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Too much Mozart makes you sick

Too much Mozart makes you sick

By Norman Lebrecht / La Scena Musicale / December 14, 2005

They are steam cleaning the streets of Vienna ahead of next month's birthday weekend when pilgrim walks are planned around the composer's shrines. Salzburg is rolling out brochures for its 2006 summer festival, which will stage every opera in the Kochel canon from infantile fragments to The Magic Flute, 22 in all. Pierre Boulez, the pope of musical modernism, will break 80 years of principled abstinence to conduct a mostly-Mozart concert, a celebrity virgin on the altar of musical commerce.

Wherever you go in the coming year, you won't escape Mozart. The 250th anniversary of his birth on January 27 1756 is being celebrated with joyless efficiency as a tourist magnet to the land of his birth and a universal sales pitch for his over-worked output. The complete 626 works are being marketed on record in two special-offer super coffers. All the world's orchestras will be playing Mozart, wall to wall, starting with the Vienna Philharmonic on tour this weekend.

Mozart is the superstore wallpaper of classical music, the composer who pleases most and offends least. Lively, melodic, dissonance free: what's not to like? The music is not just charming, it's full of good vibes. The Mozart Effect, an American resource centre which ascribes 'transformational powers' to Austria's little wonderlad, collects empirical evidence to show that Mozart, but no other music, improves learning, memory, winegrowing and toilet training and should be drummed into classes of pregnant mothers like breathing exercises.

A 'molecular basis' identified in Mozart's sonata for two pianos is supposed to have stimulated exceptional brain activity in laboratory rats. How can one argue with such 'proof'? Science, after all, confirms what we want to believe - that art is good for us and that Mozart, in his short-lived naivety, represents a prelapsarian ideal of organic beauty, unpolluted by industrial filth and loss of faith. Nice, if only it were true.

The chocolate-box image of Mozart as a little miracle can be promptly banged on the head. The hard-knocks son of a cynical court musician, Mozart was taught from first principles to ingratiate himself musically with people of wealth and power. The boy, on tour from age five, hopped into the laps of queens and played limpid consolations to ruthless monarchs. Recognising that his music was better than most, he took pleasure in humiliating court rivals and crudely abused them in letters back home.

A coprophiliac obsession with bodily functions, accurately evinced in Peter Shaffer's play and Milos Forman's movie Amadeus, was a clear sign of arrested emotional development. His marriage proved unstable and his inability to control the large amounts he earned from wealthy Viennese patrons was a symptom of the infantile behaviour that hastened his early death and pauper burial. Musical genius he may have been, but Mozart was no Einstein. For secrets of the universe, seek elsewhere.

The key test of any composer's importance is the extent to which he reshaped the art. Mozart, it is safe to say, failed to take music one step forward. Unlike Bach and Handel who inherited a dying legacy and vitalised it beyond recognition, unlike Haydn who invented the sonata form without which music would never have acquired its classical dimension, Mozart merely filled the space between staves with chords that he knew would gratify a pampered audience. He was a provider of easy listening, a progenitor of Muzak.

（極度不同意！莫札特對歌劇和協奏曲曲式有極大的貢獻！）

Some scholars have claimed revolutionary propensities for Mozart, but that is wishful nonsense. His operas of knowing servants and stupid masters were conceived by Da Ponte, a renegade priest, from plays by Beaumachais and Ariosto; and, while Mozart once indulged in backchat to the all-high Emperor Joseph II, he knew all too well where his breakfast brioche was buttered. He lacked the rage of justice that pushed Beethoven into isolation, or any urge to change the world. Mozart wrote a little night music for the ancient regime. He was not so much reactionary as regressive, a composer content to keep music in a state of servility so long as it kept him well supplied with frilled cuffs and fancy quills.

（歌劇劇本並不是作曲家定的！莫札特偉大之處在於他怎樣表達劇本。）

Little in such a mediocre life gives cause for celebration and little indeed was done to mark the centenary of his birth, in 1856, or of his death in 1891. The bandwaggon of Mozart commemorations was invented by the Nazis in 1941 and fuelled by post-War rivalries in 1956 when Deutsche Grammophon rose them from ruins to beat the busy British labels, EMI and Decca, to a first recorded cycle of the Da Ponte operas.

The 1991 bicentennial of Mozart's death turned Salzburg into a swamp of bad taste and cupidity. The world premiere of a kitsch opera, Mozart in New York, had me checking my watch every five unending minutes. The record industry, still vibrant, splattered Mozart over every vacant hoarding and a new phenomenon, Classic FM, launched in 1992 on the Mozart tide, ensured that we would never be more than a fingerstretch away from the nearest marzipan chord.

