他曾在上海的炮火中演奏巴赫

In his youth, Chou Wen-chung, the 91-year-old subject of a Composer Portrait at the Columbia University Miller Theater on Thursday, had many strict teachers. One was Edgard Varèse, the temperamental French-born Modernist and godfather of electronic music, who once showed his displeasure by throwing a score of Mr. Chou’s on the floor and ordering him to urinate on it. Then there was Bohuslav Martinu, the Czech symphonist, who reacted to a fugue Mr. Chou had written using Chinese melodic material with a single, withering, “Why?”

星期四，91歲的作曲家周文中將成爲哥倫比亞大學米勒劇場“作曲家的畫像”演出的主題。他年輕時有過很多位嚴師，其中一位便是埃德加·瓦雷茲(Edgard Varèse)，這位喜怒無常的法國現代主義作曲家和電子音樂教父發火時曾把周的樂譜扔在地上，讓他自己往上面小便。後來周又師從捷克交響樂作曲家波赫斯拉夫·馬爾蒂努(Bohuslav Martinu)，周用中國傳統旋律寫了一首賦格曲，馬爾蒂努的反應簡單而令人難堪：“爲什麼？”

But the sternest teacher of all was war, which swept over Mr. Chou’s native China in 1937, and which, over the next eight years, forced him to flee from one town to the next and often brought him face to face with death. In Shanghai, he practiced Bach and Mozart on the violin to the sound of artillery fire. Later, he trained his hearing as a university student in Guilin, where he learned to identify the flight path of Japanese warplanes by their sound. During a recent interview in his West Village townhouse, Mr. Chou recounted many harrowing war stories.

但是最嚴厲的老師還要算是1937年席捲中國的戰爭，它持續了八年之久，周被迫背井離鄉，到處遷徙，常常面對死亡。在上海，他在炮火聲中用小提琴演奏巴赫和莫扎特。後來他在桂林上大學，聽力有了長足進步，可以憑聲音就聽出日本軍用機的飛行路徑。最近周在西村的家中接受了訪談，詳細回憶了很多悲慘的戰爭故事。

“This is the kind of thing we don’t want to experience,” he said after describing a traumatic escape from Guilin in 1944, moments before Japanese forces entered the city. “But if you do experience it, use that. We have to learn from life.”

“這是我們不想去經歷的事情，”他描述了1944年趕在日軍入城之前逃離桂林的慘痛經歷，之後說，“但如果你經歷過，就得利用它。我們得從生命中學習。”

As Mr. Chou spoke, Varèse frowned down at him from an oil portrait that hung above his desk. In fact, it is in Varèse’s former house where Mr. Chou (his name is pronounced Joe Wen-joong) now lives with his wife, the pianist Yi-an Chang. Its rooms are filled with Chinese antiques and samples of Mr. Chou’s own elegant calligraphy art; a collection of instruments from around the world, including a wall of hanging gongs; and small treasures that once belonged to Varèse. As such, the house is a physical expression of Mr. Chou’s lifelong pursuit of a union of Chinese culture, rooted in serious scholarship, and the architectural rigors of Western music.

周說，瓦雷茲的油畫肖像就掛在自己的書桌上方，蹙着眉頭凝視着他。事實上，周現在同妻子、鋼琴家張易安所住的房子原本就屬於瓦雷茲。房間裏到處都是中國古玩和周自己寫的優美書法；還有從世界各地收集的樂器，有一整面牆都掛着鑼；還有曾經屬於瓦雷茲的小件珍寶。周致力於將基於嚴肅學術的中國文化與有着建築般嚴謹的西方文化融爲一體，這棟房子就是他畢生追求的實體化。

“I never regarded myself as a Chinese composer,” Mr. Chou said. “I regard myself as a 20th-century composer. I have to reflect my time: That is my responsibility.”

“我從來不把自己視爲中國作曲家，”周說，“我把自己視爲20世紀的作曲家。我必須反映自己的時代：這是我的責任。”

Even so, there is a strong Chinese inflection in much of Mr. Chou’s music, even in works for purely Western instruments, like the gorgeous, brooding “The Willows Are New,” for solo piano, or in his elegant string quartets, which at times imitate the sounds of a Chinese zither or that of the bowed two-string erhu. On Thursday night’s program, the Brentano Quartet will perform his String Quartet No. 2 (“Streams”) in a program that also features the New York New Music Ensemble and Talujon. He has also written works for Chinese and Korean instruments, and for a broad spectrum of percussion instruments.

儘管如此，周文中的音樂裏還是有着強烈的中國調子，就連在只使用西方樂器的曲子中也是如此，譬如美妙而富於沉思氣質的鋼琴獨奏曲《柳色新》；他那些華麗的絃樂四重奏中，不時會模仿一下中國古箏或二胡的聲音。星期四晚上的演出中，布蘭塔諾四重奏組(Brentano Quartet)將演出他的絃樂四重奏2號（流水），該演出中還有紐約新音樂樂團和塔魯瓊樂團(Talujon)。周還爲中國和韓國樂器，以及廣泛的一系列打擊樂器創作作品。

As a child, Mr. Chou was exposed to many different styles of Chinese music, even as he was reading translations of European fairy tales his father took home from his travels. As a toddler, he stumbled on an impromptu party in his home’s servants’ quarters.

孩提時代，周便接觸了各種不同風格的中國音樂，就連在讀父親從旅途帶回家來的中譯歐洲童話故事時也要聽音樂。學步時，他曾經蹣跚着走入家中傭人臨時舉行的聚會。

“I opened the door, and there was a strong smell of cheap Chinese wine, and they were singing and playing,” he said. “I thought, ‘That is real life.’ From then on, I associated music with pleasure and enjoyment.”

