Technique and the artist: that is a question, of interest to the student
of every art, which was brought home to me with unusual emphasis the
other afternoon, as I sat in the Queen's Hall, and listened to Ysaye and
Busoni. Are we always quite certain what we mean when we speak of an
artist? Have we quite realised in our own minds the extent to which
technique must go to the making of an artist, and the point at which
something else must be superadded? That is a matter which I often doubt,
and the old doubt came back to my mind the other afternoon, as I
listened to Ysaye and Busoni, and next day, as I turned over the
newspapers.
I read, in the first paper I happen to take up, that the violinist and
the pianist are "a perfectly matched pair"; the applause, at the
concert, was even more enthusiastic for Busoni than for Ysaye. I hear
both spoken of as artists, as great artists; and yet, if words have any
meaning, it seems to me that only one of the two is an artist at all,
and the other, with all his ability, only an executant. Admit, for a
moment, that the technique of the two is equal, though it is not quite
possible to admit even that, in the strictest sense. So far, we have
made only a beginning. Without technique, perfect of its kind, no one is
worth consideration in any art. The rope-dancer or the acrobat must be
perfect in technique before he appears on the stage at all; in his case,
a lapse from perfection brings its own penalty, death perhaps; his art
begins when his technique is already perfect. Artists who deal in
materials less fragile than human life should have no less undeviating a
sense of responsibility to themselves and to art. But the performance
comes afterwards, and it is the performance with which we are concerned.
Of two acrobats, each equally skilful, one will be individual and an
artist, the other will remain consummately skilful and uninteresting;
the one having begun where the other leaves off. Now Busoni can do, on
the pianoforte, whatever he can conceive; the question is, what can he
conceive? As he sat at the piano playing Chopin, I thought of Busoni, of
the Bechstein piano, of what fingers can do, of many other extraneous
things, never of Chopin. I saw the pianist with the Christ-like head,
the carefully negligent elegance of his appearance, and I heard
wonderful sounds coming out of the Bechstein piano; but, try as hard as
I liked, I could not feel the contact of soul and instrument, I could
not feel that a human being was expressing himself in sound. A task was
magnificently accomplished, but a new beauty had not come into the
world. Then the Kreutzer Sonata began, and I looked at Ysaye, as he
stood, an almost shapeless mass of flesh, holding the violin between his
fat fingers, and looking vaguely into the air. He put the violin to his
shoulder. The face had been like a mass of clay, waiting the sculptor's
thumb. As the music came, an invisible touch seemed to pass over it; the
heavy mouth and chin remained firm, pressed down on the violin; but the
eyelids and the eyebrows began to move, as if the eyes saw the sound,
and were drawing it in luxuriously, with a kind of sleepy ecstasy, as
one draws in perfume out of a flower. Then, in that instant, a beauty
which had never been in the world came into the world; a new thing was
created, lived, died, having revealed itself to all those who were
capable of receiving it. That thing was neither Beethoven nor Ysaye, it
was made out of their meeting; it was music, not abstract, but embodied
in sound; and just that miracle could never occur again, though others
like it might be repeated for ever. When the sound stopped, the face
returned to its blind and deaf waiting; the interval, like all the rest
of life probably, not counting in the existence of that particular soul,
which came and went with the music.
And Ysaye seems to me the type of the artist, not because he is
faultless in technique, but because he begins to create his art at the
point where faultless technique leaves off. With him, every faculty is
in harmony; he has not even too much of any good thing. There are times
when Busoni astonishes one; Ysaye never astonishes one, it seems natural
that he should do everything that he does, just as he does it. Art, as
Aristotle has said finally, should always have "a continual slight
novelty"; it should never astonish, for we are astonished only by some
excess or default, never by a thing being what it ought to be. It is a
fashion of the moment to prize extravagance and to be timid of
perfection. That is why we give the name of artist to those who can
startle us most. We have come to value technique for the violence which
it gives into the hands of those who possess it, in their assault upon
our nerves. We have come to look upon technique as an end in itself,
rather than as a means to an end. We have but one word of praise, and we
use that one word lavishly. An Ysaye and a Busoni are the same to us,
and it is to our credit if we are even aware that Ysaye is the equal of
Busoni.