What good all this Mozart does is disputable. For all the pseudoscience of the Mozart Effect I have yet to see a life elevated by Cosi fan tutte or a criminal reformed by the plinks of a flute and harp concerto. Where ten days of Bach on BBC Radio 3 will flush out the world's ears and open minds to limitless vistas, the coming year of Mozart feels like a term at Guantanamo Bay without the sunshine. There will be no refuge from neatly resolved chords, no escaping that ingratiating musical grin.

（作者可能不知道莫札特有寫賦格曲，例如我要表演那首。）

Don't look to mass media for context or quality control. Both the BBC and independent channels have rejected any critical perspective on Mozart in the coming year, settling for sweet-wrapper documentaries that regurgitate familiar cliches. In this orgy of simple-mindedness, the concurrent centenary of Dmitri Shostakovich - a composer of true courage and historical significance - is being shunted to the sidelines, celebrated by the few.

Mozart is a menace to musical progress, a relic of rituals that were losing relevance in his own time and are meaningless to ours. Beyond a superficial beauty and structural certainty, Mozart has nothing to give to mind or spirit in the 21st century. Let him rest. Ignore the commercial onslaught. Play the Leningrad Symphony. Listen to music that matters.

（此文作者熟知莫札特的生平，卻對藝術家有著非常浪漫的偏見。如果說莫札特因為他生活的背景和文化，和他天真孩子氣不懂照顧自己的性格，所以寫的音樂都是糜爛而沒有內涵，等於說只有沒錢討飯吃死在街上的人才能表達真正的藝術。這是把藝術家過度浪漫化的影像。藝術家的作品與其生活有密切的關係，但絕不能單以其背景斷定作品的藝術性，這是本末倒置的推斷。）

The Paradox of Transcription

Our art culture regards originality as the most important factor in determining artistic value. The rule certainly applies to music. If a composer merely follows a set form, critics and scholars say that his/her music is rated as "second-tier" and is not worth further studies. Such music does not last long. Even if the music has been popular by the time it was written, it would soon be forgotten. We welcome those who add something personal to the set form, those who are inspired to break through rules of the time. We therefore adulate Mozart, and forget about his colleagues and contemporaries.

This rule might be easy to apply to original composition (In fact it is not that easy. Why would there be occasional revival of "second-tier" composers like Janacek?) but it triggers more problems in transcriptions. For example, when I hear a transcription of Chopin's piano solo music for violin, the first thing that comes to my mind is "Okay, yet another transcription for people who only know popular tunes in classical music." Transcriptions are not original, and one essential motive to write transcriptions is to popularize some certain unknown music or to enforce the popularity of already well-known pieces. To put it simply, transcriptions are written for the average listeners. They are not "art for the sake of art." That is why scholars and "learned listeners" despise transcriptions.

Strangely enough, transcriptions made by people other than the composer are usually regarded as lacking sophistication while those made by the composer him/her-self are viewed otherwise. Bach turned his violin concerto into a keyboard concerto, and it is completely welcomed by us. Mozart transcribed some Haydn music into his early piano concertos, and yet that is not appreciated. Contrary to this rule, Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition receives much more attention than the original work. Good transcriptions should bring in something new and original about the piece, as Ravel brings in interesting colors and imagination through the use of orchestral instruments. A better interpretation of the rule is that transcriptions are good and acceptable only if they are original and present something new. But how much new stuff is "good"?

To extend the question, one may look into the appropriateness of adapting Bach's keyboard music to the piano. Scholars who work on "authenticity" of Bach's music simply deride playing Bach on the piano. Although it is true that the piano does not produce Bach's intended sound, I argue that his music is beyond the limit of the instrument. This argument brings up another problem. Playing Bach on the piano is just similar to playing Chopin's nocturne on the violin. Adaptation is different from transcription, but they follow the same argument. Does playing Bach on the piano not add anything new to the music? I believe it does, as the piano has much more variations in timbre and volume than a harpsichord. Goldberg on the piano creates imagination that a harpsichord cannot achieve. Can anyone claim that Bach would definitely hate the sound of a modern piano? Even Bach specialists cannot yet agree on all little details about how to "authentically" play Bach.

Maybe rules just don't work as nice in art as in science. A solution is to put aside our pigeonhole and judge case by case. A good musician should develop a good sense of judgment on when to apply rules instead of blindly following those set by the authority.

