Books › Violin mastery; talks with master violinists and teachers, comprising interviews with Ysaye, Kreisler, Elman, Auer, Thibaud, Heifetz, Hartmann, Maud Powell and others, 1919 › scan 310
Scan 310
Violin mastery; talks with master violinists and teachers, comprising interviews with Ysaye, Kreisler, Elman, Auer, Thibaud, Heifetz, Hartmann, Maud Powell and others, 1919
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 264. See the scan on archive.org.
1dividual, it really represents him. And a teacher or a colleague of greater fame does him no kindness if he encourages him to distrust his own powers by too good naturedly 'showing' him how to do this, that or the other. I mean, when the student can work out his problem himself at the expense of a little initiative.
3"When I was younger I once had to play Bach's G minor fugue at a concert in Brussels. I was living at Ysaye's home, and since I had never played the composition in public before, I began to worry about its interpretation. So I asked Ysaye (thinking he would simply show me), 'How ought I to play this fugue?' The Master reflected a moment and then dashed my hopes by answering: 'Tu m'embêtes!' (You bore me!) 'This fugue should be played well, that's all!' At first I was angry, but thinking it over, I realized that if he had shown me, I would have played it just as he did; while what he wanted me to do was to work out my own version, and depend on my own initiative—which I did, for I had no choice. It is by means of concentration on the higher, the interpretative phases of one's Art that the technical side takes its proper, secondary place. Technic does not exist for me in the sense of a certain quantity of mechan-
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.