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卓别林，被遗忘的音乐天赋 原文作者 / Ariane Todes 阿丽亚娜·托迪斯 中译 / 强怡灵 俞文佳 原载4月16日英国卫报 The Guardian ______________________________ 原文标题： The tuneful tramp: the forgotten musical genius of Charlie Chaplin 和谐优雅的“流浪汉”世界：喜剧大师卓别林被遗忘的音乐天赋 ↑‘Very little escaped his eye or ear’ … Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard in the 1936 film Modern Times /Photograph: Allstar “他的眼睛和耳朵几乎不会遗漏掉任何音符”……1936年《摩登时代》中的查理·卓别林和保利特·戈达德 / 全明星图片 原文引题： He rubbed shoulders with Stravinsky and dreamed up beautiful film scores in his sleep. So why don’t we know more about Chaplin’s love affair with song? 他与作曲家斯特拉文斯基齐名，他自称在梦中谱曲，但为什么我们对卓别林与音乐之缘知之甚少？ 正文： It might seem odd to claim that one of the most universally popular entertainers in the world is underrated. But Charlie Chaplin is. Not necessarily as a comedian, actor or director, but as a composer. Most people know the themes Smile, Eternally, and This Is My Song, but they probably don’t know that Chaplin wrote them – for Modern Times, Limelight and A Countess from Hong Kong, respectively. Film buffs might know that from 1931’s City Lights onwards, he composed the scores for all of his films, and that as an old man he wrote new music for his earlier films. Yet he is never mentioned in talk of the great film composers, and in a recent Radio Times poll of top film themes, Chaplin’s name was nowhere to be seen. 如果说几乎所有人都低估了世界上最著名的某位喜剧大师，这可能会令人匪夷所思，然而事实上，查理·卓别林就是如此。除去大家熟知的喜剧演员和导演的身份，作为一位作曲家，卓别林的作曲能力鲜为人知。 虽然很多人都熟悉《微笑》《永恒》和《这是我的歌》等歌曲旋律，但或许并不知道这些旋律是卓别林分别为电影《摩登时代》《舞台生涯》《香港女伯爵》写的插曲和配乐。 影迷们可能知道，从1931年拍摄《城市之光》开始，卓别林电影作品的所有配乐都是他自己创作的，而且他还旧作配新曲，为自己的早期默片重新创作了音乐。 当人们谈论起世界上那些伟大的电影音乐作曲家时，几乎没有谁提及过卓别林。最近“广播时代”开展了一项针对人们心目中最伟大电影音乐作曲家的调查，结果中也没出现卓别林的名字。 That might change this year. Many of the celebrations marking the 130th anniversary of Chaplin’s birth are focused on his music. His passion for music began as a young boy when he heard a tune with harmonica and clarinet in a pub in Kennington, south London, as he wrote in a 1922 memoir My Trip Abroad: “Its beauty was like some sweet mystery … I only knew that I loved it and I became reverent as the sounds carried themselves through my brain via my heart.” 这一尴尬情况当下或许会有改变，今年是卓别林诞辰130周年，许多纪念活动都将目光聚焦在了这位喜剧大师的音乐作品上。 卓别林儿时便与音乐结缘，当时他在南伦敦肯宁顿区听到了从一间酒吧里传出的音乐声，那是酒吧艺人们用口琴和黑管演奏的音乐，从而激发起他内心对音乐的热爱。 他在1922年的回忆录《我的出国游记》中写道：“那段美妙的音乐既甜蜜又神秘……我只知道我很喜欢，它使我念念不忘、魂牵梦萦，我对它肃然起敬。” ↑ Chaplin with Tippi Hedren in A Countess from Hong Kong, 1966, for which he wrote This Is My Song / Photograph: Universal 1966年《香港女伯爵》中的卓别林与蒂比·海德伦，他为该电影创作了音乐，包括著名的《这是我的歌》/ 环球影业图片 The son of music-hall entertainers, he first sang on stage age five. As a teenager, he taught himself the violin and cello. Stan Laurel, who shared digs with him when they were part of Fred Karno’s company in 1910, recalled: “He carried his violin wherever he could. He had the strings reversed so he could play left-handed, and he would practise for hours. He bought a cello once and used to carry it around with him. At these times, he would always dress like a musician, in a long, fawn-coloured overcoat with green velvet cuffs and collar and a slouch hat.” 