默菲定理告诉我们，越不想出错，就越容易出错。万众瞩目的奥巴马就职典礼，不仅宣誓法官忘词导致奥巴马接不上，出现尴尬场面，而且后来被媒体爆出，马友友等人的四重奏放的是录音，他们只负责表演陶醉表情。因为考虑到天气过冷，手指发僵无法正常演出，美国人干脆也搞了个假奏。甚至马友友等人曾经怕严寒天气冷坏名贵古琴，还考虑过拿个劣制货充数。
美国媒体在08奥运会开幕式林妙可假唱问题上，津津乐道“追究”了很多天，这次理由如出一辙，但是媒体反应冷淡，这是不是双重标准呢？
媒体报道链接：
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/arts/music/23band.html?th&emc=th
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January 23, 2009
The Frigid
Fingers Were Live, but the Music Wasn’t
It was not precisely lip-synching, but pretty close.
The somber, elegiac tones before
President Obama’s oath of office at the
inauguration on Tuesday came from the instruments of
Yo-Yo Ma,
Itzhak Perlman and two colleagues. But what the millions on the
Mall and watching on television heard was in fact a recording, made
two days earlier by the quartet and matched tone for tone by the
musicians playing along.
The players and the inauguration organizing committee said the
arrangement was necessary because of the extreme cold and wind
during Tuesday’s ceremony. The conditions raised the possibility of
broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation
minutes before the president’s swearing in (which had problems of
its own).
“Truly, weather just made it impossible,” Carole Florman, a
spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural
Ceremonies, said on Thursday. “No one’s trying to fool anybody.
This isn’t a matter of Milli Vanilli,” Ms. Florman added, referring
to the pop band that was stripped of a 1989 Grammy because the duo
did not sing on their album and lip-synched in concerts.
Ms. Florman said that the use of a recording was not disclosed
beforehand but that the
NBC producers handling the television pool were told of its
likelihood the day before.
The network said it sent a note to pool members saying that the
use of recordings in the musical numbers was possible. Inaugural
musical performances are routinely recorded ahead of time for just
such an eventuality, Ms. Florman said. The Marine Band and
choruses, which performed throughout the ceremony, did not use a
recording, she said.
“It’s not something we would announce, but it’s not something we
would try to hide,” Ms. Florman said. “Frankly, it would never have
occurred to me to announce it. The fact they were forced to perform
to tape because of the weather did not seem relevant, nor would we
want to draw attention away from what we believed the news is, that
we were having a peaceful transition of power from one
administration to the next.”
Anthony McGill, a principal clarinetist of the
Metropolitan Opera, and the pianist Gabriela Montero joined Mr.
Ma and Mr. Perlman in “Air and Simple Gifts,” a piece written for
the occasion by
John Williams. While not all music critics agreed about the
quality of the piece, some took note of the frigid circumstances
for the performers. And the classical music world was heartened by
the prominent place given to its field.
Mr. Perlman said the recording, which was made Sunday at the
Marine Barracks in Washington, was used as a last resort.
“It would have been a disaster if we had done it any other way,”
he said Thursday in a telephone interview. “This occasion’s got to
be perfect. You can’t have any slip-ups.”
The musicians wore earpieces to hear the playback.
Performing along to recordings of oneself is a venerable
practice, and it is usually accompanied by a whiff of critical
disapproval. Famous practitioners since the Milli Vanilli affair
include Ashlee Simpson, caught doing it on “Saturday
Night Live,” and
Luciano Pavarotti, discovered lip-synching during a concert in
Modena, Italy. More recently, Chinese organizers superimposed the
voice of a sweeter-singing little girl on that of a 9-year-old
performer featured at the opening ceremony of last summer’s Olympic
Games.
In the case of the inauguration, the musicians argued that the
magnitude of the occasion and the harsh weather made the dubbing
necessary and that there was no shame in it.
“I really wanted to do something that was absolutely physically
and emotionally and, timing-wise, genuine,” Mr. Ma said. “We also
knew we couldn’t have any technical or instrumental malfunction on
that occasion. A broken string was not an option. It was wicked
cold.”
Along with admiration for the musicians’ yeoman work in the
cold, questions had swirled in the classical music world about
whether Mr. Ma and Mr. Perlman would use their valuable cello and
violin in the subfreezing weather. Both used modern instruments.
Mr. Ma said he had considered using a hardy carbon-fiber cello, but
rejected the idea to avoid distracting viewers with its unorthodox
appearance.
“What we were there for,” he said, “was to really serve the
moment.”
随着奥巴马入主白宫，成为美国第44位总统，
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