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岁的作曲家周文中将成为哥伦比亚大学米勒剧场“作曲家的画像”演出的主题。他年轻时有过很多位严师，其中一位便是埃德加·瓦雷兹(Edgard Varèse)，这位喜怒无常的法国现代主义作曲家和电子音乐教父发火时曾把周的乐谱扔在地上，让他自己往上面小便。后来周又师从捷克交响乐作曲家波赫斯拉夫·马尔蒂努(Bohuslav Martinu)，周用中国传统旋律写了一首赋格曲，马尔蒂努的反应简单而令人难堪：“为什么？”

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.
但是最严厉的老师还要算是1937年席卷中国的战争，它持续了八年之久，周被迫背井离乡，到处迁徙，常常面对死亡。在上海，他在炮火声中用小提琴演奏巴赫和莫扎特。后来他在桂林上大学，听力有了长足进步，可以凭声音就听出日本军用机的飞行路径。最近周在西村的家中接受了访谈，详细回忆了很多悲惨的战争故事。
“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.”
“这是我们不想去经历的事情，”他描述了1944年赶在日军入城之前逃离桂林的惨痛经历，之后说，“但如果你经历过，就得利用它。我们得从生命中学习。”
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.
周说，瓦雷兹的油画肖像就挂在自己的书桌上方，蹙着眉头凝视着他。事实上，周现在同妻子、钢琴家张易安所住的房子原本就属于瓦雷兹。房间里到处都是中国古玩和周自己写的优美书法；还有从世界各地收集的乐器，有一整面墙都挂着锣；还有曾经属于瓦雷兹的小件珍宝。周致力于将基于严肃学术的中国文化与有着建筑般严谨的西方文化融为一体，这栋房子就是他毕生追求的实体化。
“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.”
“我从来不把自己视为中国作曲家，”周说，“我把自己视为20世纪的作曲家。我必须反映自己的时代：这是我的责任。”
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.
尽管如此，周文中的音乐里还是有着强烈的中国调子，就连在只使用西方乐器的曲子中也是如此，譬如美妙而富于沉思气质的钢琴独奏曲《柳色新》；他那些华丽的弦乐四重奏中，不时会模仿一下中国古筝或二胡的声音。星期四晚上的演出中，布兰塔诺四重奏组(Brentano Quartet)将演出他的弦乐四重奏2号（流水），该演出中还有纽约新音乐乐团和塔鲁琼乐团(Talujon)。周还为中国和韩国乐器，以及广泛的一系列打击乐器创作作品。
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.
孩提时代，周便接触了各种不同风格的中国音乐，就连在读父亲从旅途带回家来的中译欧洲童话故事时也要听音乐。学步时，他曾经蹒跚着走入家中佣人临时举行的聚会。
“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.”
“我打开门，闻到一股刺鼻的廉价白酒气味，他们在唱歌，弹琴，”他说。“我想，‘这就是真正的生活。’后来我就一直把音乐同快乐与享受联系在一起。”
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.
但是周也记得自己曾经目睹一流音乐家在街头卖艺的情形，旧的社会秩序崩溃了，艺术几乎失去了所有传统的资助。1949年他迁来美国后，最关心的事情就是保存关于这些艺术的知识，如有必要，还需要修复它们。
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，他开始在哥伦比亚大学任教，为愈来愈多学习作曲的中国学生举办非正式的中国哲学与美学讲座。其中最著名的学生包括谭盾（他曾获得多项荣誉，更因2000年为电影《卧虎藏龙》配乐而获得奥斯卡奖），以及2001年麦克阿瑟奖学金的获得者盛宗亮和2011年获得普利策音乐奖的周龙。
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.
在电话采访中，盛宗亮回忆自己对周文中的敬畏之情。盛经历了20世纪60年代毛泽东的“文化大革命”，他说自己和同学们对中国传统文化知之甚少，而周文中坚持让他们熟悉中国文化。
“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.”
“我们每周都在他的家里举行晚餐会，有时是在饭馆，他会讨论这些哲学思想，”盛说，这些话题包括易经的预言体系与它在音乐中的应用；中国戏曲的打击乐节奏；乃至书法和写意画艺术。“一开始，我们去他家是出于尊重，也是被食物吸引，但是到最后，他给我们留下了深刻印象。”
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.
周文中是哥伦比亚中美艺术交流中心的创立者和主任，他投入大量精力，不惜牺牲自己的作曲时间，致力于建立东西方文化交流的桥梁。但他说，自己在这个领域的乐观精神在逐渐减退。
“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.”
“我非常担心欧洲，”他说，“欧洲人再不关注非欧洲文化就太晚了。”
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。瓦雷兹曾经预言周的音乐只适合印在厕纸上，但这并没有成为他的最终结论。后来两人曾经密切合作多年。
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，周谱写了《浮云》，这是一部有着重大影响的弦乐四重奏，描绘了深邃的秋日之美。周文中说，“云”是对自己的音乐有重要影响的东西之一，这部作品标志着他半个世纪以来对“云”的研究成果；也证明了父亲曾给予他的无言的鼓励，父亲或许是他最温和的一位教师了。
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.’ ”
他回忆，在南京的一天，自己早早从中学放学回来。“我来到花园，躺在草坪上，”他说。“要变天了，你可以看到云的结构发生变化。我被迷住了。突然，一个影子笼罩在我身上，那正是父亲：‘你在干什么，怎么不学习？’他的脸色显然是在生气。我只好告诉他实话：‘我看云看得入迷。我想看它们是怎么移动的。’”
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.”
周文中说，父亲一句话也没说就走开了。“他知道我发现了什么东西，他不想打搅我，他让我自己去思考。”