"She had engaged the best-known artists. For the solo songs she engaged a woman who had to be carried into the room in a motor chair, and was not allowed to stand up, before three architects had examined the solidity of the floor. Her range was from the deep p to the high l. She sang baritone, and soprano at the same time, and what her tone wanted in width her taille amply replaced. She sang nothing but Wagner, whose music, it would appear, is written for two-ton women only. No smaller tonnage need apply. While she sang, three dozen violins executed the tremolos of five hundred whimpering children, while forty counter-basses gave, every three minutes, a terrible grunt in x minor. There were also fifteen fifes, and twenty-one different kinds of brass instruments, some of which had necks much longer than that of the oldest giraffe. The music was decidedly sensual and nerve-irritating. It was full of chords, both accords and discords, and what little melody there was in it was kneaded out into a tapeworm of prodigious length and such hydralike vitality, that no matter how frequently the strings throttled off its head, it yet constantly recurred bulging out a new head.
"The men present liked the singer; the women adored the music. It gave them all sorts of shivers, and although they did not understand it at all, they yet felt that here was a new shiver. Or as one of them, the bright Mrs Blazing, remarked: 'Quel artiste que ce M. Wagner! He has translated into music the grating noise of a comb on silk, the creaking of a rusty key in an old lock, and the strident rasp of a skidding sleigh or motor on hard-frozen snow.'
"The next artist was a Belgian violinist. For reasons that you alone, O Zeus, could tell us, the Belgians are credited with a special gift for pulling strings in general, and those of the violin in particular. Being a nation midway between the Germans and the French, they are believed to possess much of German musical talent and something of French elegance. This would easily make them good 'cello players. But not satisfied with the 'cello, in which they have excelled more than one nation, they must needs be great violinists too. However, the violin, while not at all the king of instruments, is yet the most vindictive and jealous amongst them. It is like the Lorelei: it allures hundreds, only to dash their bones against the rock of Failure. It wants the delicacy of a woman and the strength of a man. It requires the soul of spring and the heart of summer to play it well.
"A Belgian is eo ipso debarred from reaching the height of violin-playing; just as a Chinaman, with his over-specialised mind, can never well play the orchestral piano. A Belgian heart is moving in a colourless and slouching andante; the violin moves in a profoundly agitated adagio or allegro. The violin is the instrument of luckless nations, such as were formerly the Italians, the Poles, and the Hungarians who gave us Paganini, Wienavski and Joachim. The Belgians have nearly always enjoyed the embonpoint of fat prosperity. 'Leur jeu bedonne,' as Mrs Blazing would say.
"The Belgian played your Chaconne in D minor, O Bach."
At these words of Alcibiades all the thinkers and poets present rose from their seats and bowed to John Sebastian, who stood near Strabo and Aristotle, being exceedingly fond of geographical lore. Even the gods applauded and Polyhymnia allowed him to kiss her hands.
"You remember, O John Sebastian, when I met you near Lützen at one of your solitary walks and you spoke to me of your Chaconne. I listened with rapt attention and told you that your composition, which you then played to me on a violin which the old inn-keeper lent you and which had just arrived from Steiner in Tyrol, rendered as perfectly as possible the sentiments I had felt when for the first time in my life I went to the Oracle at Dodona, where the winds rush through the high oak-trees with a fierce power such as can be heard in no other spot in Europe. I re-imagined my awe-struck meditations in the holy grove; I heard the stormy music of Zeus' winds in Zeus' trees; I again felt all through me the soul-moving chorus of the priests which ends in a jubilating mood, and finally I left with deep regret at having to re-enter my life of stress after having spent a day in sacred and mystic seclusion.
"When the Belgian artist played it, I listened in vain for Dodona. What I heard was the rustling of silken tones through the wood of the chairs and tables at the Carlton. Where was the Oracle? Where the chorus of the priests? Where their jubilation? The only thing that I found were my regrets. But the public was charmed. It is imperative to admire the Chaconne, chiefly because it is played Violin solo. Mrs Blazing explained the matter to me with her wonted rapidity of mind: 'Why wonder at our admiration of the Chaconne? Do we not say: "Chacun à son goût?"'