為什麽我們憂傷時喜歡聽憂傷的音樂？zt

為什麽我們喜歡在憂傷時聽傷感音樂？  


譯者： RGMUSG 原作者：Kat Austen

發表時間：2010-07-22

 

Kat Austen, Letters and Comments editor

責任編輯：吉奧斯丁

August, 1942. Leningrad, besieged and filled with starving inhabitants, barely holds out against the force of the Nazi invasion. People are queuing up for soup made of boots and book bindings. Hitler has chosen the 9th of the month to celebrate the fall of the city, and a ball has been planned in advance.

　　1942年8月，深陷重圍，餓殍遍野的列寧格勒勉強抵抗住了納粹入侵力量。人們排隊領取由皮靴和書封皮煮成的湯。希特勒原定於這個月9號慶祝攻陷列寧格勒，並且提前取得了突破性進展。

But in a symbolic act of defiance, the Russians decide to hold an orchestral concert. To do so, they have to fly in extra musicians, because only 15 members of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra have survived the war. The piece of music they choose for the finale is Dimitri Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony.

　　但在一個象征性的挑釁行為裏，俄國人決定舉行一場交響樂音樂會。舉行音樂會，他們得找幾個額外的樂師，因為戰爭中列寧格勒交響樂團隻幸存了十五位成員。他們選擇了迪米特裏·肖斯塔科維奇的列寧格勒交響曲中的片斷做為結束曲。

At the Cheltenham Music Festival's The Sound of Melancholia last week, classical music composer Stephen Johnson repeated this story, describing Shostakovich's compositions as "some of the bleakest, darkest, saddest, most vile and sardonic music" he had ever heard

　　在上周的切爾滕納姆音樂節的憂鬱之聲中，古典音樂作曲家史蒂芬·約翰遜反複說著這個故事，認為肖斯塔科維奇的作品是一些最陰鬱，最黑暗，最悲慘，最悲鄙和嘲諷的音樂，是他從未聽過的。

He went on to recount the story of Viktor Kuslov, who had played in the 1942 performance, who was moved to tears by the recollection of the music's powerful effect on that night. Indeed, the final page of the ink-written score that was used at the world premiere is smudged and run with the tears of Yevgeny Mravinsky, the conductor.

　　他接著講述了維克多的故事，維克多曾在1942年的音樂會上表演過，回憶起當晚音樂的巨大影響，他感動得熱淚盈眶。事實上，在世界首演上使用的手寫樂譜的最後一頁，就被當時的指揮家葉甫根尼·姆拉文斯基的淚水浸濕了。

It's counterintuitive, but Johnson's story suggests that the desolation in Schostakovich's music, resonating with the desolation in their hearts, served to bolster the spirits of the Russian populace at the time. The premise postulated by Johnson and neuroscientist Raymond Tallis, who co-hosted the event, is the oft-repeated idea that music, by conferring a narrative structure to emotion, brings emotion closer to thought. "There is something about seeing your own mood reflected that allows you to let go of that feeling," says Johnson.

　　這是違反常識的，但約翰遜的故事表明，恰恰是肖斯塔科維奇音樂中的荒涼感引起人們的共鳴，支撐起了俄國民眾的精神。由約翰遜和神經學家雷蒙德·塔利斯假設的前提，過去經常提到的，即音樂能通過授予情感以敘述結構，使情感更接近思想。“審視你所表現出來的情緒，似乎有一種力量可以讓你忘掉那種感覺”，約翰遜說道。

But it is not so simple. As Tallis, who was standing in for an absent Robert Winston, pointed out at the start of the evening's conversation, there is a complex interplay between the emotion the composer attempts to write into the music, that conveyed by the music, the listener's interpretation, and the listener's mood. This was resoundingly reflected in the results of an experiment carried out on the evening's audience

　　但這沒這麽簡單，正如塔利斯站在缺席的羅伯特溫斯頓立場上指出，在那晚的交流之初，作家意圖寫入音樂，通過音樂傳達的情感與聽眾情緒之間產生了複雜的相互作用。這成功反映在了那晚在觀眾中進行的實驗的結果中。

We were each given a response sheet, on which we marked our response to three clips of classical music. Asked to gauge both the emotion we thought the music was meant to convey and the emotion we ourselves felt, we were given the choice of "joyful", "sad" and "neither". The experiment was not very rigorous: the demographic of the room was certainly biased towards the more senior generations, and the respondents from this group were all self-selecting. Also, looking at the numbers, it was clear that not everybody answered every question.

　　我們每人發了一張調查表，在表上我們寫出對三段經典音樂的感受。當被問及我們認為音樂意圖傳達的情感和我們自身感受時，我們有三個選項“快樂”，“憂傷”和“非上述兩者”。這實驗並非十分嚴格：房間裏的人們肯定偏向年長的一代，並且團隊裏的受訪者均為自願。並且，從數字上來看，很顯然，並不是每個人都得回答全部問題。

Still, the results were interesting. Broadly, people seemed to be fairly sure about the emotion a piece was meant to communicate - for instance 91 per cent agreed that a clip from one of Shostakovich's work was meant to convey sadness. They were, however, far more divided about the emotion it elicited within them. The most conclusive agreement was that a clip of Paul Schoenfield's Dog Heaven made 56 per cent of the audience feel joyful - not an overly compelling figure.

　　結果還是很有趣。概括地說，人們似乎相當清楚音樂剪輯所意圖傳達的情感。例如，91%的人們讚同肖斯塔科維奇作曲傳達的是悲傷的情緒。然而，他們各自的感受卻有很大不同。最明顯得就是保羅舍恩菲爾德的小狗天堂音樂剪輯讓56%的聽眾感到快樂——這區別並不明顯。

That experiment was the substantial scientific component of the evening, possibly thanks to Winston's absence. A scientific explanation of how music and mood interact was sadly lacking. When asked to talk about the brain processes involved, Tallis replied that while brain scans can show us which parts of the brain are receptive to music, they do not take us much further.

　　這個實驗隻是大量科學實驗的一部分，或許多虧了溫斯頓的缺席。很遺憾還沒有關於音樂和情緒相互影響的科學的解釋。當被問及到談論一下涉及的大腦處理研究，塔利斯回答說腦部掃描能告訴我們大腦哪個部分會對音樂產生反應，但他們沒有透露更多內容。

The response was reminiscent of Tallis's New Scientist article on consciousness, where he stated that there is a "deep philosophical confusion embedded in the assumption that you can correlate neural activity with consciousness".

　　這些回答讓人想起塔利斯在《新科學家》發表的關於意識的文章，他在文章中指出，在你可以把神經活動同意識聯係在一起的假設中，有著嚴重的哲學困惑。

Disappointing though this is, Tallis might have a point. If the evening's pop-up experiment is representative of the variety and range of responses that the same piece of music elicits in different people, it can hardly be expected that a brain scan will explain what is happening.

　　盡管有些讓人失望，塔利斯也許是有道理的。如果這個實驗是不同人群聽到相同音樂片斷時的典型反應的話，這將很難預料腦部掃描能解釋到底發生了什麽。

While we may have plenty of proof that music moves us emotionally, the conclusion of the evening's discussion seemed to be that scientific research has a long way to go to understand the complexities of our interaction with it. And if that isn't enough to make you feel melancholy, have a listen to some Sibelius.

　　雖然我們或許有許多證據證明音樂能影響我們的情緒，但實驗討論的結論似乎表明，要弄懂音樂與情緒的複雜關係，科學實驗還有很長的路要走。如果這還不足以讓你沮喪，聽點西貝利厄斯吧。


http://article.yeeyan.org/view/161848/119361