CONTENTS
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I
EUGÈNE YSAYE
THE TOOLS OF VIOLIN MASTERY
Who is there among contemporary masters
of the violin whose name stands for more at
the present time than that of the great Belgian
artist, his "extraordinary temperamental
power as an interpreter" enhanced by a hundred
and one special gifts of tone and technic,
gifts often alluded to by his admiring colleagues?
For Ysaye is the greatest exponent
of that wonderful Belgian school of violin
playing which is rooted in his teachers Vieuxtemps
and Wieniawski, and which as Ysaye
himself says, "during a period covering seventy
years reigned supreme at the Conservatoire
in Paris in the persons of Massart, Remi,
Marsick, and others of its great interpreters."
What most impresses one who meets Ysaye
and talks with him for the first time is the mental
breadth and vision of the man; his kindness
and amiability; his utter lack of small vanity.
When the writer first called on him in New
York with a note of introduction from his
friend and admirer Adolfo Betti, and later at
Scarsdale where, in company with his friend
Thibaud, he was dividing his time between music
and tennis, Ysaye made him entirely at
home, and willingly talked of his art and its
ideals. In reply to some questions anent his
own study years, he said:
"Strange to say, my father was my very
first teacher—it is not often the case. I studied
with him until I went to the Liège Conservatory
in 1867, where I won a second prize,
sharing it with Ovide Musin, for playing Viotti's
22d Concerto. Then I had lessons from
Wieniawski in Brussels and studied two years
with Vieuxtemps in Paris. Vieuxtemps was
a paralytic when I came to him; yet a wonderful
teacher, though he could no longer play.
And I was already a concertizing artist when
I met him. He was a very great man, the
grandeur of whose tradition lives in the whole
'romantic school' of violin playing. Look at
his seven concertos—of course they are written
with an eye to effect, from the virtuoso's
standpoint, yet how firmly and solidly they are
built up! How interesting is their working-out:
and the orchestral score is far more than
a mere accompaniment. As regards virtuose
effect only Paganini's music compares with
his, and Paganini, of course, did not play it as
it is now played. In wealth of technical development,
in true musical expressiveness
Vieuxtemps is a master. A proof is the fact
that his works have endured forty to fifty
years, a long life for compositions.
"Joachim, Léonard, Sivori, Wieniawski—all
admired Vieuxtemps. In Paganini's and
Locatelli's works the effect, comparatively
speaking, lies in the mechanics; but Vieuxtemps
is the great artist who made the instrument
take the road of romanticism which
Hugo, Balzac and Gauthier trod in literature.
And before all the violin was made to charm,
to move, and Vieuxtemps knew it. Like
Rubinstein, he held that the artist must first
of all have ideas, emotional power—his technic
must be so perfected that he does not have
to think of it! Incidentally, speaking of
schools of violin playing, I find that there is a
great tendency to confuse the Belgian and
French. This should not be. They are distinct,
though the latter has undoubtedly been
formed and influenced by the former. Many
of the great violin names, in fact,—Vieuxtemps,
Léonard, Marsick, Remi, Parent, de
Broux, Musin, Thomson,—are all Belgian."
YSAYE'S REPERTORY
Ysaye spoke of Vieuxtemps's repertory—only
he did not call it that: he spoke of the
Vieuxtemps compositions and of Vieuxtemps
himself. "Vieuxtemps wrote in the grand
style; his music is always rich and sonorous. If
his violin is really to sound, the violinist must
play Vieuxtemps, just as the 'cellist plays Servais.
You know, in the Catholic Church, at
Vespers, whenever God's name is spoken, we
bow the head. And Wieniawski would always
bow his head when he said: 'Vieuxtemps is the
master of us all!'
"I have often played his Fifth Concerto, so
warm, brilliant and replete with temperament,
always full-sounding, rich in an almost unbounded
strength. Of course, since Vieuxtemps
wrote his concertos, a great variety of
fine modern works has appeared, the appreciation
of chamber-music has grown and developed,
and with it that of the sonata. And
the modern violin sonata is also a vehicle for
violin virtuosity in the very best meaning of
the word. The sonatas of César Franck,
d'Indy, Théodore Dubois, Lekeu, Vierne, Ropartz,
Lazarri—they are all highly expressive,
yet at the same time virtuose. The violin
parts develop a lovely song line, yet their technic
is far from simple. Take Lekeu's splendid
Sonata in G major; rugged and massive,
making decided technical demands—it yet has
a wonderful breadth of melody, a great expressive
quality of song."
