Fiddler's Lure

OLD KING COLE is known to most of us as a mere sybarite, lolling forever in a luxuriously Parish foreground while others fetched and fiddled for him.

He has been grossly misrepresented. The true key to his famous Gemüthlichkeit lies in the fact that he played the ’cello. For what more could any amateur of chamber-music desire than what lay at his beck and call? In one of his posthumous poems the king declares, —

What I most admire in Cole is that he was not carried to these musical skies ‘on flow’ry beds of ease,’ like Hermes, who, as Jacob Grimm declares, ‘was born early in the morning, and played the lute at mid-day.’ He idled along no royal road to opus fiftynine. There was none. In his day there was as yet no telo-melo-’cello to be operated by an electric button. In the sweat of his youthful brow he earned his merry old soul. Alone, with bow in hand, it was his to do battle with those giants Grützmacher and Giese, the Czernys of the ’cello. He waded solo, in the wake of his humblest subjects, through the ‘bloody seas’ of Duport and Romberg. For him the raw finger-tip, the twice furrowed thumb, and the chronic crick in the back of the neck. Not only this. He was actually handicapped in the race. For corporate expansion had already passed so far beyond the royal control that when he played, his arms stuck straight out in front like those of the huge ’cellist in the Thomas Orchestra whom we used to call ‘The Frog.’

Such were King Cole’s difficulties, such his incentives for toil, — and they were the most dazzling incentives that any learner of musical lore could have. Before his eyes hovered fiddlers three, with the Beethoven parts waiting on the racks, and merely a ’cellist lacking to complete the magic circle. It was a goal more glamorous than any vision of initialed sweaters that ever lured the sore, disheartened little quarterback to let himself be battered about on the scrub a week longer. Only there was this difference, — that the royal pilgrim toward Beethoven’s candykitchen had been sustained, almost from the first step, on crumbs of the bulky sweets of his aspiration.

And how luscious and satisfying such crumbs are! How far more indulgent is ‘Papa’ Haydn to weak, groping fingers and stiff wrists than is the man of wrath who divided all Gaul into ‘ three halves,’ to the tender victim of ‘amo, amas, amat.' As for me, I know that when I began the ’cello I never could have weathered the blasts of Dotzhauer, or the fogs of Franchomme, or held a middle course between the scales of Scylla and the double-stops of divine Charybdis, without the tender pilotage of those makers of music, great and small, whose it is to inspire and guide little keels through the troubled sounds of apprenticeship.

I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but with a flute at my lips; and, until the age of fifteen, tootled what I thought the divinest of instruments. Then, one morning, I chanced upon an old ’cello in the attic, and an instruction-book with a long strip of paper which, pasted under the strings, promised a short-cut to virtuosity; for it pointed out exactly where to put each finger.

A week of furtive practice convinced me that I could play the ’cello, though I now remember grasping the bow like a tennis-racket and the fingerboard like a trolley-strap. I found one of those jolly trios which dear old Gurlitt so obligingly wrote in notes of one syllable, foregathered with a couple of schoolmates, — a brother and sister who played the violin and piano, — and leaped like a flash into King Cole’s paradise.

No effect of the concert stage has ever enthralled me more than that first chord of ours, when I heard the ’cello tone mingle deliciously with the violin tone, and realized that my bow had made such blending possible. The flute notes had never really mixed with others, but had stood apart by themselves, crystalline, cold, aloof; and perhaps my nature had taken its cue from the flute. But that first trio venture changed everything. There first I tasted the delights of real harmony, — and sealed eternal friendship, before parting, with the little girl who played the piano. Along with democracy and puppy-love, the ’cello came into my life. Heralded so impressively, no wonder it tangled its strings hopelessly among those of my young heart.

For a time I went on indulging in Gurlitt and considering myself a master. Then I went to live with a Western cousin, an enthusiastic amateur violinist, — and experienced a severe shock. For I learned what real chamber-music was. Gurlitt fell from my eyes like scales, and the conviction came that once I could hold a part in the trios of Gade or the quartettes of Rubinstein I might be gathered contentedly to my fathers; I should have warmed both hands before the fire of life, and could then anticipate nothing but carrying out the ashes.

Spurred thus, I found a teacher and unlearned the empirical method with groanings which cannot here be uttered; while ambition was kept in vigorous health by my cousin’s nightly séances of chamber-music with more accomplished players than I.

Finally the dreamed-of moment came. I was permitted to try my hand. The others suffered in silence. As for me, from then on life held a gluttonous measure of unalloyed bliss. The delights of that performance could not have been more thrilling to me if, with true Orphic cunning, my instrument had caused the dining-table to rustle its leaves and the cat to perform on the hearth-rug the dance of the seven veils. I could play the notes — most of them — loud and clear. What more does the hardened amateur demand from life? For the second time I supposed myself a master, and was ready to sing my Nunc dimittis, — and to practice cheerfully three hours a day.

