VIOLINISTS NOW AND YESTERYEAR
With the hair of the horse and the entrails of the cat, magicians of
the four strings weave their potent spells. What other instrument
devised by the hand of man has ever approached the violin? Gladstone
compared it with the locomotive; yet complete as is the mechanism of
the wheeled monster, its type is transitional; steam is already
supplanted by electricity; while the violin is perfection, as
perfect as a sonnet, and in its capacity for the expression of
emotion next to the human voice; indeed it is even more poignant.
Orchestrally massed, it can be as terribly beautiful as an army with
banners. In quartet form it represents the very soul of music; it is
both sensuous and intellectual. The modern grand pianoforte with its
great range, its opulence of tone, its delicacy of mechanism is,
nevertheless, a monster of music if placed beside the violin, with
its simple curves, its almost primitive method of music-making. The
scraping of one substance against another goes back to prehistoric
times, nay, may be seen in the grasshopper and its ingenious manner
of producing sound. But the violin, as we know it to-day, is not
such an old invention; it was the middle of the sixteenth century
before it made its appearance, with its varnished and modelled back.
Restricted as is its range of dynamics, the violin has had for its
votaries men of such widely differing temperaments as Paganini and
Spohr, Wilhelmj and Sarasate, Joachim and Ysaye. Its literature does
not compare with that of the piano, for which Bach, Beethoven,
Schumann, Chopin, and Brahms have written their choicest music, yet
the intimate nature of the violin, its capacity for passionate
emotion, crowns it--and not the organ, with its mechanical tonal
effects--as the king of instruments. Nor does the voice make the
peculiar appeal of the violin. Its lowest note is the G below the
treble clef, and its top note a mere squeak; but it seems in a few
octaves to have imprisoned within its wooden walls a miniature world
of feeling; even in the hands of a clumsy amateur it has the
formidable power of giving pain; while in the grasp of a master it
is capable of arousing the soul.
No other instrument has the ecstatic quality; neither the
shallow-toned pianoforte, nor the more mellow and sonorous
violoncello. The angelic, demoniacal, lovely, intense tones of the
violin are without parallel in music or nature. It is as if this box
with four strings across its varnished belly had a rarer nervous
system than all other instruments. It is a cry, a shriek, a hymn to
heaven, a call to arms, an exquisite evocation, a brilliant series
of multi-coloured visions, a broad song of passion, or mocking
laughter--what cannot the violin express if the soul that guides it
be that of an artist? Otherwise, it is only a fiddle. It is the
hero, the heroine, the vanguard of every composition. As a solo
instrument in a concerto, its still small voice is heard above the
din and thunder of the accompaniment. In a word, this tiny music-box
is the ruler among instruments.
Times have changed since 1658 in England, when the following
delightful ordinance was made for the benefit of musical genius, or
otherwise:
"And be it enacted that if any person or persons, commonly called
Fiddlers, or minstrels, shall at any time after the said first of
July be taken playing, fiddling, or making music in any inn,
alehouse or tavern, or shall be proffering themselves, or desiring,
or entreating any person or persons to hear them play ... shall be
adjudged rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars."
Decidedly, England was not then the abode of the muses, for the poor
actor suffered in company with the musician. You wonder whether this
same penalty would be imposed upon musical managers ... they
certainly do "entreat" the public to listen to their "fiddlers." Yet
in 1690 when Corelli, the father of violin playing, led the band at
Cardinal Ottoboni's house in Rome, he stopped the music because his
churchly patron was talking, and he made an epigram that has since
served for other artists: "Monsignore," remarked this intrepid
musician, when asked why the band had ceased, "I feared the music
might interrupt the conversation." How well Liszt knew this anecdote
may be recalled by his retort to a czar of Russia under similar
circumstances.
Until a few months ago I had not heard Eugene Ysaye play for years.
