弗拉基米尔·霍洛维茨（Vladimir Horowitz，1903－1989）

霍洛维茨《维也纳金色大厅钢琴独奏会》

1989年11月5日，霍洛维茨带着他可谓空前绝后的音乐演奏天赋，在纽约的家中安然逝去。古典浪漫主义音乐的最后一丝气息在现实中永久的消散了。从那时起，钢琴的黄金时代结束了。

弗拉基米尔·霍洛维茨（Vladimir Horowitz，1903年10月1日－1989年11月5日），美籍音乐家。很早就显露音乐天赋，先后师从俄罗斯和德国的演奏大师，集俄罗斯学派与德国学派之大成。1924年到柏林、巴黎举行旅行演出，大获成功。1928年赴美，与托马斯·比彻姆爵士指挥的纽约爱乐合作，在布什戈尔茨钢琴上演奏出柴科夫斯基钢琴协奏曲，一举成名，之后定居美国。他曾停止演奏达十二年之久，1965年，在卡内基大厅举行重返舞台的独奏音乐会，轰动世界乐坛。1987年，弗拉基米尔·霍洛维茨举办其最后一次公开演出，两年后，于1989年11月5日因心脏病逝于纽约，享年86岁。

今日视频：1、霍洛维茨《维也纳金色大厅钢琴独奏会》；2、霍洛维茨演奏舒曼-梦幻曲；3、音乐纪录片《霍洛维茨最后的浪漫》。

🎹 1. The wonderful combination of "Thunder God" and "Whisper" Horowitz's most famous label was his overwhelming force and overwhelming volume. He could play the piano like a complete symphony orchestra. However, he could also play with extremely soft intensity, producing a delicate and transparent tone like a whisper. · Curiosity: It is said that during one concert, when he played a very soft note, the sound was so low that even the audience in the front row could hardly hear it. The entire audience involuntarily held their breath, and the entire concert hall was silent, as if under a magic spell. This extreme contrast from "thunder" to "whisper" was one of his unparalleled skills. 😰 2. Famous "Stage Phobia" and Frequent Retirement Contrary to his domineering image on stage, Horowitz actually suffered from severe stage fright. · Curiosity: He suddenly announced retirement many times throughout his life. The longest period was from 1953 to 1965, a total of 12 years without holding public performances. Each retirement was due to great mental pressure and his own strict demands on his performance state. His agent had to do everything possible to comfort him, sometimes even needing a doctor to give him a sedative before the concert. He once said before going on stage, "Why don't they just refund the money? I can't play anymore."

🎼 3. Unique Piano and "Free Speed" Horowitz had almost obsessive requirements for the piano. He often toured with his own piano. · Curiosity: The gap between the piano keys of his piano was adjusted extremely small, and the touch was also shallower and more sensitive than that of ordinary pianos. This allowed him to play those characteristic, pearl-like falling high-speed clear notes. In addition, he reached the peak of perfection using the method of "Free Speed" (Rubato) - the right hand melody could freely stretch, while the left hand accompaniment strictly maintained the rhythm, creating an extreme singing and casualness, which was called "the magician of the stretching rhythm" by music critics.

👨‍ 4. Complicated Family Relations: The Father-in-law is an "Enemy" His marriage was a story in the world of classical music, but it also brought complex interpersonal relationships. · Curiosity: His wife Wanda Horowitz was the daughter of the conductor Arturo Toscanini. Horowitz had a very tense relationship with this powerful father-in-law, and they often had conflicts in artistic opinions. It is said that Toscanini once harshly criticized his son-in-law's performance as "the rhythm was not correct", which put a lot of pressure on Horowitz and was one of the reasons for his temporary retirement.

😄 5. Childish Humor in Private and Music Teaching Horowitz showed his humorous and even naughty side in private and during music teaching. · Curiosity: Once, he saw a student playing the piano with excessive shaking of the body, so he walked over and put a coin in the student's pocket, jokingly saying, "If this coin drops out when you play the piano, I'll give you a dollar." He used this way to cleverly remind the student that stability of the body comes from core strength, not the surface shaking. · He would also use very vivid language to guide students, for example, when playing a sonata by Scarlatti, he would say, "Imagine the piano keys as hot cherries, when you play them, you should immediately pull your hand back, otherwise it will burn you!"

 🎹 6. Legendary Concerts to Break the "Cold War" Ice In 1986, at the age of 82, Horowitz was invited to visit the Soviet Union and held a landmark concert in Moscow. · Curiosity: This concert was filmed and became a classic moment in the history of classical music. At the concert, when he played the works of Russian composers such as Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, many elderly listeners with white hair in the audience burst into tears. This was not just a concert; it was also a journey of "breaking the ice" between emotions and culture, connecting the people of the two countries that had been separated by the Cold War through music. Horowitz was such a complex and charming individual: he was a giant in terms of technique, but a "patient" in terms of spirit; on stage, he was a king, but off stage, he was a child in need of care; he played the rigorous classical works with an extremely personalized touch, yet directly touched the depths of the soul. Today, revisiting these stories on his memorial day might enable us to feel even more the vibrant, contradictory and great soul behind the notes when we listen to his unparalleled piano music. — Mozart's Journey

Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377) was the most important figure in the new art music of France. Machaut was born in the Champagne region of northern France and received religious education. At the age of 20, he served as a minister to the King of Bohemia, and later, with his talent, entered the French court to serve the King of France. In his later years, he held the position of a priest and died in a monastic life. Machaut was not only a musician but was also known as a poet at that time, and he enjoyed a reputation in literary history. Machaut had very complete records of his poetry and music creation, and he was the first musician in Western music history whose works were fully preserved. Machaut's musical works covered almost all important musical genres of the 14th century, including motets, masses, and a large number of secular songs. He summarized a series of achievements of French late medieval music and became a model of a musician of his era. Motet Composition Since Vitelius, in the 14th century, motets regained the use of Latin lyrics, which were often relatively serious, with content such as moral piety and praise. In terms of music, they were more magnificent and powerful than the 13th-century motets, and were often used in ceremonial occasions. Machaut inherited and developed the tradition of early motet composition and wrote 23 motets, mainly in three voices, with the continuo part often performed by instruments and the upper two voices sung by human voices. Unlike Vitelius's motets, Machaut used French lyrics more often (there were 17 French motets). In terms of composition techniques, Machaut highly valued the application of equal-rhythm techniques and extended them to all the voices above, exploring more complex rhythm techniques more freely and flexibly. Machaut's last three Latin motets written in his later years were composed during the Hundred Years' War, and the content was for the prayer for peace. These motets inherited the achievements of early 14th-century motets and added a new "contratenor" (the lower continuo voice), replacing the usual three-part texture with a four-part texture. The new contratenor had no lyrics and was not placed in the high voice but was in the same pitch range as the continuo voice and had similar rhythms to the continuo voice, often forming voice interludes with the continuo voice to create rich harmonic effects, supporting the two vocal parts with lyrics above. Mass Composition The Mass originated from the Mass ceremony in religious worship. The Mass in worship was divided into variable special Masses and unchanging regular Masses according to occasions and seasons. Later, people combined the five unchanging regular Masses into a set (the Mercy Ode, the Glory Ode, the Creed, the Hymn of Saints, and the Lamb Ode) and gradually separated them from worship, forming the genre of Mass. Machaut wrote only one Mass, titled "Messe de Nostre Dame", although it still served the function of worship, it was of great historical significance for the formation of the artistic genre of Mass. Machaut's contribution to the Mass was that he first unified the various sections of the regular Mass for a unified conception. The characteristics of "Messe de Nostre Dame" were: a large scale, using a rare four-part texture at that time; each movement had obvious contrasts, but the sections were internally connected in musical materials; In addition, Maixois also applied various complex rhythm techniques (such as equal rhythm) from the liturgical songs to the composition of the Mass. Secular songs Maixois's religious works only accounted for a small portion of his entire works. The majority were secular works, among which secular songs were an important part of his creation. Maixois's secular songs included some monophonic songs, such as most of the lègades he composed, and 25 virelais, all of which were monophonic songs. These songs inherited the tradition of the northern troubadours of France, but developed in terms of the complexity of rhythm. The most influential aspect of Maixois's song composition was the secular polyphonic songs. Until Maixois's time, secular songs were mostly limited to monophonic music. Maixois used secular songs in polyphonic composition and made this simple form of polyphonic songs reach a very refined and perfect level. The polyphonic songs of Maixois demonstrated many characteristics of the new art period, such as highlighting the status of the second beat, paying more attention to the third and sixth tones in harmony, and having a fine and flexible melody. In his composition, Maixois particularly emphasized the exploration of the expressiveness of the songs. He believed that music and poetry could only have an infectious power when they originated from the heart. Musicians should pay special attention to the expression role of the high-pitched melody. The continuous voices in Maixois's song composition were mostly freely created melodies. In songs with more than two voices, he often used "corresponding continuous voices", which formed the harmonic basis with the continuous voices and supported the upper high-pitched melody voice (cantus). At the end of the 14th century, this style of voice combination became the standard form of secular polyphonic songs. Maixois's polyphonic songs were mainly represented in three "fixed forms" of 14th-century French poetry and music: virelais, rondeaux, and ballades. They were all some fixed-form poetic genres, and the content of the poetry was mostly "courtly love" themes. The structural characteristics of the poetry determined the form structure of the music. The structural characteristics of virelais were started by a refrain (A), followed by three stanzas (bba), forming the Abba structure, and ending with A. The simplest form of rondeau was composed of eight short poems, and the music consisted of two sections, still with the refrain constantly repeating. Unlike virelais, the refrain could be composed of two sections, and the typical form was A B a A a b A B (capital letters indicating the refrain). Maixois wrote 21 rondeaux, in which he poured in highly complex writing techniques. Near the end of the 14th century, rondeaux showed more complex forms and became the most notable genre among the three formal forms. Ballade was an important genre in Maixois's song creation, and he composed 42 ballades with music. The lyrics of the ballades usually had three stanzas, each with seven or eight lines of poetry, and the last line or two of each stanza was the same, thus forming repetitive refrains, which were mostly summaries of the theme of this stanza. The melody of the ballades was divided into two parts, with the structure of AB. The first and second lines of each stanza were in the A melody, the third and fourth lines repeated the A, and the remaining lines were in the B part melody. Maixois's ballades had different styles of two to four voices, and the typical situation was male solo singing with two lower voices playing instruments, when there were two singing voices and each voice had different lyrics, it was called a double ballade.

Today's video: 1. Guillaume de Machaut - I Am What I Am (14th-century rondeau); 2. The Earliest Polyphonic Mass [Guillaume de Machaut] "Virgin Mary Mass" and Other Medieval Works; 3. [Medieval Music] Guillaume de Machaut's Music and Poetry Art.

【自译中字 | 音乐纪录片】霍洛维茨《最后的浪漫》（1985年拍摄于自己家中）

电影《特洛伊》

          copyright © 2003-2005 xilu.com all rights reserved.