Then I heard a professional quartette. The flame of mere sound and fury set for me. Kneisel and Schroeder with the host of heaven came. And lo! creation widened in my view. With amazement I began to realize the subtle potentialities of tone-color, the fascinations of dynamics. It dawned on me that to most young amateurs pianissimo was an almost meaningless expression; and I began to count that musical self-assertiveness almost indecent which fiddles away forever with three f’s. My heart leaped up in response to that complete ensemble, — four bows with but a single thought, — to the infinite variety of the tonal effects, to the technic so taken for granted that it never revealed itself or its basal sheep-gut, horsehair,and resin. Here at last, to set final bounds for aspiration, was the authentic oracle of Apollo, — and the practice hours aspired accordingly from three to six.

Since those first callow months at my cousin’s, his musical palate and mine have grown more discriminating. It takes a Brahms to-day to brim the cup of joy which a Raff then sweetly overflowed. As for those garbled symphonies and operas, — the transcriptions at which we once fiddled away so happily and in such good faith, — we brand them now as ‘ derangements ’ and had as lief perform The Messiah on a couple of Jew’s-harps.

Nevertheless, as I look back through the years to that time, three significant facts emerge. In the first place, it is clear that I never should have persevered in all that painful practice without the weekly reward of ‘virtuosity’ when, every Saturday afternoon, little Miss Second Violin and dear big Mr. Viola came from town and were rushed out of their overcoats and had their hands warmed with jubilant massage and then were plumped down before the G major Mozart and hardly allowed time for preliminary caterwaulings before my cousin’s firm command came, ‘No ante-mortems!’ and his ‘three-four’ detonated, and at last we were outward bound for fairy-land.

Yet even that Mozartian reward — joyous as it was — would scarcely have kept me so long on the rack of the thumb-positions, or doubled up in the chromatic treadmill, had it not been for the ‘far-off, divine event’ symbolized by the opus fifty-nine, gleaming just within the portals of King Cole’s paradise.

Ah, there is nothing like a taste of chamber-music to make the idle apprentice industrious. It is the real fiddler’s lure, — the kindly light that has the power to lead him o’er musical moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till the dusk of mere technic merges into the dawn of attainment. I sometimes wonder why American parents do not realize what kind of love it is that makes the musical world go round. German parents do — and that leads to my secondly.

German parents know, also, that there is nothing better for the unity of the home than the sport of chambermusic. To associate the hearth in the children’s minds with the intimate, exquisite democracy of ensemble, with the rapture of perpetually new achievement, with the spirit of beauty and an ever growing appreciation of that spirit, is to go far toward insuring the success of the family, and even the solidarity of the neighborhood.

Chamber-music as a home sport can accomplish more yet. Who can doubt, in the third place, that fiddler’s lure helps in smoothing the child’s way through life? For the experienced amateur of chamber-music, go where he will, even in our semi-musical country, is sure of a welcome. His bow is a master key to all doors. And the welcome is not always for the fiddle alone, — as the violinist thought who declined an invitation to dine on the ground that he had hurt his second finger. For the democracy, the constant give-and-take of the quartette and the sonata has extracted a deal of the stiffness and conceit and dogmatism from him and left him more human and more diplomatic.

Besides all these advantages, his talent adds a perpetual sparkle of romance — real or potential — to what might otherwise have turned out a hopelessly dun existence. You never can tell what friend-ever-after may not come rushing up to you after a concert with glowing face and outstretched hand, to announce himself. (I understand that my father first beheld my mother as he was ending an amateur flute solo.) A certain ’cellist was once snowbound for three hours at a small railroad station. He unpacked his ’cello and played his dozen fellow sufferers a request programme, with the result that one of them took him to Europe for a year. You never can tell as you bear your precious fiddle-case through the streets, what magic casement may not open on the foam (of steins), and what faery hand may not beckon you within to do the one thing needful to opus fifty-nine, or draw a valiant bow in the battle of Schumann Quintette.

True amateurs of chamber-music do not often have to be formally introduced. Theodore Thomas used to declare that he could tell a violinist from a ’cellist on the street by the swing of his arms. By kindred signs so subtle as to escape the layman, initiates recognize each other everywhere. And it is this world-wide confraternity of fiddlers that makes travel for the true amateur a joyous series of adventures.

It is particularly joyous, of course, in Germany, where every third house holds a devotee ready to welcome a brother chamber-musician with open arms. In Dr. Hale’s famous story, the belated traveler through a hostile countryside had merely to murmur ‘ In His name,’ and hospitable hearths blazed for him like magic. But in certain German villages, if you are really of the elect, you need not say a word. You have merely to whistle some theme from opus fifty-nine.

