Wang Mozhi
The American composer Philip Glass has a large number of music fans in our country, and this situation has lasted for at least a decade. I remember that before Shanghai's disc market was relegated from the physical internet, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, who was also the standard-bearer of Minimalism, were recognized as sharpshooters. Glass's melody is better (unconceived friends can start with the soundtrack of the movie "Yukio Mishima"), but over the years, I always feel that his relationship with China needs to be improved. Steve Reich has come and gone and is still communicating with the audience after the concert (Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, July 15, 2015). What about Grasse? See more glass, which in Salinger's novel is not only a harmonic stem, but more like some kind of prophecy, or fate.
Philip Glass, New York, 1968
Fortunately, the life of music lights up the moment you listen to it happens; not to mention, Chinese music fans have a book of solace, we can read Grasse's autobiography "Words without Music" (Henan University Press, October 2018 edition). What is valuable is that the translator of the book graduated from the composition department of the Juilliard School of Music in the United States, and can be said to be The little disciple of Glass. When it comes to music books translated in China, I often complain about translators who only understand English and do not understand music, but before reading "Words without Music", I have no worries about that aspect at all, and my mood is the anticipation and joy when Haitao Vinyl is ready to unpack. Who would have thought, the parcel was unwrapped, and glass inside shattered to pieces.
Words without Pleasure, Henan University Press, October 2018
A
How to say it, the first twenty or thirty pages of translation is still passed, perhaps because the author has been talking about home, there is nothing that cannot be read, or obvious doubts need to be compared with the original text. I couldn't resist turning to the original book because on page 42, jazz master Stan Getz's name had been mistakenly planted as Stein Getz. I would like to confirm first that this matter has nothing to do with the original author. Forget it—when everyone is careless—I was about to forgive the translator when I found more problems on Stan Gates' page.
On page 42, the name of the jazz master Stan Getz is mistaken for Stein Getz
Let's start with the original sentence: "This larger world included theater groups and cutting-edge bebop jazz clubs, like the Beehive or the Cotton Club on Cottage Grove." The translation reads: "This environment also includes a multitude of performing arts groups and jazz clubs that transcend the ages, such as the Hive Club on 53rd Street or the Cotton Club at Grove Cottage." Given that the translator is a composer and must know what bebop is and how important it is, the omission here is puzzling, while "53rd Street" is arbitrary. I immediately turned to Google for help, and found no evidence that the Hive was located or had been on 53rd Street; the house number "1503 E 55th Street" did appear. Also, theater groups are just a subset of showbiz groups, just as Bebop is just one of the genres of jazz.
42 pages original
Some add, some subtract, this kind of slightly loose "interpretation" style for the original work I thought at first was just an isolated case, but I did not expect that there were a lot of cases in the queue, and some were quite low-level.
On page 58, the translator translates John Coltrane as "Kotlin." The strange thing about this is that he has obviously translated it correctly before. On page 49, jazz fans see God-level John Coltrane as "John Coltrane" when he first appears in the book; 50 pages, 53 pages, abbreviated as "Ke Chuan"; what really happened, the gods had to hide their names.
58 pp
58 pages original
49 pp
Film master Ingmar Bergman has a similar adventure: on page 52, he is "Bergman", but on page 136, he disguises himself as "Bergman". Louis-Ferdinand Celine: 91, "Serena"; 174, "Celine"; 403, Chamovazo (without reading the original text, I have no idea what the translator is talking about).
52 pages
136 pp
136 pp. original text
403 pp
403 p. original
And Then there's Sarah Vaughan, who can actually appear in a row in the translation. The first time she was: "Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990): a famous American jazz singer. (p. 50) Becomes for the second time: "Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990): Famous American jazz singer." (p. 53) I was pondering the difference between a singer and a singer, when I suddenly understood that Wayne and Vaughn might not be alone.