“我打開門，聞到一股刺鼻的廉價白酒氣味，他們在唱歌，彈琴，”他說。“我想，‘這就是真正的生活。’後來我就一直把音樂同快樂與享受聯繫在一起。”

But Mr. Chou also remembers watching first-rate musicians play for pennies in the streets, because the breakdown of the old social order had all but wiped out traditional patronage of the arts. Preserving and, where necessary, restoring knowledge of those arts — among them classical poetry and calligraphy — would become a vital concern of his after he moved to the United States in 1949.

但是周也記得自己曾經目睹一流音樂家在街頭賣藝的情形，舊的社會秩序崩潰了，藝術幾乎失去了所有傳統的資助。1949年他遷來美國後，最關心的事情就是保存關於這些藝術的知識，如有必要，還需要修復它們。

At Columbia University, where he began teaching in 1964, he gave informal seminars on Chinese philosophy and aesthetics to the ever-growing numbers of Chinese composition students. The best known of these are Tan Dun (who, among other distinctions, won an Oscar for his score to the 2000 film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”); Bright Sheng, recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001; and Zhou Long, who won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2011.

1964年，他開始在哥倫比亞大學任教，爲愈來愈多學習作曲的中國學生舉辦非正式的中國哲學與美學講座。其中最著名的學生包括譚盾（他曾獲得多項榮譽，更因2000年爲電影《臥虎藏龍》配樂而獲得奧斯卡獎），以及2001年麥克阿瑟獎學金的獲得者盛宗亮和2011年獲得普利策音樂獎的周龍。

In a phone interview, Mr. Sheng recalled feeling intimidated by Mr. Chou. Coming out of Mao’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, he said he and his peers had had little training in the Chinese arts that Mr. Chou insisted they be familiar with.

在電話採訪中，盛宗亮回憶自己對周文中的敬畏之情。盛經歷了20世紀60年代毛澤東的“文化大革命”，他說自己和同學們對中國傳統文化知之甚少，而周文中堅持讓他們熟悉中國文化。

“We would have weekly dinner seminars at his home, or sometimes in a restaurant, where he would discuss these philosophical ideas,” Mr. Sheng said, noting that topics might cover the I Ching’s system of divination and its application to music; percussion rhythms of Chinese opera; or calligraphy and the art of capturing the illusion of motion on paper. “In the beginning, we went out of respect and the lure of food, but in the end, he made a deep impression.”

“我們每週都在他的家裏舉行晚餐會，有時是在飯館，他會討論這些哲學思想，”盛說，這些話題包括易經的預言體系與它在音樂中的應用；中國戲曲的打擊樂節奏；乃至書法和寫意畫藝術。“一開始，我們去他家是出於尊重，也是被食物吸引，但是到最後，他給我們留下了深刻印象。”

As founder and director of the U.S.-China Arts Exchange at Columbia, Mr. Chou also poured substantial energies — at the expense of his own composing — into bridging the cultural divide between East and West. On that subject, he said, his optimism is waning.

周文中是哥倫比亞中美藝術交流中心的創立者和主任，他投入大量精力，不惜犧牲自己的作曲時間，致力於建立東西方文化交流的橋樑。但他說，自己在這個領域的樂觀精神在逐漸減退。

“I’m very worried about Europe,” he said. “It is very, very late for Europeans to still not be paying attention to non-European cultures.”

“我非常擔心歐洲，”他說，“歐洲人再不關注非歐洲文化就太晚了。”

Then again, Mr. Chou knows the value of patience. Varèse’s verdict that Mr. Chou’s music was fit for toilet paper would not be his last word on the subject. The two worked very closely together for years.

但是周文中依然深知保持耐心的重要。瓦雷茲曾經預言周的音樂只適合印在廁紙上，但這並沒有成爲他的最終結論。後來兩人曾經密切合作多年。

In 1996, Mr. Chou completed “Clouds,” a landmark work for string quartet that possesses a profoundly autumnal beauty. It represents the fruit of half a century spent studying what Mr. Chou called one of his prime musical influences: clouds. It’s also a testament to the silent encouragement of perhaps his most gentle teacher: his father.

1996年，周譜寫了《浮雲》，這是一部有着重大影響的絃樂四重奏，描繪了深邃的秋日之美。周文中說，“雲”是對自己的音樂有重要影響的東西之一，這部作品標誌着他半個世紀以來對“雲”的研究成果；也證明了父親曾給予他的無言的鼓勵，父親或許是他最溫和的一位教師了。

He recalled a day in Nanjing when he came home early from middle school. “I went to the garden and lay down in the grass,” he said. “The weather was going to change, and you could see the cloud formations move. I was fascinated. All of a sudden, a shadow came over me, and it was my father: ‘What are you doing? Why are you not studying?’ I could tell from his face he was furious. I had to tell him the truth: ‘I am attracted by the clouds. I want to see how they move.’ ”

他回憶，在南京的一天，自己早早從中學放學回來。“我來到花園，躺在草坪上，”他說。“要變天了，你可以看到雲的結構發生變化。我被迷住了。突然，一個影子籠罩在我身上，那正是父親：‘你在幹什麼，怎麼不學習？’他的臉色顯然是在生氣。我只好告訴他實話：‘我看雲看得入迷。我想看它們是怎麼移動的。’”

Mr. Chou said his father then walked away without saying another word. “He knew I was discovering something, and he did not want to interfere with me. He let me think it out.”

周文中說，父親一句話也沒說就走開了。“他知道我發現了什麼東西，他不想打攪我，他讓我自己去思考。”