ALBERT SPALDING
THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE
DEVELOPMENT OF AN ARTIST
For the duration of the war Albert Spalding the violinist became Albert Spalding the soldier. As First Lieutenant in the Aviation Service, U.S.A., he maintained the ideals of civilization on the Italian front with the same devotion he gave to those of Art in the piping times of peace. As he himself said not so very long ago: "You cannot do two things, and do them properly, at the same time. At the present moment there is more music for me in the factories gloriously grinding out planes and motors than in a symphony of Beethoven. And to-day I would rather run on an office-boy's errand for my country and do it as well as I can, if it's to serve my country, than to play successfully a Bach Chaconne; and I would rather hear a well directed battery of American guns blasting the Road of Peace and Victorious Liberty than the combined applause of ten thousand audiences. For it is my conviction that Art has as much at stake in this War as Democracy."
| Copyright by Matzene, Chicago |
Albert Spalding
Yet Lieutenant Spalding, despite the arduous demands of his patriotic duties, found time to answer some questions of the writer in the interests of "Violin Mastery" which, representing the views and opinions of so eminent and distinctively American a violinist, cannot fail to interest every lover of the Art. Writing from Rome (Sept. 9, 1918), Lieutenant Spalding modestly said that his answers to the questions asked "will have to be simple and short, because my time is very limited, and then, too, having been out of music for more than a year, I feel it difficult to deal in more than a general way with some of the questions asked."