In the old days he had enchanted my ears, and in company with
Gerardy, the violoncellist and Pugno the pianist had made music fit
for the gods. Considering the flight of the years, I found the art
of the Belgian comparatively untouched. Like Liszt, like Paderewski,
Ysaye has his good moments and his indifferent. He is the Paderewski
of the strings in his magical interpretations. And unlike his
younger contemporaries, he still carves out the whole block of the
great classics, sonatas, and concertos. He plays little things
tenderly, exquisitely, and the man is first the musician, then the
virtuoso.
I heard neither Paganini nor Spohr. Joachim, Wilhelmj, Wieniawski,
and Ysaye I have heard and seen. My memory assures me of keener
satisfactions than any book about these giants of the four strings
could give me. The first violinist I ever listened to was in the
early seventies. I was hardly at the age of musical discrimination.
Yet I remember much. It was at the opera, a matinee in the
Philadelphia Academy of Music. Nilsson was singing. I can't recall
her on that occasion, though it seems only the other day when
Carlotta Patti sang the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute, and
limped over the stage--possibly the lameness fixed the event in my
mind more than the music.
A "front" set was dropped between the acts at this particular
matinee--I do not recollect the name of the opera--and through a
"practicable" door came an old gentleman with a violin in his hands.
He was white-haired, he wore white side-whiskers, and he looked to
my young eyes like a prosperous banker. He played. It was as the
sound of falling waters on a moonlight night. I asked the name of
the old gentleman. My father said, "Henri Vieuxtemps," which told me
nothing then, though it means much to me now. What did he play? I do
not know. Yet whenever I hear the younger men attack his Fantaisie
Caprice, his Ballade and Polonaise, his Concertos, I think proudly:
"I have heard Vieuxtemps!" He was a Belgian, born 1820, died 1881.
His style was finished, elegant, charming. He was a pupil of De
Beriot and represented, with his master, perfection in the Belgian
school.
After an interval of some years, I heard the only pupil of
Paganini, as he called himself, Camillo Sivori. It was in Paris,
1879. The precise day I can't say but my letter from Paris which
appeared in the Philadelphia _Evening Bulletin_ was dated January
31, 1879. I still preserve it in a venerable scrap-book. I was in my
'teens but I wrote with the courage of youthful ignorance as
follows: (It almost sounds like a musical criticism.) "Although it
was generally supposed that Sivori, the great violinist, would not
play this season in Paris, he, nevertheless delighted a large
audience, last Sunday, at the Concert Populaire, with his lovely
music. He is no longer a young man, but the vigour and fire of his
playing are immense. He gave, with the orchestral accompaniment, a
Berceuse, his own composition, with unapproachable delicacy. It was
played throughout with the mute. In contrast came a Mouvement
Perpetuel. Sivori's tone is not like that of Joachim or Wilhelmj,
but it is sweeter than either. It reminds one of gold drawn to
cobweb fineness. As an encore he played the too well known Carnival
of Venice. That it was given in the style of his illustrious master,
Paganini, who may say? But it was amazing, painful, finally
tiresome." That same season I heard Anna Bock, Boscovitz, Diemer,
Plante, Theodore Ritter, the two Jaells, fat Alfred and his thin
wife.
Sivori (1815-1894), dapper, modest, stood up in the vast spaces of
the Cirque d'Hiver, which was engaged every Sunday by Jacques
Pasdeloup and his orchestra. (Jacob Wolfgang was the real name of
this conductor who braved the wrath of his audiences by putting
Wagner on his programmes; and one afternoon we had a pitched battle
over Rimsky-Korsakoff's Symphonic Poem, Sadko.) Sivori played a
tarantella; every tone was clearly heard in the great, crowded
auditorium. Pupils of De Beriot and Paganini I have heard, though I
hardly recall the style of the former and nothing of the latter. But
there was little of Paganini's fiery attack in Sivori; possibly he
was too old. Fire and fury I later found in Wieniawski.
