VOA慢速英语2010年-THIS IS AMERICA - Classical Music, but

Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Barbara Klein. Today we begin the first of two programs about classical music composers at work today in the United States. Some continue the traditions of European music from centuries ago. Others take a more experimental approach to their music.

(MUSIC: Symphony No. 1/Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra)

VOICE ONE:

Taaffe Zwilick was the first woman composer to win a Pulitzer Prize

We start with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Her music is often described as complex but accessible, appealing to wider audiences. In nineteen eighty-three she became the first female composer to win a Pulitzer Prize. She won it for her Symphony Number One.

She says this is a special time to be a composer. Thanks to technology, more music is available to more people than at any time in history.

Ellen Zwilich began her musical exploration playing the piano, violin and trumpet¹. She started writing music as a child. She studied music at Florida State University and later moved to New York City to study violin and composition.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Composer Elliott Carter at a news conference at Carnegie Hall in New York in January 2008

One of Ellen Zwilich's teachers has been a big part of American classical music for over seventy years: Elliott Carter.

This is Elliott Carter's Double Concerto² for Harpsichord³, Piano and Two Chamber⁴ Orchestras.

(MUSIC)

He began his musical studies at Harvard University in the nineteen thirties and went on to study in Paris.

His early works were influenced by composers of the classical period of the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds. But he later broke away from this neoclassical sound to create a freer and more expressive⁵ modernist sound.

Elliott Carter has written over one hundred thirty works, many of which he composed after the age of ninety. He is one hundred one years old.

(MUSIC: ''Facades"/Philip Glass)

VOICE ONE:

Philip Glass performs one of his works before the Dalai Lama is introduced at the University at Buffalo⁶ in New York in September 2006.

The music of Philip Glass is often described as minimalist, though not by him. He would rather people describe his music as having repeating structures.

Philip Glass experiments with many different sounds. He has written operas, concertos⁷ and symphonies. He has worked on projects with singers, dancers and artists. He has also written music for many movies, including "Koyaanisqatsi," "Kundun" and "The Hours."

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Becoming a composer generally starts with musical training and education.

There are many well-known music schools in the United States. These include the Juilliard School in New York City and the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Others include the Oberlin Conservatory⁸ of Music in Ohio and the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.

Boston is also the home of the New England Conservatory of Music, the nation's oldest independent music school.

And it is not just Americans who study at these schools. At the Manhattan School of Music in New York, for example, an average of thirty-five percent of the students come from outside the United States.

VOICE ONE:

Carol Aicher is a professor at the Manhattan School of Music. We asked her how success is defined for a composer today.

Success, she says, is all about getting your music played. Having established groups hire composers to write new music is important, but that is not enough.

Professor Aicher explains that many composers have exciting premieres, where their music is played in public for the first time. But she says the real measure of success is whether or not their music gets replayed. For example, performance groups might buy the rights to play the work live. Or the music might get recorded and sold on CD or online.

Carol Aicher says most composers teach at music schools to add to their income.

(MUSIC: "Secret and Glass Gardens"/Jennifer Higdon, pianist Maria Mazo)

VOICE TWO:

Jennifer Higdon, a 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner, teaches at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia

Jennifer Higdon clearly fits the description of a successful composer. Her works are played by orchestras and at music festivals around the world, and this year she won a Pulitzer Prize.

Yet she came relatively⁹ late to music. She taught herself to play the flute¹⁰ at the age of fifteen. She began her musical schooling¹¹ three years later. Soon, she became interested in composing. She currently teaches composition at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

VOICE ONE:

For a classically trained composer, Jennifer Higdon's musical influences might surprise you.

JENNIFER HIGDON: "The Beatles. That's probably the first influence. Lennon and McCartney, because I listened to so much of it growing up. I actually didn't grow up listening to classical music."

VOICE TWO:

She is known for choosing unusual instruments and sounds. In a recent concerto piece called "On a Wire" she had the musicians play a bowed piano. They took the hairs off the kind of bow used to play a violin or cello¹² and placed them inside the piano, under the strings¹³.

JENNIFER HIGDON: "It makes for this haunted sort of sound. It's a little bit like a wine glass, when you play a wine glass. It's very unusual."

VOICE ONE:

One of her more widely performed works is "blue cathedral." She says the work is a poem about the people who cross our paths in a lifetime. It was influenced by her brother's death from cancer.

(MUSIC: "blue cathedral"/Atlanta Symphony Orchestra)

VOICE TWO:

We asked Jennifer Higdon how she goes about planning a new work.

JENNIFER HIGDON: What I do is I always know who I am writing for, I always know the ensemble¹⁴ or the soloist¹⁵. And I know how long a piece they want. Then I daydream¹⁶ a lot, trying to figure out what might be interesting for that group to do."

VOICE ONE:

She writes down her ideas with a pencil in a music notebook. She considers not only what would be interesting for the musicians to play, but also what would be interesting for the audience to hear.

JENNIFER HIGDON: "There's a lot of sketching¹⁷ that goes on, and a lot of times I don't know where things are going to fit in the texture¹⁸. I may come up with an idea and it may end up being something in the middle of the piece. When I wrote 'blue cathedral' there is a huge English horn solo in the middle of it, and that's actually the first idea I came up with."

Next, she plays some ideas on the piano before entering the beginnings of a composition into a computer.

VOICE TWO:

Jennifer Higdon says the classical music world still has a way to go in supporting more women composers, as well as conductors. She considers composers like Ellen Zwilich and Libby Larsen to be mentors¹⁹ who opened up possibilities to her.

JENNIFER HIGDON: "I was very lucky because my parents never discouraged me. They never said you can't do it because you're a woman, so it never occurred to me that I couldn't do it"

VOICE ONE:

But she says things are starting to look better for women composers.

