烧包

号称学乐理，买了一个电子琴。Yamaha DGX-630.

From 《The Music of Man》 (5)

After many a concert I have been asked what the music I played "means" to me; we have had to develop an elaborate set of terms to describe what music "means". The key difference lies in the fact that words refer first and foremost to the real world outside of us, to things and actions for which they serve as useful, acceptable symbols. Music, on the other hand, has a special relationship to our inner being. Our feelings become entities in themselves apart from literal meaning, and music shapes and alters them.

From 《The Music of Man》 (4)

小提琴的来历：

In that translucent light and air of the plains (in Africa), it is possible to hear for miles, to smell the coming of a storm, detect the movement of prowling beasts. The hunt became as much as a part of survival as the harvest, and no instrument altered the balance of power more swiftly in man's favor than the discovery of the bow and arrow, which gives man control over the animal from a distance. For the hunter this was not yet a weapon of war, but a matching of forces; only the necessity of food made man and animal antagonists. From the ritual of the hunt sprang music; the bow could produce a mellifluous twang. A widely held view is that the bow and arrow are ancestor to the violin.

From 《The Music of Man》 (3)

The keenness of every creature's senses is part of its ability to survive, to mate, to feed. Thirty thousand years ago, living in caves, among trees or in the open, our senses were our best weapon. Hearing was as important as sight; every rustle had a message; we came to know the noise of every other creature.

Feel like Helen Keller

海伦.凯勒(Helen Keller)就是那个著名的写作《假如给我三天光明》的人。高中的英语课上有一篇课文讲她怎么学会第一个单词“water”的。海伦因为出生不久(19个月)得了猩红热成了一个又聋又哑又瞎的人。没有听觉和视觉，只剩了嗅觉、味觉、触觉，这样一个只有一岁多，对世界还几乎一无所知的人如何和外界交流呢？海伦的学习完全靠触觉了。海伦五岁的时候遇到了她的老师安妮.莎莉文。她和世界的交流从那一刻开始。老师带她去水池边，打开水龙头，让水一直冲洗着海伦的一只手，在另一只手上反复地写“water”这个词，海伦终于明白了“water”就是水的意思。

在学音乐这件事上我时常觉得自己就像海伦一样。水一直冲洗着我的手，可是我不明白冲洗着我的这种东西叫做“water”。我没有办法在这种流动的液体和“water”之间建立起联系。似乎在音乐上我的“听觉”和“视觉”出了问题。

Music touches our feelings more deeply than most words and makes us respond with our whole being.

可是这句话对于我来说只对了一半，I don't know how to respond to music with my whole being. 什么时候我才能够明白“water”就是水的意思呢？

等待我的光明的到来......

From 《The Music of Man》 (2)

Music may happen to be expressive, communicative, moving and inspired, but it is rarely accidental, even when it recalls the everlasting sounds of the sea or the spontaneity of birdsong. The cry of the newborn child is as much the intrinsic sound of music as is the staccato hammering of the woodpecker, the crash of thunder, the rustle of wind through the wheat field, the cooing of the dove, the rattle of seed pods, the clank of metal, the soft tread of feet on underbrush. Is it not in these very natural sounds that is largely found the raw material for the creation of man's music? Out of these we have built, constructed, continue building and constructing, musical languages, whether the most subtle and sophisticated monodic (melodic) and rhythmic textures such as developed thousands of years ago in India, or the most complex harmonic textures which have developed only recently in Western Europe.

我从来也不知道那些创作音乐的人是怎么思考的。音乐的表达(expressive, communicative, moving and inspired)不象语言的表达一样对于每一个人来说那么自然，因为我们从小和世界的交流是从会讲话起才变得清晰而意义明确的，所以虽然文字的创作可以有许多的技巧或是玄虚在里面，但是对于我来说还是比音乐要易懂得多。但是语言也是人类进化的产物，也许在没有语言之前，音乐是通过声音表达人类的感受更自然的方式。

刚想到这儿，几页之后就读到了这一段：

Music is our oldest form of expression, older than language or art; it begins with the voice, and with overwhelming need to reach out to others. In fact, music is man far more than words, for words are abstract symbols which convey factual meaning. Music touches our feelings more deeply than most words and makes us respond with our whole being.

本来很基本的东西自己还要思考才能明白。这么没有天份，实在是应该藏拙才对，还要写下来广而告之简直太没有廉耻之心了。但是写下来记录一下学习的足迹，算是对自己的鼓励吧。

From 《The Music of Man》 (1)

The Greeks knew this well and acknowledged man in his wholeness, giving due respect to his dual nature: one half of the Apollonian, always striving for clarity and moderation; the other the Dionysian, driving toward the fantastic and orgiastic. We revel in our senses, as we revel in the powers of our mind and soul. Today these senses are at the mercy of commercial society to whom all tastes are but appetites to be used and abused for the sake of profit. Inexorably, since my boyhood in San Francisco, I have seen the dislocation of the natural and instinctive flair and taste for the genuine twisted to the acceptance of the odorless flavors, the plastic plants, the whole flattening of the aesthetic responses, even to the acceptance of the appalling distortion of pure sound when something termed music pours through various mechanical devices in one long adenoidal wail.

对音乐的了解没有那么深厚，但是如果这句话用在当今的文坛真可谓是一矢中的呀！