喜劇

電影、電視劇、話劇、歌劇、音樂劇，能夠做到使觀眾完全投入故事的世界，牽動觀眾的情緒，並不簡單。以喜劇作例子，導演／指揮如何拿捏準確的節奏，把故事一步步推向高潮，不流於鬆散，演員／歌手如何誇張表情及動作而不浮誇，實在要花很多心思。

不久前看完無線劇《我的野蠻奶奶》，前半部份實在出色，我很欣賞汪明荃和胡杏兒的喜劇天份和演技，恰當地誇張的說話聲調和面部表情令人捧腹。故事的概念特別，前半部份的不同伏線帶來驚喜，節奏明快，可惜後半部的懸疑和緊張情節既犯駁纍纍，亦嫌畫蛇添足，令該劇整體大打折扣。喜劇主要用意是要娛樂觀眾，情節不宜複雜．亦不能缺少流行元素。前晚三藩市歌劇院演出羅西尼喜劇《在阿爾及爾的意大利女孩》，此製作在這方面做得非常成功。羅西尼是喜劇天才，作品比莫札特少了一份含蓄，多了流行元素，卻無損其作品的藝術性。此劇故事簡單，導演和指揮要將時間掌握得剛剛好，有些詠嘆調及大合唱重覆又重覆（因為實在好聽），例如第一幕結尾的大合唱和第二幕 Isabella 鼓勵其他意大利人爭取自由的一段詠嘆調，導演放了心思去使每次重覆都有不同視覺效果，沒有令觀眾覺得冗長，值得一讚。

性別角色調換是很好的喜劇題材，《我的野蠻奶奶》和《在阿爾及爾的意大利女孩》都是由女人控制大局，兩劇中的女主角醒目靈活，男性角色均是又愚笨又無主見，一切事情女角作主。《我》劇最後由格格（汪明荃）率領眾人挑戰皇上，《在》劇 Isabella 一個女孩帶領著所有意大利男人準備逃走，由她使計引開土耳其皇帝注意，濃厚的女性主義味道，想不到連二百年前的意大利觀眾亦非常接受。

老餅唱片

最近喜歡聽巴哈的「老餅唱片」。Casals 的大提琴組曲和 Fischer 十二平均律都是上世紀三十年代的錄音，七十多年了，而且均是該曲集史上第一個錄音。巴哈的樂譜甚麼指示也沒有，演繹可以非常不同，現代的音樂家聲稱根據巴哈時代的傳統去演奏，但我認為過於偏執傳統是沒有必要的。

以高登堡變奏曲為例，學者爭論巴哈是否知道鋼琴這個新發明，以及高登堡變奏曲應否在鋼琴上演奏。我認為樂器只是表達音樂的工具，而巴哈的音樂是超越樂器的目標。既然鋼琴可以彈奏整首高登堡變奏曲，表現出巴哈豐富的樂思，這個工具是可以有效地表達出目標，為什麼不可？

以此為前提，演繹方法和風格的爭論便變得沒有意義。鋼琴比羽管鍵琴有更豐富的音色變化，用鋼琴去模仿羽管鍵琴的聲音簡直無聊，那樣我為什麼不直接在羽管鍵琴上演奏？

巴哈的音樂超越時空，超越樂器的限制，複調有著無窮無盡的發揮空間，我不管學者的爭論有多權威，我要的是令我感動到大叫「巴哈真是偉大啊」的演繹。聽 Fischer 的十二平均律，音色豐富，巴哈的音樂多美！當然我也喜歡聽羽管鍵琴的錄音。仍是那句，樂器是手段，音樂是目的。

名歌手

《紐倫堡的名歌手》乃華格納成熟期唯一的喜劇，也是他繼《尼布龍根的指環》後最受歡迎及最常演出的作品。華格納作品中我只對《指環》有較深入的認識，見一本地歌劇團柏克萊歌劇團演出該歌劇，非常有興趣，於是上星期三到了附近的 Julia Morgan Theater 觀賞該演出。

《名歌手》雖是一齣喜劇，其題材一點卻不輕鬆：「名歌手」乃德國十四至十六世紀的重要音樂文化傳統（詳情請參閱 Wikipedia 解釋）。華格納罕有地把故事背景設於十六世紀的城市紐倫堡而非神話，表面上是一個輕鬆愛情劇，但主題其實是文化傳承及新舊衝突等辯論，正是十九世紀音樂界的重要議題。華格納及李斯特等代表了新發展方向，力主音樂不應被傳統所轄制，反對布拉姆斯及舒曼等人對傳統曲式過份擁護。華格納於《名歌手》中以主角 Walther 為自己的立場辯護，最後更嘗試尋求中庸的解決方法。觀賞歌劇演出前沒有做過甚麼功課，只略看過故事大綱，談不上有深入認識，純粹以欣賞一套新作品的心態去看。

地區歌劇團根本沒財力去演出華格納的大型歌劇，柏克萊歌劇團做了三件事：一，把全長五小時的原作縮短為三小時；二，減少樂團人數至每種樂器一至兩人；三，把背景搬到二十世紀。看後只覺勇氣可嘉，但誠意欠奉。

