英国BBC | 她可能是历史上最成功的音乐老师

娜迪亚·布朗热

“她是苏格拉底之后最具影响力的老师”

这句话出自一位一流现代作曲家，而这位老师正是娜迪亚·布朗热（Nadia Boulanger）。看长相觉得一点都不可能，这位1887年出生、面相一点都不具备幽默感的罗马尼亚、俄罗斯和法国混血儿，在她92年的生命里完完全全地塑造了现代世界的音乐。

‍“The most influential teacher since Socrates” is how one leading contemporary composer describes Nadia Boulanger. As unlikely as itseems, this unassuming-looking lady of Romanian, Russian and French heritage, who was born in 1887 and lived to the age of 92, did indeed end up shaping thesound of the modern world.

 

她的学生名单基本上等同于20世纪音乐名人堂。指挥家伦纳德·伯恩斯坦（Leonard Bernstein）、作曲家阿隆·科普兰（Aaron Copland）、制作人昆西·琼斯（Quincy Jones）、作曲家阿斯托·皮亚佐拉（Astor Piazzolla）、作曲家菲利普·格拉斯（Philip Glass）、约翰·艾略特·加德纳（John Eliot Gardiner）、指挥家丹尼尔·巴伦博伊姆（Daniel Barenboim）、作曲家艾略特·卡特（Elliott Carter）。这些音乐巨头的风格如此不同，而且还在各自领域取得突破德高望重，但他们都曾经在布朗热门下学习。她给他们提供了严谨的学术音乐分析基础学习，而这在某种程度上促成了他们形成自己独特的音乐风格，可能这就是对一个伟大老师的最好定义。

Her roster of music students reads like the ultimate 20th Century Hall of Fame. Leonard Bernstein. Aaron Copland. Quincy Jones. Astor Piazzolla. Philip Glass. John Eliot Gardiner. Daniel Barenboim. Elliott Carter. All these musical giants, so different yet so groundbreaking in their own ways,studied with Boulanger. She gave them a rigorous grounding in academic musical analysis, yet somehow enabled each of them to find their own distinct language:perhaps the very definition of what makes a great teacher.

 

布朗日是第一个指挥纽约爱乐乐团和波斯顿交响乐团的女性。

 

把布朗热看做现代甚至人类历史上最重要的音乐教师一点都不夸张。她主要是在巴黎第九区36街（36 Rue Ballu）的公寓中教学，除此之外，她还在美国和英国与一些顶尖音乐温室合作，包括茱莉亚音乐学院、耶胡迪·梅纽因音乐学院、英国皇家音乐学院以及伦敦皇家音乐学院。

It is no exaggeration, then, to consider Boulanger the most important musical pedagogue of the modern – or indeed any – era. Although her teaching base was in the family apartment at 36 Rue Ballu in the ninth arrondisement of Paris, she also taught in the US and UK, working with leading conservatoires including the Juilliard School, the Yehudi Menuhin School, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music.

 

有这样杰出的贡献，她也可以被认为是古典音乐史上最重要的女性。虽然她的性别在那个时候使她显得格格不入，但对布朗日来说，女性角色对她的成功并没有明显的阻碍。除开她非凡的执教生涯外，她还成为了第一个指挥欧美主要交响乐团的女性，包括英国广播公司交响乐团（BBC Symphony）、波斯顿交响乐团（Boston Symphony）、哈雷交响乐团（Hallé Orchestra）、和纽约爱乐乐团（New York Philharmonic）。布朗日也是苏联作曲家伊戈尔·斯特拉文斯基的导师，并且在全音乐界都对他的天赋表示不信任时，她是伊戈尔热忱的捍卫者。她同时是一系列具有里程碑意义首演的幕后主导。

With such a contribution, she might also arguably bedescribed as the most important woman in the history of classical music. Notthat she’d appreciate attention being drawn to her gender. Being female was,for Boulanger, no apparent barrier to achievement. In addition to herremarkable teaching career, she became the first woman to conduct many of themajor US and European symphony orchestras, including the BBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, Hallé Orchestra and New York Philharmonic. Boulanger was also amentor to Igor Stravinsky and an ardent champion of his music when much of themusical world remained unconvinced of its genius. She was responsible forbringing to life a number of ground-breaking world premieres.

 

藏身幕后？

HiddenFigure?

 

但是说老实话：你有听过这个名字吗？尽管她对很多我们生活中的声带有着令人震惊的影响，不仅仅是在古典领域，她影响了爵士（Jazz）、探戈（Tango）、放克（Funk）和嘻哈（Hip-hop）风格，但布朗热的名字在古典音乐的小圈子之外几乎是不为人知的。坦率讲，如果是一个男人，对20世纪的音乐有着相同程度的影响，他几乎是不可能如此被忽略的。

But be honest: have you ever heard of her? Boulanger’s name remains largely unknown outside niche classical music circles, despite the astonishing impact she had on the soundtrack to all our lives, not just in the realm of classical but in jazz, tango, funk and hip-hop. It is frankly unimaginable that a man with a similar degree of influence over 20th Century music would have been so ignored.