I must not omit the name of Ole Bull (1810-1880), for, though I
heard him as a boy, I best remember him in 1880, when he gave his
last concerts in America. In the fifties, while on a visit to my
father's house, he went on his two thumbs around a dining-table,
lifting his body clear from the ground. His muscular power was
remarkable. It showed in the dynamics of his robust and sentimental
playing. Spohr discouraged him as a boy, but later spoke of his
"wonderful playing and sureness of his left hand; unfortunately,
like Paganini, he sacrifices what is artistic to something that is
not quite suitable to the noble instrument. His tone, too, is
bad...." For Spohr any one's tone was, naturally enough, bad, as he
possessed the most monumental tone that ever came from a violin.
The truth is that Ole Bull was not a classical player; as I remember
him, he could not play in strict tempo; like Chopin, he indulged in
the rubato and abused the portamento. But he knew his public.
America a half-century ago, particularly in the regions he visited,
was not in the mood for sonatas or concertos. Old Dan Tucker and the
Arkansaw Traveller were the mode. Bull played them both, played jigs
and old tunes, roused the echoes with the Star Spangled Banner and
Irish melodies. He played such things beautifully, and it would have
been musical snobbery to say that you didn't like them. You couldn't
help yourself. The grand old fellow bewitched you. He was a handsome
Merlin, with a touch of the charlatan and a touch of Liszt in his
tall, willowy figure, small waist, and heavy head of hair. Such
white hair! It tumbled in masses about his kindly face like one of
his native Norwegian cataracts. He was the most picturesque old man
I ever saw except Walt Whitman, at that time a steady attendant of
the Carl Gaertner String Quartet concerts in Philadelphia. (And what
Walt didn't know about music he made up in his love for stray dogs;
he was seldom without canine company.)
Those were the days when Prume's La Melancolie and Wieniawski's
Legende were the two favourite, yet remote, peaks of the student's
repertoire. How we loved them! Then came Wieniawski with Rubinstein
in 1872-1873, and such violin playing America had never before
heard--nor has it since, let me hasten to add. This Pole (1835-1880)
was a brilliant master. His dash and fire and pathos carried you off
your feet. His tone at times was like molten metal. He had a
caressing and martial bow. His technique was infallible, his
temperament truly Slavic, languorous, subtle, fierce. Wieniawski
always reminded me of a red-hot coal. How chivalric is his
Polonaise--that old war-horse! How elegiac his Legende! His
favourite pupil was Leopold Lichtenberg, the greatest violin talent
that has been thus far unearthed in America. Lichtenberg had
everything when a youth--temperament, brains, musical feeling, and
great technical ability.
After Wieniawski followed Wilhelmj, who did not efface his memory,
but plunged one into another atmosphere; that of the calm, profound,
untroubled, and classic. No doubt Spohr's tone was larger, yet this
is difficult to believe. Wilhelmj drew from his instrument the
noblest sounds I ever heard; not Joachim, not Ysaye excelled him in
cantabile. He was the first to play Wagner transcriptions--no wonder
Wagner made him leader of the strings at Bayreuth in 1876. How he
read the Beethoven Concerto, the Bach Chaconne. Or the D flat
Nocturne of Chopin--in D. Or the much abused Mendelssohn E Minor
Concerto--with Max Vogrich accompanying him at the piano. A giant
in physique, when he faced his audience there was something of the
majestic, fair-haired god Wotan in his immobile posture. He never
appealed to his public as did Wieniawski; there was always something
of chilly grandeur and remoteness in Wilhelmj's play. The last time
I saw him was at Marienbad, shortly before his death, where, a
stooped-shouldered, grey-haired old man, he was taking a Kur. He
walked slowly, his hands clasped behind him, in his eyes the vacant
look of one busy with memories. He reminded me of Beethoven's
pictures.
Joseph Joachim, that mighty Hungarian, was past his prime when I
heard him in London. He played out of tune--some of his pupils have
imitated his failing--but whether in a Beethoven quartet, concerto,
sonata with piano, he always stamped on your consciousness that
Joseph Joachim was the greatest violinist that had ever lived. This
is, of course, absurd, this unfair comparison of one artist with
another. Yet it is human to compare, and if a violinist can evoke
such a vision of perfection, then he must be of uncommon powers.
