雙語+MP3|美國學(xué)生世界歷史79 從森林之神的排簫到留聲機(jī)

79
From Pan and His Pipes to the Phonograph
從森林之神的排簫到留聲機(jī)

Frogs croak.
Cats meow.
Dogs bark.
Sheep bleat.
Cows moo.
Lions roar.
Hyenas laugh.
But only birds and people sing.
And people can do what birds cannot.
They can also make music out of things.
     HAVE you ever made a cigar-box fiddle or a pin piano or musical glasses?
     In the long-ago story-book times, Apollo took a pair of cow horns and fastened between them seven strings made from the cow's skin. This was called a lyre. These strings he picked with his finger or with a quill, making a little tinkling sound that could hardly have been very beautiful. Yet Apollo's son, Orpheus, is said to have learned from his father to play so beautifully on the lyre that the birds and wild beasts and even trees and rocks gathered around to hear him.
     Pan, the god of the woods, who had goat's horns, and ears and legs and feet, tied together several whistles of different lengths and played on these as you might on a mouth organ. This instrument was called Pan's pipes.
     The lyre and Pan's pipes were two of the earliest musical instruments. The first was a stringed instrument, the second a wind instrument. The long strings and long pipes made low notes; the short strings and short pipes made high tones.
     From Apollo's lyre we get the piano with its many, many strings. Did you ever look at the inside of a piano and see the many strings of different lengths? They are, however, not picked as the strings of a lyre or harp are picked, but hammered by little felt-covered blocks as you touch the keys.
     From Pan's pipes we get the great church organ with its pipes like giant whistles. You don't, of course, blow the pipes with your mouth as you do a whistle. The pipes are so big you must blow them with a machine.
     We know what the instruments in olden times were like, but we don't know what the music that people made was really like; there were no phonographs or tapes to bottle up the sounds and, when uncorked a thousand years later, to pour forth the old notes once again. The music went off into thin air and was lost.
     It was not until about the Year 1000 A.D. that music could even be written down. Before then all music was played by ear, for there was no written music. A Benedictine monk named Guy, or, in Italian, Guido, thought of a way to write down musical notes, and he named the notes do, re, mi, fa, and so on. These were the first letters of the words of a hymn to St. John which the monks sang like the scale.
     Another Italian is sometimes called the Father of Modern Music. His name is Palestrina, and he died in 1594. He set the church service to music, and the pope ordered all churches to follow it, but the people didn't like his music very much; that is, it was not what we call popular.
     It was not until a hundred years later-that is, about 1700-that the first great European musician lived who wrote music that was really popular, that the people in Europe and America loved, and that we still love today.
     He was a German named Handel. His father was a barber, a dentist, and doctor, and he wanted his boy to become a great lawyer. But the only thing the boy liked was music.
     In those days there were no pianos. There was a little instrument with strings which was played by touching keys. This was called a clavichord. Sometimes it had legs like a table. Sometimes it had no legs and was just laid on a table.

Handel is found in the attic （韓德爾被發(fā)現(xiàn)在閣樓上）
     Handel, though only six years old, got hold of one of these instruments, and, without anyone finding out about it, he had it put up in his room in the attic of his house. After everyone had gone to bed at night, he would practice on this clavichord until late, when he was supposed to be in bed. One night his family heard sounds up under the roof. Wondering what it could be, they took a lantern, and, quietly climbing the attic stairs, they suddenly opened the door, and there sat little Handel in his nightclothes on a chair with his feet reaching only half way to the floor, playing on the clavichord.
     After that, Handel's father saw it was no use trying to make his son a lawyer. He got teachers for him, and before long the boy amazed the world with his playing. He went to England, lived there, became an Englishman, and when he died the English people buried him in Westminster Abbey, a church in which famous Englishmen were buried.
     Handel set parts of the Bible to music. These songs with the Bible words to be sung by a chorus of voices were called oratorios, and one of these oratorios named The Messiah is sung almost everywhere at Christmas time. In addition to his religious music, Handel wrote forty-six operas!
     Living at the same time as Handel was another German musician named Bach. Bach played divinely on the organ as Handel did on the clavichord and wrote some of the finest music for the organ that ever had been written. Strange that both Handel and Bach went blind in their old age, but to them it was sound, not sight, that counted most. Which do you think "counts more"?
     Almost all musical geniuses have been musical wonders when they were still babies. They have been great musicians even before learning to read and write.
     One such genius was born just before Bach and Handel died. He was an Austrian named Mozart.
     Mozart, when only four years old, played the piano wonderfully. He also wrote music-composing, it is called-for others to play.
     Mozart's father and sister played very well, so the three went on a concert tour. Mozart, the boy wonder, played before the empress, and everywhere he went he was treated like a prince, petted and praised and given parties and presents.
     He grew up and married, and ever after he had the hardest kind of time trying to make a living. He composed all sorts of things, plays with music called operas, and symphonies, which are written for whole orchestras to play; but he made so little money that when he died he had to be buried where they put people who were too poor to have a grave for themselves alone. People afterward thought it a shame that such a great composer should have no monument over his grave, but then it was too late to find where he was buried. A monument was put up, but to this day no one knows where Mozart's body lies.
     A German named Beethoven had read the stories of the boy wonder, Mozart, and he thought he, too, would like to have a boy wonder to play before kings and queens. When his son was only five years old, he kept the boy practicing long hours at the piano until he became so tired that the tears ran down his cheeks. But Ludwig Beethoven, as he was named, finally came to be one of the greatest musicians who have ever lived. He could sit at the piano and make up the most beautiful music as he went along-improvise, as it is called-but he was never satisfied with it when written down. Time and time again he would scratch out and rewrite his music until it had been rewritten often a dozen times.
     But Beethoven's hearing began to grow dull. He was worried that he might lose it entirely-a terrible thing to happen to anyone, but to one whose hearing was his fortune, nothing could be worse. At last he did become deaf. This loss of his hearing made Beethoven hopelessly sad and bad-tempered, cross with everything and everybody. Nevertheless, he didn't give up; he kept on composing just the same, even after he could no longer hear what he had written.
     Another great and unusual German musician named Wagner lived until 1883. Though he practiced all his life, he never could play very well. But he composed wonderful operas, and he wrote not only the music but the words, too. He took old Germanic myths and fairy tales and made them into plays to be sung to music. At first some people made fun of his music, for it seemed to them so noisy and "slam-bangy" and without tune. Now people make fun of those people who don't like it!
     I have told you in other places of painters and poets, or architects and wise men, of kings and heroes, of wars and troubles. I have put this story of music of all ages in one chapter, which I have tucked in here between the acts, to give you a rest for a moment from wars and rumors of wars.
     When I was a boy I never heard any great musicians play. Now you and I can turn on the record, tape, or CD player anytime and hear the music of Palestrina or Mozart, of Beethoven or Wagner, of dozens of other masters, played or sung to us whenever we wish. No caliph in the Arabian Nights could command such service for his pleasure!