Working Papers

養耳防老：學、聽音樂好處多

廖炳惠／UC San Diego 文學系教授暨臺灣研究中心主任、川流台灣研究講座教授

Ping-hui Liao, PhD

Founding Director and Supervisor of the Center for Taiwan Studies
Professor, UC San Diego Department of Literature

演奏或指揮音樂都需手腳、心肺、頭腦等整體運作。因此，鋼琴師和指揮家有不少活到百歲仍身心靈活、記憶過人。

醫學與科學的背書

三月底的《經濟學人》有一篇特別報導，綜合了近年來各種醫療、科技的研究分析，提出不算新鮮的見解：學、聽音樂有助於防止老化、失憶、憂鬱等疾病，效能高達39%，尤其學鋼琴、銅管樂器的人，往往比一般人長壽，不僅在籌劃、推理、運算、認知、社交、語言能力上見長，而且也較爲健康、堅毅、友善、平穩，可忍受更多的肌肉或神經苦痛和折磨。

這些說法大致已是一般常識，但文章卻把玩音樂與大腦神經、身心活動、社會行爲彼此關連，又有些醫學數據，很值得參考。

以往，家長會逼小孩練琴，定調說彈巴哈會為數學加分，進階的莫札特有「蝴蝶效應」。目前，玩音樂已成了老少咸宜的娛情悅性自主活動，從 Covid-19 之後，年青族群紛紛買黑膠，學爵士及古典音樂，玩耍樂器，也不再流行上網下載歌曲；五年來，國際電影裏，主角播放唱片的場景蔚為風潮，均可看出音樂在苦難時代的療傷義意。何況這不並乏神經科學的確切依據。

其實，演奏或指揮音樂都需手腳、心肺、頭腦等整體運作，全部協調，再加上讀譜，對音階、色調、旋律、節奏的掌握與詮釋，尤其又得搭配環境氛圍、觀眾心理、音響效應，道出前人所未觸及的面向，既要發揮個人與整體、天才與傳承、一己與他人的交匯創意，又須在執行、營運、溝通、媒合的多元層次上展現實力。因此，鋼琴師和指揮家有不少活到百歲仍身心靈活、記憶過人。看過伯恩斯坦（或杜達美在BBC Prom）指揮馬勒的“復活”及蕭斯塔高維契的第五號交響曲，我想沒有人會覺得自己上健身房、打詠春拳可燒掉更多的卡路里吧。

數位時代的自學資源

我有幾個同事，退休後都學玩樂器，既健康又時髦。上了一定的年紀，又有身份，要重新開始，是有點尷尬，好在 Youtube、App、Podcast 等，都有免費的進階課可供瀏覽。App 不僅會指導入門，也可聽音糾正，很好用。我最喜歡推薦給朋友的，是指揮家的彩排錄影，指出音樂的詮釋關鍵所在，YouTube 上蠻多好看的短片（如 Carloskleiber 的排演），較長的是 The Art of Conducting（日本版內容最多，畫質更好）從托斯卡尼尼到卡拉揚、伯恩斯坦各個名家，十分可觀。

另外，喜歡聲樂的，不妨搜尋 Antonio Pappano（英國皇家歌劇院指揮），他講解男女各種音域（低、中、高等）的代表作及其玄妙，分享從表演到欣賞的故事。《經濟學人》的專欄也指出學與聽音樂的各種好處。只聽不學的疏懶方式，固然達不到39%的效益，但可也有20%。Youtube上有很多演奏會錄影（如 2025 諾貝爾音樂會），從柏林到NHK、台灣的國交、原住民樂團，選擇相當豐富，而且又不用花錢。光聽就滿足的，也可選網路收音，如芝加哥的 WFMT，南加的 KUSC（現在叫 Classical California）。這些收音節目的主播寓教於樂，很能啟發聽眾。

從收音機到美軍電台的啟蒙

對我來說，收音機是最佳的對外資訊吸納窗口。記得我唸虎尾初中時，為了加強英文能力，我上空中函授班，家人買了收音機，讓我聽英語九百句；不經意的，我轉到了每週日傍晚，由吳心柳主持的西洋古典音樂賞，吳先生是個極其有成的企業家，但他最大的嗜好卻是到全球各地聽音樂會，而且愛買黑膠，他在一個小時內，分享了他見到的指揮、作曲、音樂家的心路歷程，也比較了他收藏的不同版本。