簡化原作的原意是令主題更突出，反而柏克萊歌劇團使主題更模糊。反戰嬉皮士的描畫不倫不類（請看上圖的反戰符號），服裝及舞台設計令人摸不著頭腦，到第三幕所有人突然穿起嬉皮士服飾，觀眾才恍然大悟。因為少了一大段關於名歌手曲式的描述，文化傳承的主題幾乎不見了，我只好真的把歌劇當作三流愛情小品來看。樂團及演唱者處於非常業餘的水平，但無寄望亦無失望，倒是演唱 Sachs 的 Clayton Brainerd 超班壓台，是唯一的驚喜。

今次是我第一次現場接觸華格納，雖然演出遜色，我仍感受到華格納音樂的張力及源源不絕的能量。

我堅信小型製作亦可表現出誠意，不然為什麼我要玩室樂團。

女人皆如此

文化演藝團體需大量經費，依賴觀眾入場率、個人及機構贊助。怎樣才可吸引年青一代進入演奏廳或歌劇院，避免觀眾及贊助逐漸流失？我認為在大學和中學推廣至為重要，尤以學生優惠成效最大。香港文化表演通常都有學生半價優惠，實在造福不少學生，我多年來在香港觀賞無數演出，要多謝政府及贊助商支持這項優惠政策。當我踏進社會做事，亦樂意繼續支持這些演藝團體，甚至贊助學生優惠，達到薪火相傳的目標。

三藩市文化氣息濃厚，演藝團體多不勝數，可能由於競爭大，政府又未能完全支持每一個團體，學生優惠並不常見。以最有名的三藩市交響樂團為例，票價通常由十五至一百美元不等，沒有學生優惠。如果有大量座位未能售出，於演奏當天學生可親身到演奏廳售票處以二十元購買 student rush ticket ，座位通常不差，但以我朋友經驗亦不是下層最好的。但較有吸引力的演出大都爆滿，有時遇上很想看的演奏家，不能說服自己「搏一搏」。我觀賞過四場音樂會都是忍痛以高價購買正價座位。

反而支出更龐大的歌劇，我倒是每次都買到學生票。紐約大都會歌劇院甚至早一個星期已經可以購買學生票（二十五或三十五元），紐約城市歌劇院和三藩市歌劇院亦是當天才出售學生票（十五元），但以我經驗似乎座位是未出售中最好的。比較起來，似乎三藩市交響樂團有點吝嗇...

*****

星期二到三藩市歌劇院欣賞莫札特《女人皆如此》，查明有學生票後便施施然（其實有點擔心）於七時才購票，想不到我們以十五元便坐在樓下正中間價值一百三十元的 orchestra 無敵靚位，嚇了一跳！我決定將來一定要支持贊助演藝團體！

一九三二年啟用的 War Memorial Opera House 位於三藩市中心，其他演藝場所亦在附近，三藩市交響樂團的 Davies Hall 就在對面街。題積比大都會歌劇院小很多（還是大都會歌劇院太大？），音響效果感覺較「室樂」，舞台設計亦從簡，多了一種親密感。後來才發現原來是聯合國誕生的地方，杜魯門總統一九四五年於這裡簽署聯合國憲章！

演出一流，演員的動作神情都捕捉到莫札特／達龐德的喜劇神韻，觀眾笑聲不絕。舞台設計、服飾設計非常出色，舞台雖然簡單，但色彩配搭鮮艷奪目，貫徹了三藩市歌劇院「夏日歌劇」的主題。特別之處是三藩市歌劇院於七月演出三套截然不同的歌劇，以「愛情賭博」為主線，很有意思。導演把《女人皆如此》搬到一九一四年大戰前夕，為故事結尾加上「現在才是真正考驗的開始」，創意無限，亦能啟發觀眾。

音樂方面，似乎歌劇院本身音響效果並不特別出色，第一幕樂團與歌手之間平衡不是太好，不時聽不到唱歌。第二幕抒情歌較多，平衡亦改善不少。歌手中尤以 Frederica Von Stade 飾演 Despina 最為突出，將 Despina 演成童心未泯的中年女傭，維肖維妙。如果樂團多點莫札特必需的生氣就更好了。

*****

歌劇是昂貴的嗜好。劇院支出大，票價自然高。要增進對歌劇的認識，要購買大量 DVD 和 CD 。聽交響樂還可以與朋友交換燒碟，但要認識一套歌劇要閱讀那本厚厚的劇本，結果是燒了碟都沒有意思。一套歌劇動輒兩三隻光碟，更貴...

錢，都跑到哪裡去了？