Fritz Kreisler, one of the greatest violin virtuosos of his generation,
was born in Vienna, Austria, on February 2, 1875. He was a child prodigy
at the violin. From 1882 to 1885 he attended the Vienna Conservatory, a
pupil of Leopold Auer, winning the gold medal for violin playing. In
1887, as a pupil of Massart at the Paris Conservatory, he was recipient
of the Grand Prix. In 1888, he toured the United States in joint
concerts with the pianist, Moriz Rosenthal, making his American debut in
Boston on November 9. Upon returning to Vienna, he suddenly decided to
abandon music. For a while he studied medicine at the Vienna Academy.
After that he entered military service as an officer in a Uhlan
Regiment. The decision to return to the violin led to a new period of
intensive training from which he emerged in March 1899 with a recital in
Berlin. From 1901 on until his retirement during World War II he
occupied a magistral place among the concert artists of his time.
As a composer, Kreisler produced a violin concerto and a string quartet.
But his fame rests securely on an entire library of pieces for the
violin now basic to that repertory and which are equally well loved in
transcriptions for orchestra. The curious thing about many of these
compositions is that for many years Kreisler presented them as the
genuine works of the old masters, works which he said he had discovered
in European libraries and monasteries, and which he had merely adapted
for the violin. He had recourse to this deception early in 1900 as the
expedient by which a still young and unknown violinist could get his own
music played more frequently, besides extending for his own concerts the
more or less limited territory of the existing violin repertory. His
deception proved much more successful than he had dared to hope.
Violinists everywhere asked him for copies of these pieces for their own
concerts. Publishers in Germany and New York sold these “transcriptions”
by the thousands. As the years passed it became increasingly difficult
for Kreisler to confess to the world that he had all the while been
palming off a colossal fraud. Then, in 1935, Olin Downes, the music
critic of the _New York Times_, tried to trace the source of one of
these compositions—Pugnani’s _Praeludium and Allegro_—now a worldwide
favorite with violinists. Downes first communicated with Kreisler’s New
York publishers who were suspiciously evasive. After that Downes cabled
Kreisler, then in Europe. It was only then that the violinist revealed
that this piece was entirely his, and so were many others which he had
been presenting so long as the music of Vivaldi, Martini, Couperin, and
Francoeur among others.
It was to be expected that musicians and critics should meet such a
confession with anger and denunciation. “We wish to apply the term
discreditable to the whole transaction from start to finish,” one
American music journal said editorially. In England, Ernest Newman was
also devastating in his attack. “It is as though Mr. Yeats published
poems under the name of Herrick or Spenser,” he said.
Yet, in retrospect, it is possible to suggest that musicians and critics
should not have been taken altogether by surprise. For one thing, as
Kreisler pointed out, numerous progressions and passages in all of these
compositions were in a style of a period much later than that of the
accredited composers, a fact that should have inspired at least a
certain amount of suspicion. Also, when Kreisler presented his own
_Liebesfreud_, _Liebesleid_, and _Schoen Rosmarin_ as transcriptions of
posthumous pieces by Joseph Lanner in a Berlin recital, and was
vigorously assailed by a Berlin critic for daring to include such gems
with “tripe” like Kreisler’s own _Caprice Viennois_, Kreisler replied
with a widely published statement that those pieces of Lanner were of
his own composition. The reasonable question should then have arisen
that if the three supposedly Lanner items were by Kreisler, how
authentic were the other pieces of old masters played by the virtuoso?
Besides all this, Kreisler himself provided a strong clue to the correct
authorship in the frontispiece of his published transcriptions. It read:
“The original manuscripts used for these transcriptions are the private
property of Mr. Fritz Kreisler and are now published for the first time;
they are, moreover, so freely treated that they constitute, in fact,
original works.”
The furor and commotion caused by the uncovering of this fraud has long
since died down. It has had no visible effect on Kreisler’s immense
popularity either as a violinist or composer. Since then, all this music
has been published and performed as Kreisler’s without losing any of its
worldwide appeal.
Among the compositions by Kreisler which he originally ascribed to other
masters in imitation of their styles were: _Andantino_ (Martini);
_Aubade provençale_ (Couperin); _Chanson Louis XIII et Pavane_
(Couperin); _Minuet_ (Porpora); _Praeludium and Allegro_ (Pugnani); _La
Précieuse_ (Couperin); _Scherzo_ (Dittersdorf), _Sicilienne et Rigaudon_
(Francoeur); _Tempo di minuetto_ (Pugnani).
Perhaps the best loved pieces by Kreisler are those in the style of
Viennese folk songs and dances in which are caught all the grace and
Gemuetlichkeit of Viennese life and backgrounds. Some he originally
tried to pass off as the works of other composers, as was the case with
the already-mentioned _Liebesfreud_, _Liebesleid_, and _Schoen
Rosmarin_, attributed to Lanner. Some were outright transcriptions. _The
Old Refrain_ is an adaptation of a song “_Du alter Stefanturm_” by
Joseph Brandl taken from his operetta, _Der liebe Augustin_, produced in
Vienna in 1887. Still others were always offered as Kreisler’s own
compositions and are completely original with him: _Caprice Viennois_,
for example, and the _Marche miniature viennoise_.
Among other original Kreisler compositions which he always presented as
his own are the following: _La Gitana_, which simulates an
Arabian-Spanish song; _Polichinelle_, a serenade; _Rondino_, based on a
theme of Beethoven; _Shepherd’s Madrigal_; _Slavonic Fantasia_, based on
melodies of Dvořák; _Tambourin Chinois_; and _Toy Soldiers’ March_.