem, or from a play, or from a novel, or from a folklore; and it can also explore the origin of its creation - from the composer's family to his teacher's lineage, from his personal temperament to the artistic atmosphere of his circle of friends; but also to trace the twists and turns and the ups and downs of fate after the birth of this work... In Lei Jianjie's pen, music is not only audible, but also readable, sensible and visible. Among those beautiful and moving melodies, there are always vivid lives: they include composers, performers, and singers who directly create these pieces, as well as poets, writers, painters, dramatists, critics, and even theater operators who have "stuck" to their past and present lives, and all the colorful people who have been "wrapped" into these melodies in the long river of time have been "read" by Lei Jian brother's wise eyes and included in his books.
Lei Jian life photos
Media people often say a "jargon", called "finding an angle". An object may look bland and unobtrusive from the front; however, once you change an angle, from the side to the reverse, it suddenly becomes colorful and wonderful. Who says it isn't, aren't the musical masters and their masterpieces written about by Brother Lei Jian in the book already listened to and familiar to the world for hundreds of years? Most of these musicians' names have long been household names, known to women and children. However, Brother Lei Jian only changed his perspective, no longer confined to the field of music, but from the perspective of reading to find interpretation to think, immediately let abstract music become image, so that those distant musicians, and even many sages who provided these musicians with "source living water", gradually resurrected from his narration - this is the power of reading, and its depth and breadth cannot be achieved by hearing alone. Through "Listening to Music in Books", music and literature, painting, drama and other adjacent art categories have achieved seamless connection and even cross-border integration. Readers who are familiar with music, in reading, will naturally echo those familiar melodies in their ears, which will deepen their understanding of the connotation of music; even readers who are not very familiar with these music pieces can understand and taste the life stories of music masters or comfortable or bumpy or difficult or sad, so as to get close to music, feel art, and then understand life.
Any art, in the final analysis, is actually the "art of man": it is both created for man and appreciated. In this book, although Lei Jian Brother writes from music, his focus is on the people behind the music. I call this formulation of his "leading people with a curve." The reason why I am familiar with his method of expression is because when I wrote "The Lonely Master", I adopted the method of "leading people with people", which is the same as his "leading people with music".
These articles by Lei Jian brother had previously been serialized in the beijing daily supplement, and later published one after another in the "reader" of our "China supplement" public account. As a result, I have read most of the chapters in the book. However, this time I re-read it in its entirety, and I still feel that I have gained a lot. Brother Lei Jian entrusted me with the heavy responsibility of writing the preface, although I knew that I was incompetent and did not resign. Because I know that there is a precious trust and deep emotion in this. Compared with the weight of this emotion, whether I, the preface writer, is competent and professional, seems to be insignificant - life is alive, only emotion and trust, can not be disappointed.
is the preamble.
From October 17 to 18, 2021, he sent Tsuen Zhai in Beijing
(Hou Jun: Former deputy editor-in-chief of Shenzhen Newspaper Group, editor-in-chief of the New Media Center of "China Supplement". Scholar, essayist, art critic, calligrapher. )