a negro violinist—sierra leone—some violinists—wagner—a sea chantey—old memories

when i got back to sierra leone i was glad of a rest and stayed at the english hotel for a couple of weeks. at freetown i heard a negro play the violin really well. he held the fiddle to his breast, instead of to his chin, and played raff’s cavatina and la serenata, very expressively. i complimented him on his playing, and discovered that a hungarian violin-player had given him a course of lessons. he played african dances and melodies wonderfully well. we had a glorious time, that negro violinist and i.

in an old bungalow by a native village where soldiers and white men congregated we gave concerts night after night. the men came from far and near and joined in the sing-songs; our small, extemporised orchestra played homeland songs; the exiles shouted themselves hoarse. we made up part songs and put our own words to them, and the natives came from the village and peeped into our bungalow with delighted eyes and ears as we scraped away. it was there that i wrote the melody that is now the trio of my military march, sierra leone. this is how it went in the original setting; a few years later i made a military march trio of the strain and sold it to a london publisher. i heard it performed by sousa’s band at several commemoration festivals in new york city.

i have heard many violinists, among them joachim, whom i heard when i was a boy. while on a ship in the east india docks i obtained leave from the skipper for a saturday afternoon off, and full of excitement went to sydenham and heard the great violinist perform at the crystal palace. to tell the truth, i was disappointed. he played a viotti concerto, stood like a statue, and his fingers and arms moved with the ease of machinery. his bearded face was raised toward the ceiling the whole time, as though he saw some beautiful sight in the sky above the palace roof. it struck me as a very refined and intellectual-looking face. his playing revealed perfection in the trained artistic sense, but lacked the fire and emotion born of the singing stars.

i heard sarasate play at his villa near biarritz. his nostrils dilated and pinched in as he played, and he had all that joachim lacked (when joachim played in public), for he was a spiritual player; you could have thought that the angels were wailing and fingering his own heart-strings. m. ysaye played rather like sarasate, but seemed more conscious of his own ability, which destroyed the atmosphere of the public performance which i happened to hear.

kubelik i have heard twice, at bournemouth and in new south wales. he performed with joachim’s machinery-like ease; his double-stopping revealed the perfection of the performer’s ear and the dexterity of the fingers that seemed to outdo the player’s own heart; but it struck me as cold playing, as if the player’s command over technique was greater than his musical temperament.

i have often heard it said that the marvellous technique of paganini is to-day the technical equipment of all violin virtuosos. i doubt it. certainly they are not mentally equipped with his way of playing. when you look at paganini’s compositions you see something that is the outcome of one personality, the white heat of genius who first discovered the musical gold mines in the depths of the violin. what must the man have been whose genius was so intense that he invented that which all others imitate and call their equipment? paganini could not leave his playing to posterity, but a true critic can look at those individual compositions and dream of the tremendous passion that inspired the maestro to leave us those fugitive echoes of his playing, for that is all they are. paganini played like an inspired, deep-feeling barbarian; his style was not artifice and did not represent, by artistic bowing and phrasing, the niceties of polite emotion and the artistries of civilisation. we have no compositions as he played them. he stood before his awestruck audience and extemporised melodies, chords, sparkling arpeggios and staccato and cadenzas, that were all half forgotten when the intense musical fury of his heart ceased and the magic fingers were silent; and so we have only hints of his style. his imitators scrape out phonographic records of his published compositions and say they are equipped with paganini’s art.

i heard an english violinist, henley, in london. i was off to jamaica next morning and only heard him by accident. a friend of mine said: “come in this hall.” we went in, and i was astonished. i thought at first that the violinist whom i saw playing, with joachim’s ease and sarasate’s passion, must be some foreigner; but he was an englishman. his double-stopping was superb, with a passionate fire in it alien to kubelik’s temperament, i should think. altogether he was really the most artistic and passionate player i ever heard, sarasate excepted. while he played i realised that note that tells of genius, which makes you feel that the performer’s violin and fingers are imperfect instruments, are not as great as the heart that is trying to express its depth of feeling upon strings.

i went abroad after that. i have not heard since of henley the wonderful violinist. he was english, and i suppose london’s fashionable musical world positively refused to go mad about an englishman when so many german and austrian violinists were about.

i heard “king billy,” the australian aboriginal king, play the violin by the kerb-side in sydney. he was the world’s worst “great violinist,” made a squeaking row and thought more of the cash the colonials dropped in his tin pot than of the melody which he performed.