卓别林是剧院歌手老查理·卓别林之子，小卓别林初登舞台时年仅五岁，十几岁时自学了小提琴和大提琴。1910年，他与斯坦·劳瑞尔同在弗莱德·卡诺尔的剧团，当时俩人还是室友。据劳瑞尔回忆，“他随时随地都带着小提琴，他能将小提琴反过来拉，即反手（左手）拉琴。那个时候他总是打扮得像个音乐家，穿着淡黄褐色的长大衣，袖口和衣领是绿色的，戴一顶宽边软帽。” Chaplin kept up his violin playing even when he hit it big in Hollywood. Journalist Charles Lapworth wrote in 1918: “It will be unusual if Charlie does not pick up the fiddle and the bow, and accompany your remarks with an obbligato from the classics.” 当卓别林在好莱坞大获成功时，他还是坚持拉小提琴。记者查尔斯·拉普沃斯在1918年写道：“如果哪天查理没有拿着小提琴过来给你的台词配上一段古典乐，那倒是怪事了。” ↑‘He carried his violin with him wherever he could,’ said Chaplin’s friend Stan Laurel / Photograph: Picture Collection "他随时随地都带着小提琴”——卓别林友人斯坦·劳瑞尔 / 图片收藏 The advent of sound might have meant the end of silent movies that had made Chaplin a star, but it gave him the chance to compose his own scores. And what scores they are: full of charming and catchy tunes, the perfect timing and contrasts that make his comedy so affecting, clever use of motifs and wide-ranging magpie influences that make for rich variety. This was the man, after all, whose fame allowed him to rub shoulders with Debussy, Schoenberg and Rachmaninov, and who almost wrote an opera with Stravinsky. 无声电影成就了卓别林，电影中出现了声音可能意味着默片时代的终结，但对于卓别林来说这并不是终结，因为他可以为自己的电影创作音乐了。这些配乐的旋律动听悦耳，出现的时机都恰到好处，与画面形成了强烈对比，使他的喜剧引人入胜。 他选取的配乐主题也很巧妙，暗藏着复杂、多层次的结构，让剧情更丰富立体。毕竟，这位大师和德彪西、勋伯格和拉赫马尼诺夫齐名，还差点要和斯特拉文斯基合写一部歌剧。 Technically, he didn’t compose – he couldn’t read or notate music. Rather, he described the process of writing it as “la-la-ing” to the arranger. David Raksin, who worked with Chaplin on Modern Times, said: “Very little escaped his eye or ear, and he had suggestions not only about themes and their appropriateness, but also about the way in which the music should develop.” 严格说来，卓别林不会作曲。因为他既不识谱，也不会记谱。他甚至说过，音乐创作就是对着编曲人“啦啦啦”地哼唱出调子。但是，曾和卓别林在电影《摩登时代》合作过的大卫·拉克辛说：“他的眼睛和耳朵几乎不会遗漏任何音符。他不仅会对音乐的主旋律及其是否适当提出自己的建议，还会告诉我们一段音乐要如何展开。” He had learned from his music-hall days how music could affect the emotional or comic impact of the plot. “I tried to compose elegant and romantic music to frame my comedies in contrast to the tramp character, for elegant music gave my comedies an emotional dimension,” he wrote in his autobiography. Musical arrangers, he said, “wanted the music to be funny. But … I wanted the music to be a counterpoint of grave and charm, to express sentiment.” 在歌舞杂耍戏院工作的那段时间里，卓别林明白了音乐对故事情节、对推进情感和喜剧效果的影响力。 他在自己的自传中这样写道：“我试图为我的喜剧写出优雅、浪漫的音乐，来衬托出剧中的流浪汉一角，因为优雅的音乐可以赋予喜剧丰富的情感。”他说编曲人“希望喜剧中的音乐能够幽默一点，但同时我也希望它能不失庄重和魅力，从而表现出情绪。” He certainly had an ear for a good tune (he claimed to have dreamed them in his sleep), and violinist Philippe Quint – first off in the Chaplin 130 celebrations – has put a selection on CD. Quint grew up watching Chaplin films in the former Soviet Union in the 1980s. “We had only three channels. Most broadcast government meetings. In terms of films, everything was censored, but Chaplin was different – they played his films all the time,” he says. “Everyone talks about him as a great comic, but we don’t hear about him as a great director, producer and scriptwriter, and his music is such an important factor. The music told the story in his films.” 