During many years I have cherished an alluring plan for a sort of musical Inland Voyage. The outfit would comprise fiddlers three who would have to be kindred spirits of mine, a house-boat, a complete library of chamber-music, — and a cook. Then we would float down some beautiful German river, the Elbe, say, or the Neckar, and sit playing quartettes on the sunny deck until we came to a village that looked unmistakably chamber-musical. There we would land and invite all the local members of our great confraternity to repair to us. With them — even to the limits of the loathed nonet — we would perform mightily before the populace assembled on the shore, until it pleased us to cast off and drift down to adventures new.

Our craft should bear two inscriptions. Round about the prow we would write, —

The Faerie Queene would furnish the motto astern: —

Perhaps we should be arrested as unofficial vagrants and haled on shore to pay a fine of twelve cents and a half. Perhaps, even more delightful, some mighty composer whom we had all loved from afar might be summering at one of the river Dörfer, and might board us and enter into the spirit of the quest, and, with his revered feet, like as not, trailing in the water back by the tiller, would then and there compose and dedicate with heartfeltest representations of his imperishable esteem to the highwell-born Fiddlers four, his destinedto-be-world-famous Vagabondia Quartette. But alas! I fear me that the Musical Inland Voyage, fraught as it is with rich possibilities in the way of music and life,—and magazine articles, — is destined to be the booty of fatter purses and more golden pens than mine.

At any rate, let us have done with the utilitarian side of fiddler’s lure, — its toil-persuading, home-solidifying, friend-attracting, romance-compelling attributes. The royal sport I would sing for its own sake.

Why is ensemble music the sole recreation definitely promised us in the future life? Obviously because it combines the most fun with the fewest drawbacks. Milton, indeed, goes so far as to give the angelic musicians ‘ harps ever tuned,’ thereby reducing the drawbacks to zero. True, we hear something of these harps being played en masse, which smacks more of orchestral than of chamber-music; though I cherish a hope that these masses are merely proportioned to the size of the chambers in the upper mansions. However this may be, we can rest assured that there wait above, the nobler delights of the string quartette, though reserved, perhaps, for those sainted capitalists, those plutocrats, of bliss who have on earth laid up the fattest dividends in heaven through dynamic selfabnegation when it was the other fellow’s turn for a solo. For has not Melozzo da Forli immortalized for us on the walls of St. Peter’s a small combination of angelic amateurs who are having a simply heavenly time —

By referring to ‘the nobler delights of the string quartette,’ I mean that chamber-music has a number of advantages over orchestral. There is the literature, for example. The majority of the classic composers have been more happily inspired when writing in the smaller forms than in the larger, and I know of three quartettes and one trio for every symphony of equal musical worth. Vivitur parvo bene indeed in the musical camera.

The string quartette possesses another little realized advantage over the orchestra: it can play in perfect tune. It can follow the natural law decreeing that G sharp is eternally different from A flat. It does not have to ‘temper’ the wind to the shorn bassoon like the orchestra, which finds its tonal life by losing it. For the latter, to secure concord among those baser instruments worked by keys, compromises by taking a nondescript, hybrid note and declaring it to be both G sharp and A flat, that is, both white and black, though its mongrel gray is palpable.

Besides these literary and scientific advantages,—the boon of playing ‘where Art and Nature sing and smile,’ — the quartette has the added advantage of democracy. Now, the orchestra is a monarchy, if not a tyranny, and is aristocratic to its very bow-tips; but in the republic of the string quartette there are no wretched hewers of wood and drawers of water. All men are free and equal. And though the first violin may sparkle, the ’cello wear its heart on its sleeve, and the viola sigh out its mystic soul to the moon with more abandon, perhaps, than the fourth member, yet Secondo knows that he is quite as important as any of his brothers. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. These make the quartette as fertile of friendships as the rush-line. There is a constant give-and-take among the members, a constant pocketing of one’s personal thunder in favor of the man with the message of melody.

And then the humor of the thing, — the infinite varieties of incongruity that are always popping up. There are the accidents, for instance; as when grave and reverend signor ’cello sits plump into a musical puddle; or, at the uttermost tension of his fine, careless rapture, the first violin’s E slips slowly to earth with a most unmusical, most melancholy yowl. There is the endless play of humor in the music itself (which, by the way, deserves a separate essay), and the sudden droll resemblances of the players to nonmusical groups of the philistine world outside, as when the amateurs in Somehow Good reminded De Morgan of a court scene, in ‘the swift pertinence of the repartees of the first violin to the second, the apt résumé and orderly reorganization of their epigrammatic interchanges by the ’cello and the doublebass, the steady typewritten report and summary of the whole by the pianoforte, and the regretful exception to so many reports taken by the clarionet.’

