Edward Elgar: The Man & His Music

nWAY · 2013-02-24 10:38:27Z

Edward Elgar: The Man & His Music簡介

來源: nWAY 於 2013-02-24 10:38:27 [檔案] [博客] [舊帖] [給我悄悄話] 閱讀數 : (8443 bytes)

Sir Edward Elgar, 1st Baronet, Order of Merit, Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (1857–1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.

Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory. The first of his Pomp and Circumstance Marches (1901) is well known in the English-speaking world.

In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a violin concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity and took many years to achieve a regular place in the concert repertory of British orchestras. Elgar's music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death. It began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, but the music remains more played in Britain than elsewhere.

【古風按】英國傑出的電影導演肯·羅素（Ken Russell）於1962年為BBC拍攝的敘事記錄片《埃爾加》是部佳作，特別是其前半段30多分鍾把埃爾加在成名前遭受的種種失意描述得相當詳細，對後世有抱負的年輕人具有巨大的激勵作用。

世隔近半個世紀之後，BBC又於2010年由導演John Bridcut執導，邀請了Sir Colin Davis（One of the best British conductors），Sir Mark Elder（Music Director，Hallé Orchestra），David Owen Norris（Pianist and Elgar scholar），Edward Gardner（Music Director，English National Opera），James Burton（Choral conductor），Michael Kennedy（Elgar biographer），Anthony Payne（Composer and Elgar scholar），Vladimir Ashkenazy（Principal Conductor，Sydney Symphony Orchestra），Jerrold Northrop Moore（Elgar biographer），Paul Harper-Scott（Elgar scholar），and Natalia Luis-Bassa（Venezuelan conductor）等眾多熟知埃爾加其人其事的音樂界知名人士，拍攝了記錄片《麵具之後的埃爾加》。該片並沒有在埃爾加成名前的經曆上過多地重複以前羅素經典記錄片的內容，而是把主要的精力關注在對埃爾加音樂的解讀與埃爾加創作經典名曲過程中的靈感來源之上，因此該片極具人生史詩般的美感，看後無不令人動容、感歎萬千！

古風在觀看了這兩部有關埃爾加的記錄片後感慨更多的其實是在發問：為何中國的這麽多名導演們中就沒有一個在賺取了上億的票房後，能夠真正靜下心來把中國偉大作曲家的經曆也拍攝成不朽的記錄片，為之孫後代、為世界文化留下幾份珍貴的遺產呢？不過把話說回來，中國到目前為止還真的沒產生出一位世界級的作曲家。因此，中國沒有拍攝出音樂記錄片精品也是有其客觀原因的。