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 Bériot 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, Diémer, Planté, 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 Bériot 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.