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Austria:A land of music
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说起奥地利，人们不由自主地就会想到音乐。这个有着无限魅力的地方，其实就是一个浓缩了无数艺术精华的音乐王国。
音乐王国——奥地利
THE Austrians traditionally live in two countries. One is on the map. The other is the imaginary region where wine flows, love triumphs, and everything is silk-lined. This is the land of music.
从传统上讲，奥地利人生活在两个国家里：一个在地图上，另一个是想象中的王国，那里美酒飘香，爱情获胜，一切都如丝绸般的柔顺。这就音乐王国。
Johann Strauss I ruled over this mythical realm of music during the first part of the 19th century. A generation later, his son, Johann Strauss II, extended the scope of the waltz to symphonic proportions, writing dance music in the form of orchestral tone poems that transformed the ballroom into a concert stage.
老约翰·施特劳斯在19世纪上半叶统治着这个神话般的音乐王国。一代人以后，他的儿子小约翰·施特劳斯把华尔兹扩展到交响乐的领域，将舞曲写成管弦乐交响诗，从而把舞厅变成了音乐厅。
These two men welded their city and their music into a single identity, making Vienna and the waltz almost a single thought. Viennese historians are fond of florid metaphors suggesting that Johann Strauss — father and son — did not so much compose their waltz as magically turned their city into music. Such notions seem altogether reasonable to the romantic Viennese, including the young Strauss himself. “If it is true that I have talent," he wrote during the latter part of his life, “I owe it, above everything else, to my beloved city of Vienna... in whose soil is rooted my whole strength, in whose air float the melodies which my ear has caught, my heart has drunk in, and my hand has written down."
这两个人把他们的城市和他们的音乐融为一体，维也纳和华尔兹几乎成了同一回事。维也纳的历史学家喜欢用华丽的比喻来暗示，施特劳斯父子与其说是谱写了华尔兹舞曲，还不如说是用神奇的方法将他们的城市变成了音乐。这种见解在罗曼蒂克的维也纳看来是完全合情合理的。小施特劳斯自己也不例外。在后半生时，他曾写道:“假若我真有天才，我首先将它归功于我心爱的城市维也纳……。我全部的力量都扎根于维也纳的土壤里，在维也纳的空气中飘荡着美妙的旋律。我的耳朵听到了，我的心陶醉了，我的手就把它写了下来。"
A well-known critic made a perceptive comment on Vienna's matchless array of musicians: “They would not have been what they were, what they had to be, if chance had forced them to live anywhere but in Vienna."
一位著名的评论家在评述维也纳培育出的一大批无与伦比的音乐家时曾提出这样一个深刻的见解:“假若命运安排他们生活在任何一个别的地方而不是维也纳的话，那么他们就不会有今日，这是环境注定的。"
Music, like wine, takes its flavour from the soil and the season in which it grows, and the roots of the waltz were nourished by a moment of history in which an aging civilization had reached the peak of mellowness. No other city has ever been so suffused by an art as Vienna was by music. Vienna's involvement with music was shared by its shopkeepers and doormen. The barriers between serious and popular music had not become impassable. There was no “music business" in the modern sense, for commercial pressures had not yet debased and polarized public taste. In the crowds who went to hear performances of Beethoven symphonies, Haydn oratorios, or Mozart operas, shopkeepers and artisans easily joined princes of the realm. Conversely in the little rustic inns tucked among the hillsides of the Vienna Woods, members of the nobility mixed quite casually with lesser folk to dance to the sweet and giddy folk tunes of the region. Here the sound of music created casual friendliness between people of widely different social standing.
音乐，就象葡萄美酒，它的味道来自它生长的土壤和季节。华尔兹的“根"从历史的某一瞬间吸取了营养。在这一瞬间，成熟的文明已达到了丰硕甘美的顶峰。维也纳当时充满着音乐，从未有哪一个城市曾这样地被艺术渗透到每个角落。小店主和看门人也一样与音乐有着不解之缘。严肃音乐和流行音乐之间的界限那时还未变得不可逾越。当时不存在现代所谓的音乐行业，因为商业方面的压力那时还未能降低公众的趣味，也未能使公众的欣赏趣味产生两极分化。在去音乐厅听贝多芬交响乐、海顿的圣乐或莫扎特的歌剧的人流中，小店主和手艺人很容易有机会和这一王国的王子走在一起。另一方面，在维也纳森林山坡上隐现着的那些朴实无华的小酒馆里，贵族们也会极随便地混迹于小老百姓中，随着当地民歌的愉悦、轻快的旋律翩翩起舞。这里，美妙的音乐在社会地位悬殊的人们中间制造了一种无拘无束的友好气氛。
Vienna, and much of Austria, thus became a natural breeding ground for musicians. A contemporary historian observed that “every hole is full of musicians who play for the people. Nobody wants to eat his meal at the inn if he can't have table music to go with it!" No feast or celebration was complete without a special overture composed for the occasion. Virtually every well-to-do family could muster a passable string quartet among its members, creating a constant demand for new scores. More than 60 piano factories flourished in the city, which numbered a mere 250,000 inhabitants, and next to good looks and a dowry, musical talent was considered a girl's chief asset.
维也纳及奥地利的很多地方因此而成为众多音乐家的摇篮。一位当代的历史学家评论道:“每个角落都挤满了音乐家，他们为老百姓演奏。在小酒店里，如果就餐时没有音乐伴奏，人们就吃不下饭。"每一次宴会或庆典都必有专门谱写的乐曲相伴才算完美。几乎每个富裕的家庭都可以从它的成员中凑出一个水平过得去的弦乐四重奏演出小组。因此，新的乐谱也就成了一种经常性的需求。维也纳城里有60多家钢琴厂，而维也纳居民总数仅为25万。除了姣好的容貌及嫁妆以外，音乐天赋被公认为一个姑娘的主要财富。
Every Sunday, the churches resounded with musical settings of the Mass — “operas for the angels", as Mozart called them. Performed by choirs and orchestras of remarkable proficiency, these compositions by Mozart, Haydn and Schubert were splendidly melodic and the occasion, despite its religious setting, was often more a public concert than a divine service.
每个星期天，教堂里回荡着弥撒曲——莫扎特称之为“天使的歌剧"。这些出自莫扎特、海顿和舒伯特之手的乐曲，经杰出的专业管弦乐队演奏，由唱诗班演唱，余音绕梁，十分悦耳动听。因此，尽管这是宗教场合，但常常更像是大众音乐会，而不像是神圣的仪式。
Perhaps the most significant aspect of Vienna's musical life was the attitude of the typical listener. In Paris or London, for example, music was regarded as an entertainment. Not so in Vienna. Here it was a personal necessity, an indispensable part of everyday life. In its lighter forms, music was a needed refreshment; in its more demanding forms, an exercise of the spirit in search of illumination.
也许，维也纳的音乐生活最重要的方面是典型的听众的态度。例如，在巴黎和伦敦，音乐被认为是娱乐。在维也纳则不然。在这里，音乐是个人的需要，是日常生活中必不可少的部分。轻松的单薄是人们需要的一种休息，而严肃的音乐又是为寻求启示而进行的一种精神操练。
It is hardly surprising that poets and musicians have always felt at home there, for the land pulses with the heartbeat of humanity.
诗人和音乐家在维也纳总是觉得很自在，这当然毫不奇怪，因为维也纳的大地跳动着人性的脉搏。
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