為了練習聽力，我也開始每天聽美軍電台（後來叫ICRT, International Community Radio Taipei），當時虎尾是美軍駐地之一，有轉播設施，因而早晚會放 Carl Haas 的 Adventures in Good Music 各一次，Haas 是印地安納大學音樂系教授，到處講解古典音樂賞析，比起柏恩斯坦的青年音樂節目，更顯得平易近人、多元文化些。他喜歡教大家去養耳朵，培養聆聽各種好版本的能力，節目的序曲是極慢、超平緩的月光奏鳴曲，徬彿要人在華燈初上之際，細品如何撥雲見月。

養兒不如養耳

養耳防老是要鼓勵大家去培養演奏、欣賞音樂的能力，隨著年青族群紛只立業不成家，養耳其實比養兒更加可行，除了學、玩音樂，也要養耳朵聽音樂，Youtube 及網路上有不少資源可輔助大家，若要以頂級音響設備去養耳朵，也可上網見識一下音響或唱片公司老板的多重隔音、吸音牆及好幾座前後級真空管擴大機與無以倫比的特製喇叭。

但如果只想省錢養自己的耳朵，買一對高階的耳機，可能會是個好選項。

Modern Taiwan Literature

台灣文學的風起雲湧

(Routledge Companion to Taiwan Studies, 2024)

Chapter 23

Ping-hui Liao

To update our last interpretive account of modern Taiwan literature, we highlight two more recent trends: postmodern parody and vernacular cosmopolitan. They largely grow out of a context in which Taiwan must cultivate its international visibility as it is constantly threatened by China in the forms of economic, military, and diplomatic pressure. To find new ways to rearticulate the local traditions has become a disruptive impulse for many Taiwanese writers, when they realize that they can’t naively claim themselves to be just cultural members of the Sinophone (or a Greater China) community. In many respects, postmodern cynicism or parody offers a vernacular alternative or twist in exposing the global cultural politics as provincial and unstable, or even deepfake and implosively obscene. A new ethical and aesthetical awakening about what makes Taiwanese culture relatively unique enables writers such as Chu Tianwen to offer parodic views of postmodern cultural products from the West—simulacra, mindfulness, or even queer discourse. Younger generations even go steps further by giving voices to the local, in learning from the environments, the subaltern, or the almost obliterated, if not totally forgotten. Wu Ming-yi’s semi-autobiographical novel regarding father’s stolen bicycle, for one, takes us back to not merely the family histories, but the multiple traces of Taiwan’s colonial past. His more recent work, The Land of Little Rain, draws on a cosmopolitan work by Mary Austin while revealing instances of climate science across borders. Contemporary Taiwanese authors follow their footsteps in tracing the hidden clues and by unearthing what lies buried. As a result, ghost stories prevail, often fused with science fiction and LGBTQ, local politics, social media, artificial intelligence, multisensorial (memory, affect, among others) dimensions.

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(Full text available here)

Wu Ming-yi's Search for a Planetary Intelligence: The Land of Little Rain in Re-vision

吳明益的苦雨之地

(Cambria, 2024)

Ping-hui Liao

“There’s a language without question marks.

You can read it in the rings of trees.

And in the wind and the river.

And in the sound of birds singing.

Has their song changed since they sang it once in Eden?”

--Gene Scheer, “The First Morning of the World” / Joyce DiDonato, Eden (2022)

In her foreword to the 2022 CD titled Eden, American mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato reveals how she renews hope and perseveres during the long Covid period of isolation and loss. She admits that several pieces of music help sustain her, among them, a song based on Gene Scheer’s poem, “The First Morning of the World.” The affirmative tone that opens the poem quoted here does not appear to be a song in celebration of pre-Edenic innocence or of nostalgic memory. On the contrary, it employs the past perfect tense to ask a complex question: “Has their song changed since they sang it once in Eden?” Intricately, the speaker refers to birds, trees, wind, and river, among other beings, to mend our anthropocentric conception of the cosmos on top of raising a planetary consciousness. In many ways, it is also an echo or even hymn to what Wu Ming-yi highlights in a recent collection of short stories.