A most convincing proof of the joygiving qualities of chamber-music is the attitude of the professional musician toward it. One rarely hears of the reporter haunting the police court during off hours, or of the mail-carrier indulging in a holiday walking-tour. But many a jaded teacher and slave of the orchestra finds his real raison d’être in playing chamber-music ‘for fun.’

I crossed once on a German liner which had an excellent orchestra among the stewards. This was kept at a surprisingly high standard, though the members were overwhelmed with menial occupations as hard on a fiddler’s fingers as on his temperament; I still remember the pang it cost to see the artist who had just been leading the Unfinished Symphony so divinely, staggering along with a pail of slops. But the spirit of the true chamber-musician is Antæan. I found that the men had formed a quartette, and every evening that they were in port they practiced together after the severe toil of the day, ‘just for fun.’ My old violaplaying steward touched me not a little when he inquired if I had ever come across ‘the miracle-quartettes of Mozart.’ With the flashing eye of youth, he told how he and his comrades had discovered them a few weeks before. ‘Und now,’ he cried ‘to blay dem over eveninks — dat iss all we live for!’ When it comes to comparative capacities for pleasure, however, the amateur, with his fresher, keener musical appetite and unimpaired digestion, can usually give odds to the professional. In my opinion, the real earthly paradise is the amateur quartette party.

I have a perfect memory of such an experience in one of the loveliest parts of Canada, at the home of two brothers, good friends, good fiddlers, and good fellows. As second violinist we had the best professional in that part of the Dominion. For one swift fortnight in that old mansion, girt with lawns and woods and waters, surrounded by congenial souls and the rare warmth of oldtime Canadian hospitality, I tasted an experience that now seems like a visit to the Avilion of some former existence. Quartettes were interwoven with lacrosse; eager talk with forest excursions and trios and tennis; sonatas with swims; poetry with pantry-parties; canoeing with quintettes. Though our standards were not quite as lofty as those of professionals — such as they were, we were actually attaining them; and what artist ever does that?

Never, since our bows trembled on that last, lingering, poignant cadence of opus fifty-nine, have I enjoyed another such musical lark. And I wonder sometimes why it is that we Americans are so long-faced, so academic, over our music; why we do not extract more fun from it. Certainly we possess three of the prime requisites for enjoying the quartette: love of adventure, good nerve, and that ready sympathy for the other fellow’s point of view, which is vulgarly known as ‘sporting blood.’

One of the chamber-musician’s chief delights is to ‘read,’ — to spread out on the racks the crisp new parts, take a deep breath, and together voyage forth into uncharted waters, tensely strung as a captain in the fog, now shaving a sunken rock, now becalmed on a languorous mirror, now in the grip of a hurricane off a lee shore. Or, if the adventure prove not so desperate as this, at least one feels the stimulus, the constant exciting variety as in a close game of tennis, where — no matter what the emergency — one can exultantly depend upon himself to take measures not wholly inadequate to the occasion.

And, as in tennis doubles, there is that same strange, wireless, telepathic something shuttling back and forth between the comrades in the venture, — urging, cautioning, praising, advising with lightning speed, saving the other from utter disaster by a hair, adding, bar for bar, the ineffable commentary of the subliminal, — a thing more akin than aught else I can imagine to the communion of disembodied spirits.

More memorable yet, the experience when the mysterious waves of these soundless words break beyond the little excited circle of players, seemingly so intent upon the notes alone, — and compel the listeners; bending them to the music’s mood.

Most other-worldly of all it is when, in playing with those near and dear, these waves go forth and find among the hearers such capacious spirits that they recoil in tenfold volume to overwhelm the players, so that time and space and the feel of bow and fingerboard go utterly lost and the very presence of the instrument passes, and, rapt out of touch and sight, one’s self is only such another medium for the soul’s expression as are the throbbing strings themselves. Then it is that

Your painter-friend over yonder in the corner with closed eyes, — how he is offering all the tender, sonorous, melting, glowing resources of his young palette to color the music that stirs beneath your unconscious fingers. And there in the doorway leans the pale sculptor, the wonder-worker who can ‘from the sterile womb of stone, raise children unto God.’ In every fibre you feel that he is there,—

See in the far window-seat our lady of song. How the string voices broaden, turn canorous under her silent gaze! Brother, can you not feel the very heart of the music pulse faster, —

Ah! lure of lures indeed — the memory of incomparable hours like these

— the hope of hours yet in store when — as in no other way earth offers — we may ‘feel that we are greater than we know.’