Maud Powell, a distinguished pupil of Joachim, has asserted that it
took her three years before she could recover herself in the
presence of Joachim's overwhelming personality. Yet he struck me as
not at all assertive. He seemed an "objective" player, _i. e._, you
thought only of Beethoven, of Brahms, as he calmly delivered himself
of their Olympian measures. The grand manner is now out of fashion.
We care more for exotic rhetoric than for simple and lofty measures.
Sarasate and Dengremont charmed me more; Wieniawski set my blood
coursing faster; but in Joachim's presence I felt as if near some
old Grecian temple hallowed by the presence of oft-worshipped gods.
Remenyi was a puzzle. He could play divinely, and scratch
diabolically. He belonged to that old romantic school in which pose
and gesture, contortion and grimace occupied a prominent place. I
had an opportunity to study Remenyi (whose Austrian name was
Hoffman) (1830-1898), at close quarters. He brought to my father's
house in the early eighties his favourite instruments, and such a
wild night of music I never heard. He played hour after hour,
everything from Bach to Brahms--and incidentally scolded Brahms for
"stealing" some of his, Remenyi's, Hungarian dances! (Which is a
joke, as Brahms only followed the examples of Liszt and Joachim in
avowedly employing Hungarian folk melodies). He did such tricks as
dashing off in impeccable tune his arrangement of the D Flat Valse
of Chopin in double notes at a terrific tempo. Violinists will
understand the feat when I tell them that the key was the original
one--D flat. He made the walls shiver when he struck his bow
clangorously in the opening chords of the Rackoczy March. What a
hero then seemed this stout, little, prancing, baldheaded man with
the face of an unfrocked priest. How he could talk in a half-dozen
different languages; he had travelled enough and encountered enough
celebrated people to fill a dozen volumes with his recollections. He
was a violinist of unquestionable power; that he deteriorated in his
later years was to have been expected. Liszt understood and
appreciated Remenyi from the first; he nicknamed him "the Kossuth of
the Fiddle."
To recall all the celebrities of the violin I have heard since 1870
would be hardly possible. I've forgotten most of them, though I do
remember that wonderful boy, Maurice Dengremont, who ended his life,
so rich in possibilities, it is said as a billiard marker. He was
spoiled by women, for he was a comely lad. Another wonder-child kept
his head, and to-day fascinating Fritz Kreisler is a master of
masters and a favourite in America without peer. He first appeared
at Boston and in 1888. In Paris I recall Marsick and his polished
style; the gallant Sauret, Johannes Wolf, and the brilliant and
elegant Timothee Adamowski. And in 1880, Marie Tayau and her woman
quartet, a member of which was Jeanne Franko, the sister of the
conductors and violinists, Sam Franko and Nahan Franko; Caesar
Thomson, the miraculous; C. M. Loeffler--subtle player, subtle
composer; Sarasate with his sweet tone; Brodsky and his masculine
manner; Willy Burmester and his pallid pyrotechnics; the learned
Schradieck, the Bohemian Ondricek, the dashing Ovide Musin, Bernhard
Listemann, Carl Halir; Gregorowitsch, the languid; brilliant
Marteau; Alexander Petschinikoff, the Russian; the musicianly Max
Bendix; the astonishing John Rhodes, the wonder-worker Kubelik and
his icy perfections; Kocian, Willy Hess, Efrem Zimbalist, Albert
Spalding, Arthur Hartman, and a myriad of spoiled youths, Von
Veczsey, Horszowski--all have crossed the map of my memory. And
Franz Kneisel and the Kneisel Quartet, dispensers of musical joys
for decades, but alas! no more. Alas! I would not barter memories of
their music-making for a wilderness of virtuosi. I must not forget
Joseph White, the Cuban violinist, who was with Theodore Thomas one
season. His style was finished and Parisian. He was a mulatto and a
handsome man. The night I heard him he played the Mendelssohn
concerto, and at the beginning of the slow movement his chanterelle
broke. Calmly he took concert master Richard Arnold's proffered
instrument and triumphantly finished the composition.
