Chapter 16 big voice

The sound of the big sound is rare, and the shape of the elephant is rare ——Lao Tzu He used to give us music, and now, he can't give us any more. But the real big sound can not borrow rhythm, and the really shocking loud sound can be silence, so he is still giving us music. He is Mr. Shi Weiliang. To me, he is almost a kind of legendary figure.In the past, he worked in the anti-Japanese rear area, in the Northeast—that mysterious and tragic land (only in that land with mountains, vast rivers and vast rivers, can such a pure character like him be bred!).He studied music in Spain and Germany. He is a composer and a music theorist, and he wants to build a music library.

Last fall, I asked someone to hand over a copy of my stage play (Yan Zi and His Wife) to him. Soon after, I called him, and his voice was unusually soft: "I really like this script, it's beautifully written." As a playwright, I am almost naked spiritually. Anyone can give you praise or whip you. I have learned to be indifferent, but Mr. Shi's praise is different. I grabbed the phone receiver excitedly. "Is there anything I can do to help you?" I didn't know how to speak, but he spoke first so kindly. "My idea of ​​the soundtrack is like this. I think drama is the main thing, and the music can't take the main role. I hope that the audience doesn't even notice the music—although the music is always there, Chinese music has never been overbearing."

Although his words are very simple, I still find it surprising that for an artist to make so many concessions, others will inevitably have to go through debates with the other party, conflicts with themselves, and finally get coordination.But in Mr. Shi, it is so natural and simple. When the autumn mood deepened, he handed over the preliminary tapes. Mr. Nie Guangyan, the stage and lighting designer, also came that day. The person in charge of visual effects and the person in charge of auditory effects began to explore each other to make further corrections. "Thank you very much. I took this opportunity to think about a lot of things that I hadn't thought about before, and it's very useful to me."

—He always surprises me, of course I should be the one to thank, but he said something like that.Some people seem to criticize him for being aloof by nature, but the Mr. Shi I know is unusually humble. Mr. Liu Fengxue was very surprised when he knew that Mr. Shi agreed to make the music: "He only had major surgery during the summer vacation." "Surgery?" I was completely at a loss. "Yes, cancer." No, it won't, it's not cancer, someone must have passed the wrong word, he looks healthy and normal, or the thing has been removed, anyway, cancer shouldn't have anything to do with him, he still has a lot to do.

He almost always smiles, his teeth are particularly white and beautiful, above his nose there is a beauty that has experienced the vicissitudes of time and sorrow, but below his nose is an innocent and childlike beauty.His smile reassured me, how could a person with such a comfortable smile be a cancer patient. He wrote the soundtrack, found all the people, and everyone worked in the recording studio for twelve hours before it was completed. He said to director Huang Yigong: "Probably the last time we will work together." I went to inquire. He really had cancer, and the condition was worse than imagined. The doctor didn’t remove the tumor at all. They thought there was no way to cut it. The doctor didn’t even tell him the real situation at first, but he was very concerned about the cancer. Said an old friend: "I already knew it, I saw it in the eyes of my friends."

——I was horrified when I heard that. Every time I went to see him, I tried to pay attention to whether my eyes were adjusted properly. Even if it was a lie, I must let him see a pair of happy eyes. In November, we took photos for the special issue of the performance. He came to the China Television studio from Beitou. On that day, he was wearing a white shirt with blue stripes and a blue-gray jacket. He had a kind of elegance that only Chinese scholars can have And comfortable and beautiful. In order to wait for others to take pictures first, we sat down and chatted. He suddenly said that he wanted to hold a children’s musical performance on Children’s Day. He said that he had found four students to write children’s musicals. A nursery rhyme for my youngest daughter, titled "The World Is Sliding on Slides":

Peach petals slide in the wind, The little white fish slides in the waves, The summer night sky is a slide, Leave it to a little star to play with the skin. The green downy slide of the lotus leaf, Leave it to the small water droplets. Sliding off the keyboard is, Duo, Rui, Mi, Fa, Shuo, La, Ti; Sliding from the cradle was, The smile in my little cousin's dream. really, The whole world is on slides. He saw it, was very happy, and asked me how many more, he said that they could be written as a group, and I was also very excited. I was always moved when I heard that the artist was willing to do things for the children. I searched for more than a dozen songs later. , took it to him—but it was given to him in the hospital. He was sitting in the reception room of the fifth ward, still in high spirits, still smiling so beautifully:

"Every capital can be written, and I can write it as soon as I go out. It's great." Later, he was never discharged from the hospital. He didn't know whether he was comforting himself or me. He said: "It's good for creation if it's brewed for a long time." He also talked to me about his opera. The first part of the overture has already been written, which is very similar to the part in "Xiu Ru Ji" where Zheng Yuanhe becomes a singing singer and goes to perform. He won the first place in the song, but all the singers rejected him. Finally, in a lonely and unacceptable situation, he went straight to the mountains, wanting to understand what life is, but unfortunately the lyrics in the middle section (actually not The part of the lyrics, but the thought part) still can’t think of a better way to deal with it. He mentioned that this unfinished opera is a little melancholy, he said:

"In foreign countries, a grand opera should be written by a foundation that actively invites a composer, which will save a lot of effort." He said it very implicitly, and he didn't complain about anyone. Among all the artists, the composer is almost more miserable than the playwright. At present, there is not even an ideal place for performances) An opera and an orchestra often have more than a hundred people, which is beyond what a teacher can afford. It is a sad thing that his opera cannot be written. In the hospital, he didn't care about himself. On Christmas, there was a two-story Christmas tree in the front hall of Rong Zong's ward. He was very excited:

"I told the hospital, let my students contribute some Christmas music, but unfortunately the hospital did not agree, for fear of disturbing the patients." Speaking of illness, he said: "Knowing that you are sick, you have two moods, one is anxious, thinking of finishing what you should do well, and the other is relaxed - you don't have to care about anything." On a quiet afternoon in winter, with a faint shadow of the sun, his eyes are quiet and deep. When you talk to him, he lets you into his world, but obviously, he has another world, and you can feel his easy-going conformity , but you feel his loneliness at the same time.

