"With regard to mechanism," Ysaye continued, "at the present day the
tools of violin mastery, of expression, technic, mechanism, are far more
necessary than in days gone by. In fact they are indispensable, if the
spirit is to express itself without restraint. And the greater
mechanical command one has the less noticeable it becomes. All that
suggests effort, awkwardness, difficulty, repels the listener, who more
than anything else delights in a singing violin tone. Vieuxtemps often
said: _Pas de trait pour le trait--chantez, chantez_! (Not runs for the
sake of runs--sing, sing!)
"Too many of the technicians of the present day no longer sing. Their
difficulties--they surmount them more or less happily; but the effect is
too apparent, and though, at times, the listener may be astonished, he
can never be charmed. Agile fingers, sure of themselves, and a perfect
bow stroke are essentials; and they must be supremely able to carry
along the rhythm and poetic action the artist desires. Mechanism
becomes, if anything, more accessible in proportion as its domain is
enriched by new formulas. The violinist of to-day commands far greater
technical resources than did his predecessors. Paganini is accessible to
nearly all players: Vieuxtemps no longer offers the difficulties he did
thirty years ago. Yet the wood-wind, brass and even the string
instruments subsist in a measure on the heritage transmitted by the
masters of the past. I often feel that violin teaching to-day endeavors
to develop the esthetic sense at too early a stage. And in devoting
itself to the _head_ it forgets the _hands_, with the result that the
young soldiers of the violinistic army, full of ardor and courage, are
ill equipped for the great battle of art.
"In this connection there exists an excellent set of _Études-Caprices_
by E. Chaumont, which offer the advanced student new elements and
formulas of development. Though in some of them 'the frame is too large
for the picture,' and though difficult from a violinistic point of view,
'they lie admirably well up the neck,' to use one of Vieuxtemps's
expressions, and I take pleasure in calling attention to them.
"When I said that the string instruments, including the violin, subsist
in a measure on the heritage transmitted by the masters of the past, I
spoke with special regard to technic. Since Vieuxtemps there has been
hardly one new passage written for the violin; and this has retarded the
development of its technic. In the case of the piano, men like Godowsky
have created a new technic for their instrument; but although
Saint-Saëns, Bruch, Lalo and others have in their works endowed the
violin with much beautiful music, music itself was their first concern,
and not music for the violin. There are no more concertos written for
the solo flute, trombone, etc.--as a result there is no new technical
material added to the resources of these instruments.
"In a way the same holds good of the violin--new works conceived only
from the musical point of view bring about the stagnation of technical
discovery, the invention of new passages, of novel harmonic wealth of
combination is not encouraged. And a violinist owes it to himself to
exploit the great possibilities of his own instrument. I have tried to
find new technical ways and means of expression in my own compositions.
For example, I have written a _Divertiment_ for violin and orchestra in
which I believe I have embodied new thoughts and ideas, and have
attempted to give violin technic a broader scope of life and vigor.
"In the days of Viotti and Rode the harmonic possibilities were more
limited--they had only a few chords, and hardly any chords of the ninth.
But now harmonic material for the development of a new violin technic is
there: I have some violin studies, in ms., which I may publish some day,
devoted to that end. I am always somewhat hesitant about
publishing--there are many things I might publish, but I have seen so
much brought out that was banal, poor, unworthy, that I have always been
inclined to mistrust the value of my own creations rather than fall into
the same error. We have the scale of Debussy and his successors to draw
upon, their new chords and successions of fourths and fifths--for new
technical formulas are always evolved out of and follow after new
harmonic discoveries--though there is as yet no violin method which
gives a fingering for the whole-tone scale. Perhaps we will have to wait
until Kreisler or I will have written one which makes plain the new
flowering of technical beauty and esthetic development which it brings
the violin.
"As to teaching violin, I have never taught violin in the generally
accepted sense of the phrase. But at Godinne, where I usually spent my
summers when in Europe, I gave a kind of traditional course in the works
of Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski and other masters to some forty or fifty
artist-students who would gather there--the same course I look forward
to giving in Cincinnati, to a master class of very advanced pupils. This
was and will be a labor of love, for the compositions of Vieuxtemps and
Wieniawski especially are so inspiring and yet, as a rule, they are so
badly played--without grandeur or beauty, with no thought of the
traditional interpretation--that they seem the piecework of technic
factories!