晦微斋

The Beethoven Quartets

 

贝多芬弦乐四重奏

 

Michael Steinberg

 

米歇尔·施泰因贝尔格

 

道成 译

 

原文来源：booklet attached to Emerson String Quartet: Beethoven Quartets at DG

http://music.douban.com/subject/1437557/

 

 

Beethoven’s solo keyboard music gives a singularly vivid picture of his artistic development inasmuch as he liked to use the piano, his own instrument, as a proving ground for new ideas, but the string quartets offer another sort of insight in that they document the state of Beethoven’s art at three different and crucial stages of his life – and up to the very end of it. They record both the expansion of a compositional style and the growth of a man.

 

贝多芬的键盘乐器独奏曲正是他艺术发展历程栩栩如生的写照，因为他喜欢将钢琴这一他再也熟悉不过的乐器用作他的新构想的实验天地。但是，弦乐四重奏却是我们了解贝多芬艺术形态的另一扇窗口。在这些四重奏中，展露了贝多芬一生中三个极为重要的不同阶段中作品的面貌——直到他去世之时亦然。它们既记录了贝多芬创作风格的演变，也记录了他的成长历程。

 

Beethoven began, naturally enough, by writing music much like that which he already knew, but even so, attentive listening reveals detail after detail, strategy after strategy, that attest to the presence of a personality quite unlike those of his daunting elder contemporaries, Haydn and Mozart. Such works as the Op.18 quartets, with their brilliance, exuberant invention, and originality, remind us that the young Beethoven is one of the most underrated of composers.

 

贝多芬在刚开始习作时，作品自然与那些他业已知悉的作品在风格上十分相似。但即便如此，认真聆听之后，便会发现其中每一处细节、每一处技巧都见证了一种特质，与海顿、莫扎特等可钦可敬的同时代大家迥然相异。那些作品，诸如作品十八号的四重奏，其美妙而热情洋溢的创意与其独到之处都提醒我们，在众多作曲家中，年轻的贝多芬被大大低估了。

 

As Beethoven enters his 30s and the new century begins, the scale of the music becomes bigger, and the gestures are often heroic. The “Eroica” (1803) unmistakably defines his new manner; the “Emperor” Concerto composed six years later represents its summit. The “Razumovsky” Quartets, Op.59, fall into the middle of this phase, and the two single quartets, Op.74 and Op.95, are potent postscripts. Then comes a period of exploration and near-silence, one in which the string quartet is not represented at all. It was a time of massive personal crisis, of, among other matters, Beethoven’s encounter with the “Immortal Beloved” (now believed to have been Antonie Brentano), and the ravaging litigation with his sister-in-law over the guardianship of his nephew Karl. But it was also a useful fallow period in which Beethoven sought new things to say and new ways of saying them.

 

当贝多芬步入而立之年，新世纪来临了，他音乐作品的规模也逐渐扩大，其内涵也往往具有英雄性。英雄交响曲（1803）无疑确定了他的新风格；六年之后创作的“皇帝”钢琴协奏曲代表了其巅峰；而“拉祖莫夫斯基”系列四重奏（作品五十九号）则作于这一时期中叶，另两部四重奏，作品七十四号与九十五号，则是充满力量的尾声作品。随之而来的是一段不断探索开拓、几近无声的时期。期间，贝多芬经历了巨大的个人危机，囊括了与“永恒爱人”的邂逅，及他和弟媳关于侄子卡尔监护权的决裂性诉讼。但这却也是一段辍耕修整的时期，贝多芬于是找到了新的素材与新的表现手法。

 

With the great “Hammerklavier” Sonata of 1818, Beethoven set out on a new path. Or on many. What followed in these years of the last piano works, the Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, and the last quartets comprises his most rhetorical music and his most inward, his most public and his most esoteric, more expansive pieces than any he had written before and ones more compressed, works at the summit of the virtuoso tradition and others that seem to ignore the limitations of fingers and vocal cords, compositions that proclaim the inexhaustible possibilities of the sonata style and those that propose new ways of organizing material. One by one, the genres drop away. Although Beethoven still harbored plans for a second opera and had begun to sketch a Tenth Symphony, he now, save for the occasional canon tucked into a letter to a friend, concentrated on quartets. Those works, long puzzling to many but never without their apostles, are the summa of what he had become as a musician and mensch. It may even be that the very last piece, Op.135 and the alternative finale for Op.130, marked what would have been the beginning of a new, simpler manner. Beethoven had not ceased to learn or to explore.

 

凭借着1818年所作的那首伟大的新式钢琴奏鸣曲，贝多芬辟出一条新径继续前行了。在最后数首钢琴作品谱就之后，第九交响曲、庄严弥撒以及弦乐四重奏涵括了他最为华丽的音乐，最为内在、最为公开、最为玄奥的作品，其规模较之他先前的创作更为宏大；也包括了更为凝练的作品，堪称大师传统的巅峰之作；还囊括了另外一些将指法局限及声带限制置之度外的作品，那些展现了奏鸣曲风格的无穷可能性的作品，还有那些倡导以全新模式组织素材的作品。如是的作品不断涌现，而体裁的区分被渐渐淡化。虽然，贝多芬仍然怀有创作第二部歌剧的构想，并且已经开始为第十交响曲规划蓝图了；虽然，他曾偶尔在一封致友人信笺中附上卡农曲，他目前将精力集中于四重奏上。那些作品长久以来对于许多人而言都是困惑难解的，但却不乏忠实的支持者。这可谓是贝多芬作为一名音乐家、也作为一个“人”的集大成之作了。他最后的作品，作品第一三五号，还有作品第一三零号的另一稿终曲乐章，甚至标志着一种新颖而更显简洁的风格之滥觞。贝多芬从未停止研习，也从未停止求索。

 

（未完）

 

注释：

其一，第四段内more expansive pieces than any he had written before and ones more compressed一句译文有些难以定夺。一种理解（我初读时即如此）是将and ones将ones与any (pieces) he had written视作并列，译作“其规模较之先前的创作以及凝练的曲目更为宏大”。另一种理解（即为我目前采用的）是将ones与前面more expansive pieces视作并列，原因有二：（甲）some pieces are more expansive than ones more compressed是一句显然正确的冗余之言；（乙）贝多芬的晚期作品的确有极为凝练精悍之笔，如Op.135，长度仅二十余分钟，甚至短于其中期作品；这一点在后文It may even be that the very last piece, Op.135 and the alternative finale for Op.130, marked what would have been the beginning of a new, simpler manner有了照应。

 

其二，Those works, long puzzling to many but never without their apostles, are the summa of what he had become as a musician and mensch一句中mensch原文用斜体，但首字母却未大写。于是又有两种理解：（甲）将mensch理解为英文词汇，意指“正直的人；受尊敬的人”（《新牛津英汉双解大词典》）；（乙）按德文理解为Mensch，译为“人”。我的译文采取后一解。

 

其三，该译文的缘起。最近整理托福笔记时偶然发现了我初二或初三假期内的译文，目的为纯粹出乎兴趣的翻译练习，当时只译到第四段第二句就辍笔了。现在将该段续完。但是仍未完成全文翻译，尚需假以时日。又及，Michael Steinberg是一位相当权威的音乐评论家，我衷心希望各位读者能如我一样从中受益。初出茅庐，希望大家能多多指教。时儒略二零一零年十一月六日。