Summer is the silly season for news. In August 2018 Deutsche Bahn, the German railway company that also runs Berlin’s S-Bahn system, announced that it had come up with a way of deterring the ‘junkies and drunks’ who hang around the Hermannstrasse S-Bahn station in the Neukölln district of the city. Because these vagrants were spoiling the ‘customer experience’ for passengers they needed to be driven out of the station, off the platforms, the stairs, the walkways. How to do this? Deutsche Bahn had already tried to do something similar at the main railway station in Hamburg by playing classical music. It’s a practice with a precedent, first tried in Montreal in the 1990s, then on the Tyne and Wear metro and, ten years ago, in a number of London underground stations. Feedback in London suggested that for passengers ‘hearing classical music made them feel happy, less stressed and relaxed’ and, perhaps because it was not the music they would have chosen themselves, encouraged people who were using the stations as a temporary home to move on. On the London underground the choice of music was originally subcontracted to a company that created a 40-hour playlist of ‘tuneful’ music, mostly from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; but with repulsion rather than relaxation in mind the S-Bahn authorities planned to flood the Hermannstrasse station with ‘atonal’ music, which they described as music ‘to run away from’. The Deutsche Bahn press release offered nothing more specific about repertoire, so we can only speculate about how they defined atonality. What is more interesting is their belief that there is a type of music more likely than any other to keep people on the move, a type of music that people wouldn’t want to hear if they could possibly avoid it. Even more interesting is what happened next. Deutsche Bahn’s declared intention was to launch the atonal offensive in September 2018 but as the news began to circulate there was an immediate reaction from musicians in Berlin. The organisation Initiative Neue Musik Berlin posted plans for an event, ‘Atonale Musik für alle’, on their Facebook page and on 24 August several hundred people gathered at the entrance to the Hermannstrasse S-Bahn to listen to improvised music and compositions by Sciarrino, Juliana Hodkinson and Julius Eastman. Deutsche Bahn have subsequently decided not to go ahead with their scheme. It’s tempting to draw conclusions, but the more I have thought about Deutsche Bahn’s plans and their repercussions the less sure I am about what these conclusions might be. Certainly it was striking how quickly and effectively the ‘Atonale Musik für alle’ event came together but does this mean that there is a universal fondness for new music? Or was the audience of 300 (as reported by neue musikzeitung) made up of people who, on a warm Friday evening in August, thought it would be fun to meet up with colleagues after the summer holidays? Would the same thing happen in other major cities or is Berlin, for so many years a haven for progressive artists, an exceptional TEMPO 73 (287) 3–4 © 2018 Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S004029821800058X 3

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社论：令人厌恶的音乐

夏天是新闻的愚蠢季节。2018 年 8 月，同时经营柏林 S-Bahn 系统的德国铁路公司 Deutsche Bahn 宣布，它已经想出了一种方法来阻止在柏林新克尔恩区 Hermannstrasse S-Bahn 车站附近闲逛的“瘾君子和醉汉”。城市。因为这些流浪者破坏了乘客的“客户体验”，他们需要被赶出车站、平台、楼梯和人行道。这该怎么做？德国铁路公司已经尝试通过播放古典音乐在汉堡的主要火车站做类似的事情。这是一种有先例的做法，首先于 1990 年代在蒙特利尔试行，然后在泰恩威尔地铁站以及十年前在伦敦的许多地铁站试行。伦敦的反馈表明，对于乘客来说，“听古典音乐让他们感到快乐、减轻压力和放松”，也许因为这不是他们自己选择的音乐，鼓励将车站用作临时住所的人继续前进. 在伦敦地铁上，音乐的选择最初转包给一家公司，该公司创建了一个 40 小时的“优美”音乐播放列表，大部分来自 18 和 19 世纪；但考虑到排斥而不是放松，S-Bahn 当局计划用“无调”音乐淹没 Hermannstrasse 车站，他们将其描述为“逃避”的音乐。Deutsche Bahn 的新闻稿没有提供任何关于曲目的具体内容，因此我们只能推测他们如何定义无调性。更有趣的是，他们相信有一种音乐比任何其他音乐都更有可能让人们保持活力，如果可以避免这种音乐，人们就不会想听。更有趣的是接下来发生的事情。德国铁路公司宣布的意图是在 2018 年 9 月发起无调性攻势，但随着消息开始传播，柏林的音乐家们立即做出了反应。柏林新音乐倡议组织在其 Facebook 页面上发布了一项名为“Atonale Musik für alle”的活动计划，8 月 24 日，数百人聚集在 Hermannstrasse S-Bahn 的入口处，聆听 Sciarrino 的即兴音乐和作品，朱莉安娜·霍德金森和朱利叶斯·伊士曼。德国铁路随后决定不继续他们的计划。很容易得出结论，但我对德国铁路的计划及其影响考虑得越多，我就越不确定这些结论是什么。'Atonale Musik für alle' 活动的举办速度和效果确实令人震惊，但这是否意味着人们普遍喜欢新音乐？或者 300 名观众（据 neue musikzeitung 报道）是由那些在 8 月一个温暖的周五晚上认为在暑假后与同事见面会很有趣的人组成的吗？同样的事情会发生在其他主要城市还是柏林，多年来一直是进步艺术家的天堂，一个特殊的 TEMPO 73 (287) 3–4 © 2018 剑桥大学出版社 doi:10.1017/S004029821800058X 3 'Atonale Musik für alle' 活动的举办速度和效果确实令人震惊，但这是否意味着人们普遍喜欢新音乐？或者 300 名观众（据 neue musikzeitung 报道）是由那些在 8 月一个温暖的周五晚上认为在暑假后与同事见面会很有趣的人组成的吗？同样的事情会发生在其他主要城市还是柏林，多年来一直是进步艺术家的天堂，一个特殊的 TEMPO 73 (287) 3–4 © 2018 剑桥大学出版社 doi:10.1017/S004029821800058X 3 'Atonale Musik für alle' 活动的举办速度和效果确实令人震惊，但这是否意味着人们普遍喜欢新音乐？或者 300 名观众（据 neue musikzeitung 报道）是由那些在 8 月一个温暖的周五晚上认为在暑假后与同事见面会很有趣的人组成的吗？同样的事情会发生在其他主要城市还是柏林，多年来一直是进步艺术家的天堂，一个特殊的 TEMPO 73 (287) 3–4 © 2018 剑桥大学出版社 doi:10.1017/S004029821800058X 3 觉得暑假后和同事见面会很有趣吗？同样的事情会发生在其他主要城市还是柏林，多年来一直是进步艺术家的天堂，一个特殊的 TEMPO 73 (287) 3–4 © 2018 剑桥大学出版社 doi:10.1017/S004029821800058X 3 觉得暑假后和同事见面会很有趣吗？同样的事情会发生在其他主要城市还是柏林，多年来一直是进步艺术家的天堂，一个特殊的 TEMPO 73 (287) 3–4 © 2018 剑桥大学出版社 doi:10.1017/S004029821800058X 3