river scene, west africa

an artistic public performance on the violin is widely divided from the poetry of violin-playing in solitude, out of sheer love to express the performer’s feelings and relieve the tension of sorrow and joy that is oppressing him. when i was a boy, staying at leichardt, in sydney, i heard someone playing the violin and accompanying his playing with his own voice. the sound came from a little wooden house on a flat. i stood still and listened. it was dusk. on the window was a bit of scribbled paper: “room to let, cheap.” that gave me a good excuse, for i was intensely curious to see the man who played and sang so beautifully. i knocked at the door and was asked in, and i got in conversation with the player. he was a norwegian with a handsome face, but unshaved and worried-looking. his wife was about thirty years older than he was, and as he played to me she sat near and her old wrinkled face beamed with delight as i praised his playing. he played by ear and was self-taught. i could easily see that. but he was a great violinist. he expressed his very soul as he played, in a weird, peculiar style, norwegian melodies. i felt greatly drawn toward him as he played and sang to me, looking past me with steady, dreaming eyes as he extemporised sweet strains. he had hard, rough hands, through working on the roads. i saw him night after night. i thought at first that his wife was his mother, and i said, “your son is a real musician.” when he smiled at me and said, “my wife, not mother,” i felt very uncomfortable. he took her old wrinkled hand and led her into the little kitchen and kissed her tenderly. i suppose norwegian women age quickly, or they had fallen in love with each other when he was quite a lad; but it was beautiful to see their sincere, sweetheart-like affection for each other.

he secured a job on the broken hill silver mines, packed up and went off to melbourne. i never saw him again. i often think of him and his clever, handsome face as he sat breathing heavily and playing and singing to me. he would have been better than joachim and kubelik if he had had their technical equipment and no road stones to break and ruin his hands. i cannot remember any special feelings when i heard the great violinists, joachim, kubelik and kreisler, except curiosity and momentary admiration, but the memory of the stone-breaking norwegian’s playing is as vivid to-day as then; and when i think of it all the poetic atmosphere of his playing still haunts me. so if it’s true that time is the great critic of poetry and music, then assuredly, as far as i am concerned, my norwegian friend was the greatest violinist i ever heard.

it is difficult to define art. i suppose anything that appeals to the best emotions in men and women is art. a good deal of what is known as art to-day will soon be cast on the rubbish heap of the medi?val ages with the old ideals and idols. people move in the realms of art as they do in frock-coats; it must be just so, and must have three buttons on the front only; if it has four buttons it’s not art. art should be natural and oblivious of fashion, and, like true religion, beautiful in rags and tatters, pale-faced, walking the streets of humanity, singing with the birds and stars, and looked down upon by affluence.

do the thousands who hear wagner understand the depth and meaning of the music as wagner thought they would understand? do they hear the barbarian note in his music that tells so well of the savagery of the german people, the barbarian shriek, the exultation over the fallen and the tramp of bloodthirsty warriors driving the helpless victims of the fallen cities before them? i do not think so. it’s fashionable, and to have heard wagner is to be in the fashion, and so off people go and hear and see “wagner.” most of them would more thoroughly understand and enjoy a phonographic record of a solomon islander’s cannibalistic dance, accompanied by living pictures of the scantily clad native men and women, beating their drums and whirling round the blushing bride, clad in half a coco-nut shell and her hair only. their funerals are conducted with the same austere art that makes them all go and see wagner.

i like beethoven and mendelssohn’s concertos, also schubert’s music, indeed all the really good classical compositions, but my memory of the old chantey, blow the man down, as i heard it sung, and sang it myself, with crooked-nosed old sailors as we rounded cape horn, with seas crashing over the decks and the flying scud racing the moon, the old skipper on the poop shouting, muffled to the teeth in oilskins, his grey beard swinging sideways to the wind as the full-rigged ship dipped and rolled homeward bound, is something of music, singing and haunting my soul, that will only die when my memory dies. i can still see the crew climbing aloft and along the yards, their shadows falling softly through the moonlit grey sails and yards on to the decks. melodies from the sails aloft, gliding under the stars, still sing beautifully to me as i watch the sleeping sailors, far out at sea, in their tossing bunks. then they stand by the galley door, with their mugs for the hot coffee, while the chief mate tramps away the night to and fro on the poop, humming soon we’ll be in london town. then, as i dream, the sails crumble in the moonlight, the decks are awash, sink and disappear; sailors are struggling in the moonlit waters. their white hands are tossed up as they sink, one by one; and now daybreak steals over the sky-lines that fence that vast grave of wandering waters.

often memories play on the strings of my heart as i stand listening to the great orchestra of the winds fingering the giant forest boughs, or to the noise of seas on the moonlit shores.