50 pages
53 pages
Since the above three masters will receive such courtesy in the process of retranslating the Coming Dynasty, I have to wonder whether the translators are not familiar enough with modern jazz and Swedish films. If familiar enough, some low-level mistakes will not be made. For example, those who collect records know that the three most common specifications of vinyl are 12 inches, 10 inches, 7 inches, and the English corresponding to the inch is inch, which is common sense, just like an inch registration photo, how can it be a centimeter? The translator was able to translate the 12 inches of vinyl in the book into 12 centimeters. Let's take a good look at that passage:
"Two weeks later my Schoenberg gift box came from the developer. I'm excited every time it comes. My brother and my dad will also enjoy this moment with me. At that time we didn't know what those covers were supposed to look like, because there was only title text on the order. But by then there were already covers and photographs, both 12 centimeters × 12 centimeters in size. We opened the box with excitement, and then four big Schoenberg faces were revealed. (p. 55) Original text: "About two weeks later the box arrived from the distributor. That was always an exciting moment. Marty and I would be joined by Ben, who also enjoyed the moment. In those days we didn’t know what the covers looked like—the order books provided just lists of names. But these were the early days of LPs and artists and photographers had a field day with twelve-by-twelve-inch covers. With great anticipation we tore open the box, and there were the four Schoenbergs.”
55 pp
55 pages original
There is a problem with the first sentence of the translation. The record industry is not a real estate industry, distributor refers not to the developer, but to the wholesaler or agent after the release of a record. As for the 12 cm sentence, the translator may not be able to grasp had a field day with, almost touching the elephant. I wrote, "But it was the early days of the LP era, and artists and photographers would make a big fuss about 12× 12-inch envelopes." ”
If this is not counting the gutter overturning, let's look at a more ruthless one.
On page 57, the author refers to the influence of jazz musician Lennie Tristano on himself, citing two pieces: "The first is his 'Queue', and the second is his 'West 32nd Street'. "I flipped through the original text and looked up Tristanno's record, 'West 32nd Street,' and the song was called East Thirty-Second Street.
57 pp
Lenny Tristanno record cover
57 p. original
I don't believe that the translator can't even distinguish things clearly, it should be that the translation is too fast, and the brain is not keeping up. Anyway, his translation is so casual, like a free jazz to play a jazz standard repertoire, inevitably there will be some improvisations.
Again, page 57, the original text says: "'Mr. Tristano, my name is Philip Glass,'I managed to say. ‘ I’m a young composer. I’ve come to New York to study, and I know your work. Is there any chance I can study with you?’” The translator may have been anxious for the author, thinking that he had rushed to call people and said that he wanted to visit the teacher, which was too radical, so his translation was as follows: "'Teacher Cui, my name is Philip Glass.' I said nervously, 'I'm a little composer, I came to new York to study, and I know your music very well.' Is it possible to visit you? ’”
People with high emotional intelligence usually talk like this, obviously only know something about other people's works, but say, "I know your works very well." ”
Branding their own characteristics in other people's works, translators sometimes create awkwardness in their own translations. Take this passage on page 62: "There are regular chamber concerts there, such as the Budapest String Quartet. But you'll hear more about Big Bill Brunch, folk singer Ortita, and a string of '50s folk singers. In contrast: "There were regular chamber music concerts there—the Budapest String Quartet, for instance, but you could also hear Big Bill Broonzy, Odetta, and a whole raft of fifties folksingers. "The previously discussed" is clearly a decorative chord imposed by the translator, as if to remind the reader that if you forget who Big Bill Brunch is, then flip it forward." The hat of "national singer" is also a second creation, which is suspected of being random, after all, it takes courage to translate the pollk in the musical context as "national" instead of "folk". I also seriously pondered how the folksingers upgraded to become "national singers", according to the translator's understanding of fox, should not be translated as "national singers"? Probably because he had already helped Otita wear the hat of a "national singer", in the literary world, repetition is usually simply understood as word exhaustion.
