【精英翻譯】的部落格

Yo-Yo Ma Says Use Bach to Make the World Better 馬友友用巴哈讓世界更美好

精英翻譯社轉自: https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0067/332978/web/

作者／Zachary Woolfe

譯／陳韋廷

While it’s impossible not to think of Johann Sebastian Bach as you walk through this city, where he spent the final decades of his life, what little remains of his world here has been altered almost beyond recognition.

漫步於這座城市（譯者按：指萊比錫），不可能不想到巴哈。他曾在此地度過生命中最後幾十年，然而他在這兒留下的極少數痕跡卻已被改動得幾乎讓人認不出來。

The house where he and his family lived was demolished a century ago. Next door, St. Thomas Church, where Bach was a cantor from 1723 to 1750, was overhauled in Gothic Revival style in the 1880s. St. Nicholas Church, where the “St. John Passion” was first performed in 1724, got its current cupcake-pastel interior decades after Bach died.

他和家人住的那棟房子一個世紀前就被拆了，隔壁是巴哈於1723年到1750年間擔任合唱團指揮的聖多馬教堂，也在1880年代被徹底改造成歌德復興風格建築，而1724年《約翰受難曲》首次演出的地點聖尼古拉教堂，內部則在巴哈去世數十年後被粉刷成宛如紙杯蛋糕的模樣。

And Bach certainly would never have heard Arabic being widely spoken, as it is now, in the bustling, largely immigrant neighborhood of Neustadt. It was here, on a mild weekend afternoon recently, that Yo-Yo Ma bounded into a room in a community center, Stradivarius cello in hand, and moved swiftly around a seated circle of adults and children, grinning and giving one long high five.

巴哈肯定不會聽到阿拉伯語被廣泛使用，而目前在熙熙攘攘、大部分為移民的新城社區就是如此。就在最近一個溫和的周末下午，馬友友大步邁進社區中心的一個房間，手裡拿著史特拉底瓦里大提琴，沿著坐成一圈的大人與小孩迅速走動，咧嘴笑著並不斷與人擊掌。

“The most important thing is to bring all of yourself into a moment,” he said the next day. “If for even one second you’re like, ‘Oh, I have to go do this,’ people are really smart. They can see when someone is there, or just not quite there.”

他隔天說：「最重要的是把你自己完完全全投入這個時刻，那怕只有那麼一秒鐘你覺得『哦，我非得應付一下不可』，人們可真的是很聰明的。他們看得出來你有沒有十分投入。」

Ma, 62, was entirely there. He stayed in the community center only about half an hour, but without seeming rushed, he blended disarming generosity — he gave two budding cellists his instrument to try out in front of the group — with a kind of subtle social work.

62歲的馬友友則是完全地投入。他在社區中心大約只待了半小時，卻氣定神閒未顯匆忙，他展現了令人釋然的大方，把自己的樂器借給剛嶄露頭角的兩個大提琴家在眾人面前演奏，並把這種大方和某種微妙的社會工作兩相結合，

“Learning a new piece is like moving from one place to another,” he said in answer to someone’s question, connecting music-making to the lives of the migrants without making too big a deal of it.

他在回答一個人的問題時說，「學習一首新作品就像從一個地方搬到另個地方一樣」，就此將音樂製作和移民的生活聯繫了起來，而沒有把搞音樂說得多了不起。

If Ma seemed wholly at ease, a veteran politician delightedly working a town hall, it is because his visit, blending Bach and social responsibility, was nothing unusual in the career of the musician of our civic life. The one we call upon to play at the funeral Mass of a senator and the inauguration of a president, the anniversary of a terrorist attack and the commemoration of the victims of a bombing.

若說馬友友看起來像是一位完全自在、在市政府快樂工作的資深政治人物，那是因為他融合巴哈與社會責任的這趟訪問行程，在這位我們（指美國）公民生活音樂家的職涯中乃屬稀鬆平常之事。舉凡參議員的葬禮彌撒，總統的就職典禮，恐攻周年紀念，以及炸彈襲擊受害者紀念活動，我們都會請他到場演奏。

And what Ma plays at moments like those, to make us cry and then soothe us, is, more often than not, a selection from the Bach cello suites. These six works are the Everest of his instrument’s repertory, offering a guide to nearly everything a cello can do — as well as, many believe, charting a remarkably complete anatomy of emotion and aspiration.

而馬友友在此類場合所演奏，讓我們先哭泣然後獲得慰藉的樂曲，通常選自巴哈無伴奏大提琴組曲。這六組作品是他的樂器（大提琴）演奏曲目的最高峰，幾乎為大提琴能做的所有事情提供了指南，而且許多人認為，它還描繪了一個非常完整的情感與想望的剖析。

Last month, Ma released his third and, in all likelihood, final recording of the suites. His trip to Leipzig was part of a sprawling project related to the album: Over the next two years, he will visit 36 cities — winking at the fact that each of the six suites has six sections — on six continents.

上個月，他發表了他第三張，很可能也是最後一張巴哈組曲錄音。他的萊比錫之行是跟專輯有關的龐大計畫的一部分，在接下來的兩年裡，他將造訪六大洲共36座城市，假裝不知道六個組曲各有六個樂章的事實。