 

音乐制作人昆西琼斯，他制作了《Thriller》这样经典的曲目，并且获得过27座格莱美奖，以及79个其他奖项的提名。

 

但是布朗热并不是一个非常怕羞的人，所有的一切都向我们表明她是一个令人生畏、不屈不挠以及有说服力的女性：魅力非凡、忠诚、富有激情但同时又复杂且难以被人理解。她内心被她对作曲天才妹妹莉莉（Lili）的嫉妒撕裂，她的妹妹在19岁的时候就成为了第一个赢得声望极高的罗马奖的女性，但在24岁时她死于肠结核。娜迪亚和妹妹一样，在10岁的时候就进入了巴黎音乐学院学习作曲，但是她从来没有成为一名合格的作曲家。在莉莉死后，不同于其他互相嫉妒的同胞兄弟姐妹，娜迪亚没有让她妹妹的天才随着时间消失，她把永不停歇地推崇并捍卫妹妹的音乐天赋当做自己人生和职业的使命，直到她职业生涯结束的那一天，她都坚持把妹妹的作品和更加经典的演奏曲目放在一起演出。 

Yet Boulanger was no shrinking violet. By all accounts she was a fierce, uncompromising and forceful woman: charismatic, loyal andpassionate but also complex and complicated. She was riven with envy for her younger sister Lili, a composer of genius who, at 19, had been the first woman ever to win the prestigious Prix de Rome competition but by 24 was dead of intestinal tuberculosis (now known as Crohn’s Disease). Nadia, like Lili, had also entered the Paris Conservatoire to study composition at the tender age of 10, but she never received much acclaim as a composer. After Lili’s death,rather than allowing her talented late sister’s name to fade, as many jealous siblings might have, she made it a mission of her life and career to ceaselessly promote and champion Lili’s musical genius, programming her works alongside more canonical repertoire right up until the end of her career.

 

布朗热和伊戈尔·斯特拉文斯基合照。

 

要把20世纪巴黎沙龙和充斥迪斯科舞厅的昆西·琼斯的作品联系起来需要极大地想象力，毕竟从弗兰克·辛纳屈（Frank Franklin）再到迈克尔`杰克逊（Michael Jackson），昆西·琼斯是每一个流行乐手都希望合作的制作人。但是在去年BBC的逍遥音乐节上Q（这是他的外号）告诉我说从内心最真挚的角度出发，他把他作为音乐人所有的成功都归功于上世纪五十年代在娜迪亚·布朗热门下学习的经历。想到这里我不禁发笑，试图去想，比如说《Thriller》这首1982年在布朗热去世三年后昆西为迈克尔·杰克逊制作的史上销量最佳专辑（销售了超过6500万份），如果是布朗热来做，她会做成什么样。但Q告诉我说，布朗热具备一种非凡的能力，能够鼓励并诱导出每个学生自己的发音方式，甚至在学生们根本不知道自己该怎么唱歌的时候。

It’s quite a stretch to make the imaginative leap from the salons of early 20th Century Paris to the disco-strewn beats of QuincyJones, producer of choice for everyone from Frank Sinatra to Aretha Franklin to Michael Jackson. But at last year’s BBC Proms, Q, as he is known, told me inall earnestness that he owed everything he was as a musician to his early instruction, in 1950s Paris, under Nadia Boulanger. It tickles me to imagine what Boulanger – who died in 1979 – would have made of, say, Thriller, whichJones produced for Jackson three years later and which remains the top-selling album of all time, having shifted over 65 million copies. But Q told me that Boulanger had a singular way of encouraging and eliciting each student’s own voice – even if they were not yet aware of what that voice might be.

 

1956年摩纳哥亲王的婚礼，布朗热负责为他们安排音乐。

 

对个头小小的白发法国女士来说，她有些吓人，Q开玩笑道：“她过去总是告诉我：‘昆西，你的音乐不能比你做人的方式更重或更轻。除非你有一定的生活经历或者一些谈资来证明你很厉害，但你现在什么都没有’……她说话特别重，真的特别重。”

For a little old grey-haired French lady, she was also,he joked, terrifying. “She used to tell me all the time: Quincy, your music cannever be more, or less, than you are as a human being. Unless you have the life experience and have something to say that you’ve lived, you have nothing to contribute at all… She was strong. Really strong.”

 

我们应当向这位对二十世纪和二十一世纪的音乐有着巨大贡献的女性之一致以崇高的敬意。这不仅仅是我说的。“娜迪亚·布朗热，”昆西·琼斯说。“是我这一辈子见过的最令人吃惊的女性了。”而她仅仅是伟大女性中的一位罢了。

We should raise a cheer to the woman who contributed so much, with so little fanfare, to the history of 20th and 21st Century music. Don’t take my word for it. “Nadia Boulanger,” says Quincy Jones, “was the most astounding woman I ever met in my life.” And he’s met a few.