Drilling sixty had no effect on him at all, and chemotherapy only made his condition worse. He once said: "If I lived in a small place and never knew about modern medicine, maybe I would have lived longer. Actually, I have that thing in Madrid in retrospect—my body can hold it there for seven or eight years. Think about it, a few years ago, didn’t I run all over the mountains and plains to find folk songs?” I like the expression on his face when he said that his body functions can suppress cancer for seven or eight years. He is always confident. "Yan Zi and Wife" was staged, and he was very excited. He gave all the tickets we sent him to the doctor, but bought the tickets for the child himself. He said: "I have never thought about money. If you can contribute, I will too!" He asked the hospital for leave to go to the theater, the hospital was very embarrassed: "Let me go, maybe for the last time!" When he arrived and sat in the art gallery, everyone was moved. In the entire vast theater of the universe, even if Mr. Shi was the only one in the auditorium, our performance would have value. When the curtain fell, we specially introduced Mr. Shi. He stood up amid the applause and rushed to the backstage to shake hands with the actors. Wang Zhengliang, who played Yan Zi, couldn't help but burst into tears. The theater was the busiest and most desolate place. All gatherings are nothing but dispersal, and all images eventually become illusory—that was forty-three days before his death, he comforted the weeping Zhengliang, and he said: "The pressure on actors is really heavy!" He went to comfort the actor, who was so infuriatingly nice!He never complained of suffering, as if it was someone else who was sick. Even when the doctor asked him, he didn't say much, he just thanked him again and again-but in fact, it is impossible not to suffer. Once, when I went to see him, he was lying down, pretending to be relaxed and saying: "I don't get up, I'm a bit 'lazy'." He doesn't say he's comfortable, just "lazy," and I find him and the visitor always trying to cheat each other in vain. Because of the teaching in the medical school, I also found words to lie to him, "A professor told me two groups of experiments, two groups of mice were injected with pulmonary tuberculosis, but the second group was injected with adrenal glands, and the results of the first group of mice were both Sick looking, the second group of mice were still excited, climbing up and down." "Yes," he said happily, "I am the second kind of mouse." Maybe I didn't lie to him, I just didn't tell the whole story. The result of the experiment was that the second group of mice died suddenly, and when they were dissected, it was found that the entire lungs had been rotten—those mice were not without disease, but had Something as strong as a disease. After the play is over, the usual ending is to be scolded. I am not a sudden and generous person, but I am used to cursing, and I can quite understand that it is an inevitable part of the whole performance. He came to comfort me: "Leave them alone, I have received a lot of letters here, all of which are good things." He actually came to comfort me! His white blood cells dropped. He started on oxygen. He's starting to get fluid in his lungs. I don’t know who lied to whom, we are still talking about collaborating on a cantata (oratorio) after being discharged from the hospital. It was already ten days before his death. He said: "I wish to come and help you." In fact, I am not very interested in Cantata, I just want to give a dying person more strength to live. I want to show him the main theme first, but it is a song sung by Su Wu facing death in the ice and snow , I'm afraid that he'll be so full of energy and blood that he won't be able to calm down and heal his illness. He has been in conflict for a long time and dare not make a move. Now, he can't see it anymore. The melody is named "Blood Flute". My blood is the reddest and hottest flute The Longest and Softest Flute from head to toe meandering flow around my murmuring love give you my china My heart is the deepest and deepest drum The most majestic and saddest drum Straight from ancient times to eternity Anxiously offering my raging love give you my china I don't know if it's spring, but the early cherry blossoms in Mr. Rong's flower garden have turned red sadly, and the gerbera is all over the ground golden. One day, Sima Zhongyuan called me to ask me about his ward. He said that people from Hua Hin were going to see him. "Anyway, he was the only one left to lie to us, and we lied to him." I said sadly. "That's how it is—if I have this day, you can lie to me too!" I felt a kind of deep sorrow, but I pulled myself together and baked a piece of western-style shrimp cake for him, and To Sima sent it to him. Daughter told me: "Dad only took a few bites, and he said it was delicious." Just a few words like that, I already felt a kind of choked up happiness. I remember one time when I went to Tainan to see Mr. Shi’s old friend Mr. Zhao (the author of "Rolling Liaohe"). During the dinner, Mrs. Zhao suddenly told a secret that she had never told anyone 30 years ago-it was Lian Shi. Mr. himself does not know. At that time, Mr. Shi wanted to go abroad to study music. His old friends knew that he was poor, so everyone donated some money. Mr. Zhao was a military doctor at the time, and his salary was very low. Got it. After twenty years, Mr. Zhao just said indifferently: "It's very convenient for me to sell blood. I just work in the hospital!" It is certainly a happy thing to have a friend who is willing to sell blood for you, but on the other hand, having a friend who is worth selling blood for, who is alive and can enjoy your dedication, should be an equally happy thing . "Today's people not only don't understand what happened in their generation," he said once talking with Liangxuan on the phone, "but they can't even imagine it." Really, in a farewell party at a tourist hotel, if you specify to drink a certain year of brandy, and talk about a certain person's right of abode, who can understand the generation that is interlinked by blood. Mr. Shi was baptized at birth, and he has never been the kind of standard believer who clocks in. However, his rigorous private life, his honesty and integrity, and how many people there are in this world, deep down in his heart, he is more devout and eager than anyone else. When he was first ill I wrote him a letter with a prayer attached, I didn't tell him I was the author of the prayer, I'm not used to imposing my will on others strongly, but he seems Very happy, he said: "That prayer is very good, I have already read it like that." After some time he asked his son to buy him a notebook, and the prayer was copied on the first page: God, I'm a small person But still know how to envy your greatness God, I'm a erroneous person but still longing to be near your holiness god i'm a fragile person But still longing for the redemptive love on the cross God, my life is short as a sigh but eternity is with you God, I don't know where to turn, like a reed in the wind, But seeing you, the weak grass also turns into a reed flute God, others can only see me standing tall You see me who worships you from the bottom of my heart I bought him a cross made of olive wood from Jerusalem during the meeting in Hong Kong. It is not a small gift, but a pattern of life he loves - he has carried the cross all his life. He thanked me again and again, saying that I gave him the most precious gift—in fact, compared with what he gave me, I gave him nothing. What he gave me was the only health left after he knew he couldn’t afford it. It was the light and heat that he gambled on at the end of his life. I couldn't repay his friendship for knowing each other. I could only devote myself more to the people he loved. At 3:50 pm on February 14, 1977, he closed his eyes. Some people's death is "finished", but Mr. Shi's is "completed", he has completed the journey of a "person". The soundtrack of "Yan Zi and Wife" is not his last sound, because the real strings are still lingering when the fingers stop, and the real singing is still lingering at the end of the board. What Mr. Shi left behind is a typical example of a generation of musicians. Silent loud voice, silent loud noise.