23, The Patriotic Traitor The Biography of Ma Sicong Ye Yonglie Chapter 10 Mentor and Friend

Ma Sicong chewed every word of this passage for a long time and silently, remembering these words of Bi Nengpeng.

Again and again, on Sundays, Bi Nengpong travelled from the countryside to Paris to wander with Ma Sicong in the Louvre, the palace of Western art. Ma Sicong found that in Bi Nengpeng's view, music and art are interconnected, and auditory art and visual art can learn from each other.

Ma Sicong remembers that Bi Nengpeng was full of emotion at a painting of open-bellied cattle by Lambland: "What is painted here is a picture of cow meat and bones, which is as boring as the anatomical drawings in the hospital." However, the painting is full of artistic conception. A truly great artist is someone who can achieve a huge effect with a minimum amount of material. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is built on four notes, and the first chapter of the Ninth Symphony is built on two notes. Brahms was the most proficient in this technique, and often exchanged the undertone for a melody, and the material savings reached the extreme. In the face of the more than 170,000 vast works of art in the Louvre, Bi Nengpeng has sublimated from a cow with an open belly to the true meaning of music creation.

He also loved poetry, especially the poets Byron and Heine, who were full of strong romanticism. He said to Ma Sicong in a very general way: "All good art contains a strong romantic color. ”

The teacher and student talked about philosophy again...

"The truly all-encompassing philosopher is Spinoza of the Netherlands," said Billenpong. Nietzsche was just a great poet, and Schopenhauer was a great essayist. Every line of Nietzsche's poems is a whip that goes straight into people's hearts. ”

Ma Sicong listened to it and said, "Teacher, I feel that your music is very similar to Nietzsche's poems. ”

Bi Nengpeng said, "I belong to this category. But the music I love to listen to is the gentle and peaceful Mozart! Outside of creation, his music is my favorite to listen to. ”

For Ma Sicong, Obedofer and Bi Nengpeng are his mentors, and Bi Nengpeng has a more profound influence and influence on him.

Fortunately, after many traces, I walked into the Guilin Library on the shore of the tranquil and soft Banyan Lake in Guilin, Guangxi, and finally found the "New Music" magazine published in the war-torn years. The first issue of the fifth volume in 1942 was published by the "Three-dimensional Publishing House" located at No. 20 Donghua Road in Guilin. Editors-in-chief Li Ling and Zhao Feng wrote an article about music creation to Ma Sicong. On the coarse blackened paper, Ma Sicong once wrote about his mentor Bi Nengpeng with profound brushstrokes:

"Without him, I would have gone down the path of vanity, wandering on the path of immaturity and incompleteness. Or it takes a lot of energy and energy to find a definite route. Mr. Benenpong was not only my teacher of harmonic composition, but also the instructor of my entire artistic accomplishment. ”

Although Pin Nengpong was almost silent on the French music scene at the time, and his works were almost incomprehensible, Ma Sicong was proud of his mentor:

Calvocoressi, an authority on music criticism, placed Benenpong at the forefront of his recent musical history. I have seen three of his works, one symphony, one string quartet, and one piano string quintet, all of which are magnificent and deeply emotional. His style is characterized by always being tragic, not melancholy, but like the great style of ancient Greek tragedy, like the burning of a fierce fire, and his music burns with an irrepressible enthusiasm. He will be a unique face in the history of music. ”

Ma Sicong recalled:

"When I had composed half a dozen or so chases, I hurried out of the beautiful countryside where I often heard larks singing.

"When I started learning chase, I tried to make a string quartet, which was my first instrumental piece. The Short Quartet is a piece that has tested my compositional skills. When I sent the finished quartet from Guangzhou to Mr. Bi Nengpeng to see. He replied: 'The technique is first-rate, you make serious music, and you are on the right path. ’......”

Ma Sicong deeply misses his mentor. In his article, it is as if his sigh can be heard. Oh, that's a deep teacher-student relationship:

"Mr. Billenpong was in his fifties when I left Europe, and ten years later he is about sixty years old. After the war, there had been no news of him for many years. He was a Jew, and the Nazis had probably driven him out of one of his hard-earned country houses, and he did not know to which country he had fallen to, and what a sad thing! ”

Ma Sicong also misses his violin professor Obedofer, not only because Professor Obedofer made his violin playing skills go astray and on the right path, but also because "he later learned composition from Mr. Bi Nengpong and listened to his ideas".

Ma Sicong, who is young and strong-blooded, once vowed to be "the 'Napoleon' of music". Since receiving the teachings of Bi Nengpeng, he has devoted himself to "working in the dark in loneliness", pursuing the truth, goodness and beauty in the world of music.

In 1929, when Ma Sicong had just returned to Paris, his "Guangdong countryman" Xian Xinghai came to him and asked him to introduce him to Professor Oberdofer. Under Ma Sicong's enthusiastic introduction, Professor Obiedofir accepted another Chinese student. Later, Xian Xinghai, like Ma Sicong, asked to learn composition. Professor Obedofer took into account Xian Xinghai's different temperaments and recommended him to Paul Duka.

As a friend of Xian Xinghai, Ma Sicong once wrote such memories:

"Xian Xinghai and I knew each other earlier, we both studied music in France, and my violin teacher Oberdofer was later Xinghai's teacher. Xinghai, whom I know, is a straightforward, heroic, courageous and enthusiastic person. He has shown amazing perseverance in his studies. We all know that Xinghai has endured great hardships in life (especially in Paris), and in that environment, a person who lacks fortitude will be discouraged, but Xinghai persevered in learning in the face of all difficulties and never lost heart. Because of this feeling of life, he has a deep sympathy for the working people, so his works can achieve a high degree of authenticity when expressing the thoughts and emotions of the working people..."

Xian Xinghai was born into a family of poor shipwrights in Macau, and relied on work-study to study music in Paris.

Ma Sicong first relied on his father's financial resources, and later with the financial support of his self-sacrificing eldest brother, to pay the professors' tuition fees of 50 francs per hour, and finally from an eleven-year-old child, he was trained by a famous teacher in France to a young musician who is also a performer and composer, and has become a rare "double" musician in the Chinese music scene!