62 pp
62 pp. original text
Basically, as long as the translator leaves the comfort zone of classical music, he will contribute some famous scenes when he encounters jazz, film, literature, the record industry, and folk songs. The theater world could not be spared, and he translated the famous book of the Polish master Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, into About the Poor Theatre (p. 144). Whether it is a rustic drama or a poor theater (the translated name of Hong Kong and Taiwan), this is a common sense problem in the theater industry, which is equivalent to asking music fans: "Do you know Philip Glass?" ”
144 pp
144 pp. original text
Forget it, don't talk about this, and look at the translator's performance outside the literary circle.
On page 80, Glass recalls this passage from his part-time job at the steel mill: "I worked from the afternoon to midnight, which means that my 'health' schedule from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three weeks was changed to 2 p.m. to 6 a.m. the next morning. (I was working a swing shift, meaning that in the course of three weeks my workday shifted from 6 a.m.–2 p.m. to 2 p.m.–10 p.m. and then 10 p.m.–6 a .m. Working hours were first from 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., then from 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., and then from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. the next day. ”
80 pages
80 pages original
Glass had a good job at the factory, and in his recollection of his colleagues, I was shocked by this sentence: "I guess the highest degree among them is the first grade of elementary school." (p. 82) What is this concept? This meant that the workers had basically not even read the first grade of elementary school, in other words, the American factory employed a lot of illiteracy. What struck me even more was the original text: "I guess that fewer than half of them had more than a grade school education." Should this sentence be translated as: "I guess less than half of them have a primary school education or above." ”
This free jazz translation by the translator culminates in a certain way on page 107 of the book:
"Then, modern jazz has really changed and developed dramatically, mainly in two ways." (Modern jazz and experimental music did offer examples of change and dynamic development.) Inexplicably, "experimental music" went, just as "seen in two main ways" inexplicably came.
"First, jazz geniuses who played in exuberant styles—like Charlie Parker and Bauer—were a lot like Abstract Expressionist painters who pushed the deep expressive power of pure music to the blazing realm." （The gifted geniuses of jazz—Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, to mention only two—were, like their counterparts in the abstract expressionist world, playing their music of deep expression with Energy and at high speed.) turns out to be "seen in two main ways" by the author's phrase "just two examples."
"Second, in the late '50s, we heard a new kind of 'cool' jazz, like Davis, Munch, and Coleman." (In the late 1950s we began to hear the new "cool jazz" as played by Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, and Chet Baker.) I wiped my eyes repeatedly when I saw the original text of this sentence. Is the translator playing NBA Player Trade? Exchange Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, and Chet Baker for Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman.
"Their music is still very complex, but it is based on a completely different aesthetic point of view - the music is much 'loose', no longer making you breathless, but little by little, you find your own figure in the music, like some kind of spiritual call in the distance." 」 (It was equally complex but in a very different aesthetic—sometimes more reflective and laid-back and always more distant.) The translator's treatment of this sentence reminds me of pianist Ivo Pogleridge, whose interpretations are often subversive.
107 pp
107 pp. original
Having said that, I can't help but think of the translator's composer status. Suppose he composed a piece of music that was deleted a little bit by the player here, added a little there, and played a few wrong notes from time to time, how would he feel?
B
The omissions, mistranslations, and random plays in "Words of No Joy" are really a bit much, and in order to avoid this book review approaching the doctoral dissertation in terms of volume, I think it is time to turn the page.
