Violin Mastery | Page 4

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!"

II
LEOPOLD AUER
A METHOD WITHOUT SECRETS
When that celebrated laboratory of budding musical genius, the
Petrograd Conservatory, closed its doors indefinitely owing to the
disturbed political conditions of Russia, the famous violinist and
teacher Professor Leopold Auer decided to pay the visit to the United
States which had so repeatedly been urged on him by his friends and
pupils. His fame, owing to such heralds as Efrem Zimbalist, Mischa
Elman, Kathleen Parlow, Eddy Brown, Francis MacMillan, and more
recently Sascha Heifetz, Toscha Seidel, and Max Rosen, had long since
preceded him; and the reception accorded him in this country, as a
soloist and one of the greatest exponents and teachers of his instrument,
has been one justly due to his authority and preëminence.
It was not easy to have a heart-to-heart talk with the Master anent his
art, since every minute of his time was precious. Yet ushered into his
presence, the writer discovered that he had laid aside for the moment
other preoccupations, and was amiably responsive to all questions,
once their object had been disclosed. Naturally, the first and burning
question in the case of so celebrated a pedagogue was: "How do you
form such wonderful artists? What is the secret of your method?"
[Illustration: LEOPOLD AUER, with hand-written note]