Three violinists abide clear in my recollection: Wieniawski,
Wilhelmj, and Ysaye. The last named is dearer because nearer,
contrary to the supposed rule that the older the thing the worse it
is. Ysaye is the magician of the violin. He holds us in a spell with
that elastic, curving bow of his, with those many coloured tones,
tender, silky, sardonic, amorous, rich, and ductile. He interprets
the classics as well as the romantics; Bach, Beethoven, Brahms;
Vieuxtemps as well as Sibelius. Above all else, his mastery of the
violin's technical mysteries, looms his musical temperament. He has
imagination.
I have reserved the women for the last. A goodly, artistic company.
It is not necessary to go back to the Milanolla sisters. We still
cherish remembrances of Camilla Urso and her broad musicianly
manner; the finished style of Normann-Neruda, Maris Soldat, the
gifted and unhappy Arma Senkrah, Nettie Carpenter, Teresina Tua--who
did not become a "Fiddle Fairy" when she visited us in 1887--Leonora
Jackson, Dora Becker, Olive Mead, and Maud Powell. In Europe many
years ago, I heard Marcella Sembrich, who, after playing the E Flat
Polonaise of Chopin on the piano, picked up a violin and dashed off
the Wieniawski Polonaise; these feats were followed by songs, one
being Viardot-Garcia's arrangement of Chopin's D Major Mazourka.
Sembrich is the blue rose among great singers. Gericke, Paur,
Nikisch were at first violinists; so was Fritz Scheel, late
conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. Franz Kneisel is a
conductor of great skill; so is Frederick Stock, who followed
Theodore Thomas as conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Theodore Spiering formerly concert-master of the Philharmonic
orchestra proved himself an excellent conductor. But that a little
Polish woman could handle with ease two instruments and sing like an
angel besides, borders on the fantastic. Geraldine Morgan is an
admirable violin artiste who plays solo as well as quartet with
equal authority.
Maud Powell has fulfilled her early promise. She is a mature
artiste, one who will never be finished because she will always
study, always improve. A Joachim pupil, she is, nevertheless, a
pupil of Maud Powell, and her playing reveals breadth, musicianship,
beauty of tone and phrasing. She is our greatest American violin
virtuosa.
I wrote this of Mischa Elman (the first of the many Mischas and
Jaschas who mew on the fiddle strings) after I heard him play in
London: "United to an amazing technical precision there is a still
more amazing emotional temperament, all dominated by a powerful
musical and mental intellect, uncanny in one not yet out of his
teens. What need to add that his conception of Beethoven is neither
as lovely as Kreisler's nor as fascinating as Ysaye's? Elman will
mature. In the romantic or the virtuoso realm he is past master. His
tone is lava-like in its warmth. He paints with many colours. He
displays numberless nuances of feeling. The musical in him dominates
the virtuoso. Naturally, the pride of hot youth asserts itself, and
often, self-intoxicated, he intoxicates his audiences with his
sensuous, compelling tone. Hebraic, tragic, melancholy, the
boisterousness of the Russian, the swift modulation from mad caprice
to Slavic despair--Elman is a magician of many moods. When I listen
to him I almost forget Ysaye." Yet when I heard Ysaye play last
season it was Elman that I forgot for the moment. After all, a
critic, too, may have his moods. And now comes another conqueror,
the lad Jasha Heifetz from Russia, a pupil of Leopold Auer and an
artist of such extraordinary attainments that the greatest among
contemporary violinists--is it necessary to mention names?--have
said of him that his art begins where theirs ends, and that they
will shut up shop when he plays here. All of which is a flattering
tribute, but it has been made before. Heifetz, however, may be the
dark horse in the modern fiddle sweepstakes.