JENNIFER HIGDON: "We're starting to see a little bit of a change. I suspect my winning the Pulitzer this year will probably alter quite a bit because it meant that I was in the news enough that there’s some little girl out there who says 'Oh! I can do that!'"

VOICE TWO:

Jennifer Higdon is currently working on an orchestral piece for the Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming. The music will celebrate the festival's fiftieth anniversary next year.

Ms. Higdon says one important thing about her work is her general goal when writing music.

JENNIFER HIGDON: "I write music for people who may have no experience with classical music. I often think you don't need to have a [music] degree, you don't even need to have been to a concert hall."

VOICE ONE:

Jennifer Higdon says she is always thinking about her audience when she is composing.

JENNIFER HIGDON: "What if this was someone coming to the music for the very first time? Maybe they've never heard classical music. So give it a chance, see what you think. There is some cool stuff out there."

(MUSIC: "String Poetic"/ Jennifer Higdon, violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist Reiko Uchida)

VOICE TWO:

Our program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I'm Barbara Klein.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Steve Ember. You can read and listen to our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. Join us again next week for more about contemporary American composers on THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English
 

1 trumpet   

n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘

参考例句：

• He plays the violin, but I play the trumpet.他拉提琴，我吹喇叭。
• The trumpet sounded for battle.战斗的号角吹响了。

2 concerto   

n.协奏曲

参考例句：

• The piano concerto was well rendered.钢琴协奏曲演奏得很好。
• The concert ended with a Mozart violin concerto.音乐会在莫扎特的小提琴协奏曲中结束。

3 harpsichord   

n.键琴（钢琴前身）

参考例句：

• I can tune the harpsichord as well as play it.我会弹奏大键琴，同样地，我也会给大键琴调音。
• Harpsichord music is readily playable.古钢琴音乐可以随时演奏。

4 chamber   

n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所

参考例句：

• For many,the dentist's surgery remains a torture chamber.对许多人来说，牙医的治疗室一直是间受刑室。
• The chamber was ablaze with light.会议厅里灯火辉煌。

5 expressive   

adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的

参考例句：

• Black English can be more expressive than standard English.黑人所使用的英语可能比正式英语更有表现力。
• He had a mobile,expressive,animated face.他有一张多变的，富于表情的，生动活泼的脸。

6 buffalo   

n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛

参考例句：

• Asian buffalo isn't as wild as that of America's. 亚洲水牛比美洲水牛温顺些。
• The boots are made of buffalo hide. 这双靴子是由水牛皮制成的。

7 concertos   

n. [音]协奏曲

参考例句：

• I once heard Brendel play all the Beethoven concertos. 有一次，我听了布伦德尔演奏贝多芬全部的协奏曲。
• The six finalists then played two piano concertos each. 然后，六名决赛选手每人演奏了两首钢琴协奏曲。

8 conservatory   

n.温室，音乐学院；adj.保存性的，有保存力的

参考例句：

• At the conservatory,he learned how to score a musical composition.在音乐学校里，他学会了怎样谱曲。
• The modern conservatory is not an environment for nurturing plants.这个现代化温室的环境不适合培育植物。

9 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

10 flute   

n.长笛；v.吹笛

参考例句：

• He took out his flute, and blew at it.他拿出笛子吹了起来。
• There is an extensive repertoire of music written for the flute.有很多供长笛演奏的曲目。

11 schooling   

n.教育；正规学校教育

参考例句：

• A child's access to schooling varies greatly from area to area.孩子获得学校教育的机会因地区不同而大相径庭。
• Backward children need a special kind of schooling.天赋差的孩子需要特殊的教育。

12 cello   

n.大提琴

参考例句：

• The cello is a member of the violin family.大提琴是提琴家族的一员。
• She plays a melodious cello.她拉着一手悦耳的大提琴。

13 strings   

n.弦

参考例句：

• He sat on the bed,idly plucking the strings of his guitar.他坐在床上，随意地拨着吉他的弦。
• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。

14 ensemble   

n.合奏(唱)组；全套服装；整体，总效果

参考例句：

• We should consider the buildings as an ensemble.我们应把那些建筑物视作一个整体。
• It is ensemble music for up to about ten players,with one player to a part.它是最多十人演奏的合奏音乐，每人担任一部分。

15 soloist   

n.独奏者，独唱者

参考例句：

• The soloist brought the house down with encore for his impressive voice.这位独唱家以他那感人的歌声博得全场喝彩。
• The soloist had never performed in London before.那位独唱者过去从未在伦敦演出过。

16 daydream   

v.做白日梦，幻想

参考例句：

• Boys and girls daydream about what they want to be.孩子们遐想着他们将来要干什么。
• He drifted off into another daydream.他飘飘然又做了一个白日梦。

17 sketching   

n.草图

参考例句：

• They are sketching out proposals for a new road. 他们正在草拟修建新路的计划。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• "Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. “飞舞驰骋的想象描绘出一幅幅玫瑰色欢乐的场景。 来自英汉文学 - 汤姆历险

18 texture   

n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理

参考例句：

• We could feel the smooth texture of silk.我们能感觉出丝绸的光滑质地。
• Her skin has a fine texture.她的皮肤细腻。

19 mentors   

n.（无经验之人的）有经验可信赖的顾问( mentor的名词复数 )v.（无经验之人的）有经验可信赖的顾问( mentor的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Beacham and McNamara, my two mentors, had both warned me. 我的两位忠实朋友，比彻姆和麦克纳马拉都曾经警告过我。 来自辞典例句
• These are the kinds of contacts that could evolve into mentors. 这些人是可能会成为你导师。 来自互联网