卓别林对优美的旋律当然是非常敏感的（他曾经声称在梦中遇见过它们）。为纪念喜剧大师卓别林诞辰130周年，小提琴家菲利普·昆特灌录了一张卓别林电影原声配乐精选唱片。 在20世纪80年代的苏联，昆特看着卓别林的电影度过了他的童年。“那个时候我们仅有三个电视频道，而且大部分都是在播放会议消息。电影审查制度虽然很严，但卓别林的电影不一样，经常能在电视上播放。”他说：“所有人都说他是一个伟大的喜剧演员，但我们很少听到有人称他是伟大的导演、制片人或编剧。他为电影编排的音乐也非常重要，这些音乐帮助他更好地讲述了电影中的故事。” His scores are full of references – some direct quotes, some pastiche, some just moods – to composers as diverse as Debussy, Brahms and Elgar. Quint points out how often Chaplin paid homage to Gershwin, noting that the scene of the ship sailing in Modern Times touches on Rhapsody in Blue. And Quint has no time for those who dismiss his music as sentimental. “A Russian would say, What is wrong with that? Tchaikovsky is very sentimental, too! It’s all about love. Chaplin was a loving man who loved to fall in love. Of course his songs are sentimental.” 他的音乐中有很多地方都直接引用或模仿了德彪西、勃拉姆斯和埃尔加等作曲家的作品，有的在情绪上与这些作品相近。 昆特说卓别林经常会向格什温致敬，并指出了《摩登时代》里的船舶航行片段的音乐与《蓝色狂想曲》之间的联系。昆特不喜欢听到有人说卓别林的音乐过于伤感：“一个俄罗斯人就会说：‘那有错吗？柴可夫斯基的音乐难道不伤感吗？只要能够感受到爱就行了。卓别林是一个有爱心的人，容易陷入爱河，他的音乐怎么可能不伤感呢？’” And, naturally, many of Chaplin’s key climactic moments involve his own instrument. “The violin in his movies always represent the most emotional moment, starting with City Light’s flower-girl theme … it was the instrument of his heart,” says Quint. 卓别林许多电影中高潮片段中的音乐，当然都和他对某种乐器的偏好有关。昆特说：“在他的电影中，小提琴乐总是代表着最感人的时刻，这一惯例是从《城市之光》中卖花女的主题曲开始的。小提琴是他内心里的乐器。” 1972年，在《舞台生涯》获奥斯卡奖的次晨，卓别林在读报 / 盖蒂社图片 But there is so much more to his scores than mere sentiment. Think of some of his most iconic scenes: when the Kid, played by Jackie Coogan, is torn away from the Tramp by the authorities; or when the Tramp comes face to face with the flower girl at the end of City Lights; or the moment he unwittingly gets involved in a workers’ march in Modern Times. The emotion is always ramped up by his music, proving his unerring sense of theme, structure and timing. 但卓别林的音乐绝不仅仅只有伤感，回想一下他电影中一些最具有标志性的片段，比如杰基·库根扮演的孤儿从流浪汉手中被人抢走时；或是在《城市之光》的结尾，卓别林饰演的流浪汉和卖花女面对面相见时；或是在《摩登时代》中流浪汉在无意间卷入了一场游行时……在看这些段落时，观众的情绪通过音乐的渐强不断加强，证明了卓别林对音乐的主题、结构和时间的把控方面，其理解力向来是正确的。 Chaplin was awarded three Oscars. At the very first Academy Awards, in 1929, he was given a special statue for The Circus, and in 1972, 20 years after his exile from the US amid dubious claims he was a communist, he returned to receive an honorary Oscar and a 12-minute standing ovation. But the only Oscar he won as a nominee was for Limelight in 1973 – for best score (the 1952 film only screened theatrically in Los Angeles in 1972, at which point it became eligible for Academy Award consideration). Maybe with the Chaplin 130 celebrations, the world can pick up where the Oscars left off in appreciating this aspect of his genius. 在1929年的第一届奥斯卡金像奖角逐中，卓别林获得四项提名，此外奥斯卡奖为他单独颁发了一个特别荣誉奖。 1972年，卓别林重返美国，荣获奥斯卡终身成就奖，现场观众鼓掌起立，向他致敬长达12分钟。但直到1973年，《舞台生涯》的音乐才获得奥斯卡奖的肯定，摘得了第45届奥斯卡金像奖的“最佳配乐奖”桂冠，这也是卓别林获得的唯一一座奥斯卡小金人（这部喜剧片于1952年上映，但只在1972年的洛杉矶以戏剧形式上演过，也就是在那时，这部影片得到了奥斯卡金像奖的关注）。在卓别林诞辰130周年的纪念活动上，世人也许会发现这位喜剧大师被奥斯卡奖忽略的音乐才能。 ↑视频：卓别林电影《城市之光》片段 ★ |
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