The book has been translated into 457 pages, or abridged, deleted thanks, and deleted after the index. As an autobiography, it should be said that it is full of sincerity, and the author is roughly showing his life in an anatomical way. He is honest enough to be willing to find in his works those teachers who are difficult for ordinary people to find. It took him a long time to discover how jazz had infiltrated his creations: "Now more than fifty years later, I listened to Tristanno's music again, and I found that music... That's the feeling that comes out of my opera. (p. 57)
His frankness was given back to his private life. On the night of the end of the virgin's body, his retrospective and inference are full of farce. If his married life is a drama series, the protagonist is undoubtedly his first wife, JoAnne Akalaitis, who accompanies him for more than two hundred pages. The second wife disappeared completely. The third wife, Candy Jernigan, plays a supporting role in the book and is a tragic character. Candy's grandmother was Chinese, but somehow her family never mentioned it. Candy once happened to see her mother's passport and learned that her mother was born in Shanghai. (pp. 410-411)
Glass is still quite nagging, sometimes annoying, and feels that he has a lot of ink on family life. But these details, chai rice oil and salt are difficult to say are redundant, after all, Glass ate a long time of dried radish rice before becoming a great composer.
In order to go to the Juilliard School, he worked in the steel factory to save money, and worked for five months. He entered the school of his choice, and he was a porter for the freight company outside of class. After graduating, he has been composing music, but composer is not his profession, he has worked for some years as a plumber and taxi driver. "And" means that two jobs are often done in tandem. Even though he became famous with "Einstein on the Beach," he was still renting a car, helping people fix water pipes, and was in debt. Because "Einstein on the Beach" is full, but the field loses money, which is a loss of money. "Many of my clients who worked as plumbers at the time knew I was a musician, but no one was upset with me. I continued to do this for 12 years until I was 41 years old. (p. 278)
Stills from the opera Einstein on the Beach
Born in 1937 and premiering Einstein on the Beach in 1976, 41 means he survived another two years after he became famous before he really made his head. So when I re-read his memories of the steel mill when I brushed it for the second time, I suddenly realized that what he had cast in that factory was not iron nails, but his state of mind and perseverance. This person is dead in art, can bend and stretch in life, and sometimes, he will be bigger than his musical works.
It is also for this reason that the whole book is difficult to read top-heavy. The drama of studying, debuting, and making a career is particularly heavy, like a seesaw, they press the glamorous and dazzling parts after fame in mid-air, the reader cannot touch it, and the author has no intention of repeating it.
If someone asks me how the book is, I might say that the title could be changed to "How I Became Philip Glass." Basically, the author spent more than three hundred pages aimed at answering the question of how his art, his minimalist style, came to be.
On the way to becoming a great composer, Glass used a method at the beginning of the race - hand-copying the manuscripts of his predecessors. MAHLE is a first-class master of orchestration. "So I chose Mahler's Ninth Symphony and copied it on a large sheet of sheet music sheet, note by tone." (p. 120) He says this is good for his own training and orchestral writing techniques.
In 1965, glass studied traditional Indian music for the soundtrack of a film with Ravi Shankar. "That whole music is an infinite loop of sixteen beats. Araraka then told me that the beat was called 'Thar', and the sixteen beats of 'Tar' was called 'Tintar'..." (p. 169)
Isn't infinite circulation a feature of minimalism? He says that spending time with Ravi Shankar in the Paris studio gave him "the foundation and skills to complete future works."
Philip Glass with The British writer Doris Lessing, London in 1988
In 1968, Glass began composing for his band. At that time, the tradition of composing music was to write the total score first and then copy the score, but he directly wrote the score and gave it to the musicians. When he composed music, he would generally write about the parts he played, then the music of other people and other parts, and then use notation to produce a conductor's score (171 pages).
When it comes to art, Glass is still relatively popular, and even a layman like me, who knows nothing about composition, can understand the ideas and speculations he wants to convey. This makes some of the book read as if you're taking a music masterclass in Grasse. For example, on page 408, the author gives a three-point summary of the creation of the film's soundtrack. I will not spoil the specific discussion, interested friends should find (buy) the book to study well.
In the process of learning, if you have any doubts, don't rush to question Glass, first find a way to make an original book and flip through it. The problem may be in translation. Although the performance of the translator is disappointing, the reason why a good book can be called a good book is that it can withstand the wear and tear of translation, and this is the biggest reason why I solemnly recommend "Words of No Joy".
Editor-in-Charge: Gu Ming
Proofreader: Yan Zhang