These works—those who have heard the
Master play the beautiful Lazarri sonata this
season will not soon forget it—are all dedicated
to Ysaye. And this holds good, too, of
the César Franck sonata. As Ysaye says:
"Performances of these great sonatas call for
two artists—for their piano parts are sometimes
very elaborate. César Franck sent me
his sonata on September 26, 1886, my wedding
day—it was his wedding present! I cannot
complain as regards the number of works,
really important works, inscribed to me. There
are so many—by Chausson (his symphony),
Ropartz, Dubois (his sonata—one of the best
after Franck), d'Indy (the Istar variations
and other works), Gabriel Fauré (the Quintet),
Debussy (the Quartet)! There are
more than I can recall at the moment—violin
sonatas, symphonic music, chamber-music,
choral works, compositions of every kind!
"Debussy, as you know, wrote practically
nothing originally for the violin and piano—with
the exception, perhaps, of a work published
by Durand during his last illness. Yet
he came very near writing something for me.
Fifteen years ago he told me he was composing
a 'Nocturne' for me. I went off on a concert
tour and was away a long time. When I
returned to Paris I wrote to Debussy to find
out what had become of my 'Nocturne.' And
he replied that, somehow, it had shaped itself
up for orchestra instead of a violin solo. It
is one of the Trois Nocturnes for orchestra.
Perhaps one reason why so much has been inscribed
to me is the fact that as an interpreting
artist, I have never cultivated a 'specialty.' I
have played everything from Bach to Debussy,
for real art should be international!"
Ysaye himself has an almost marvelous
right-arm and fingerboard control, which enables
him to produce at will the finest and most
subtle tonal nuances in all bowings. Then,
too, he overcomes the most intricate mechanical
problems with seemingly effortless ease.
And his tone has well been called "golden."
His own definition of tone is worth recording.
He says it should be "In music what the heart
suggests, and the soul expresses!"
THE TOOLS OF VIOLIN MASTERY
"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!
VIOLIN MASTERY
"When I take the whole history of the
violin into account I feel that the true inwardness
of 'Violin Mastery' is best expressed
by a kind of threefold group of great artists.
First, in the order of romantic expression, we
have a trinity made up of Corelli, Viotti and
Vieuxtemps. Then there is a trinity of mechanical
perfection, composed of Locatelli,
Tartini and Paganini or, a more modern
equivalent, César Thomson, Kubelik and Burmeister.
And, finally, what I might call in
the order of lyric expression, a quartet comprising
Ysaye, Thibaud, Mischa Elman and
Sametini of Chicago, the last-named a wonderfully
fine artist of the lyric or singing type.
Of course there are qualifications to be made.
Locatelli was not altogether an exponent of
technic. And many other fine artists besides
those mentioned share the characteristics of
those in the various groups. Yet, speaking in
a general way, I believe that these groups of
attainment might be said to sum up what
'Violin Mastery' really is. And a violin master?
He must be a violinist, a thinker, a poet,
a human being, he must have known hope, love,
passion and despair, he must have run the
gamut of the emotions in order to express them
all in his playing. He must play his violin as
Pan played his flute!"
In conclusion Ysaye sounded a note of warning
for the too ambitious young student and
player. "If Art is to progress, the technical
and mechanical element must not, of course, be
neglected. But a boy of eighteen cannot expect
to express that to which the serious student
of thirty, the man who has actually lived,
can give voice. If the violinist's art is truly a
great art, it cannot come to fruition in the artist's
'teens. His accomplishment then is no
more than a promise—a promise which finds
its realization in and by life itself. Yet Americans
have the brains as well as the spiritual
endowment necessary to understand and appreciate
beauty in a high degree. They can
already point with pride to violinists who emphatically
deserve to be called artists, and another
quarter-century of artistic striving may
well bring them into the front rank of violinistic
achievement!"
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