I had lived with war for a long time-almost ten years had passed since the outbreak of the Civil War in Spain-and when peace came to Europe, it seemed at first almost like a dream. There was of course widespread jubilation in France. The people were intoxicated with the air of victory and freedom. And what a change took place overnight in my situation! Nobody, it seemed, could do enough for me. My days were filled with interviews, receptions, offers of degrees from various institutions, lavish banquets. Sometimes at those banquets I used to think what I would have given a few months before for just one of the rolls of bread now left half-eaten on the tables! I moved among crowds of well-wishes, and Catalan flags flew everywhere I went. The French government awarded me the Cross of a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. I was made an honorary citizen of a number of French towns. One of those towns was Perpignan-I was greeted there with headlines in the very same paper that had formerly branded me a villain and assassin when I rang the bell at the Abbey of Saint-Michel de Cuxa!
But deeply as I appreciated these generous attentions and manifestations of affection, my mind was preoccupied with other matters. My exiled compatriots released from the concentration camps or returning from slave labor in Germany were in desperate need. Few had any means of subsistence. Many were sick, crippled, half starved. And thousands of French people too were in dire circumstances, homeless and destitute. There was much to be done! I gave benefit concerts for Spanish refugee relief, for the Red Cross and other such causes. I visited the homes that had been established in some towns for Spanish orphans. Each of those little figures represented a tragedy. Looking into their sorrowful eyes, who could take comfort in his own fortunate lot? My mind was haunted too by thoughts of the crowded prisons in my own land. Millions had fought and died for the victory that had been won over fascism. Now, above all, I longed to see my people liberated from fascist tyranny....
In June of 1945 I was invited to visit England. A whole epoch seemed to have gone by since I was last in that dear land. One can imagine how I looked forward to seeing my old friends! When I went to buy my ticket at the office of the British Airways in France, I was told, "What-you expect to pay? Why, that's impossible! You are our guest!" At the London Airport when I submitted my baggage for customs inspection, the officials smiled and shook their heads. They would not touch my things.
I had of course known of the terrible Nazi air raids on London, but I was sickened by the havoc I now saw-the gutted remanants of buildings, the great craters and piles of rubble, whole blocks obliterated. All were ghastly reminders of the bombings I had witnessed in Barcelona. But again, here in england, I found proof among the ruins that no amount of bombing can erase the spirit of man. From talking with Englishmen, one would never have guessed the ordeal they had survived-they simply did not mention their sacrifices and suffering. In fact, they seemed to radiate optimism and good cheer. And this, one knew, was not only because they had won a great victory but because nothing could defeat people like this.
In an interview with the London Philharmonic News, I addressed a message of respect and love to the British people. I related how those of us in Nazi-occupied territory had hung on the words of BBC and how London had been for us the Capital of Freedom. "Today," I said, "it is the Capital of Hope." I spoke of another matter close to my heart-the magnificent role of Britgish musicians during the war. To the members of the London Philaharmonic Orchestra, I said:
From my little refuge in the Pyrenees I have watched from hour to hour the experiences through which your great country has passed, and I have accorded no more importance to the actions of your political and military leaders than to the countless achievements of your leading symphony orchestra and soloists. I know how you have traaveled under bombardment from town to town to keep alive the cause of great music, and I know, too, how those years of trial have created millions of new listeners to the works of the great masters.
I gave concerts in a number of cities in England. Perhaps the most memorabel for me was the concert at the Albert Hall. The last time I had performed with an orchestra was at the Lucerne Festival in the summer of 1939. Then, the conductor had been Sir Adrian Boult; now six years later, he was again conducting. Thousands packed the hall, and there seemed to be even more outside. I played the Schumann and Elgar concertos, and, as an encore, one of the Bach unaccompanied suites. When I left after the performance, the crowd in the street was so dense that it was some time before the police could extricate my car. I was not impatient-I could have remained for hours among those radiant faces!
One moment stands out from that glorious evening. An elderly man with a white beard and flowing cape was waiting at the stage door after the concert. "Do you recognize me?" he siad. It was none other than my old friend, the cellist Agustin Rubio, whom I had first met almost seventy years before when I wad a lad of eleven playing at Cafe Tost in Barcelona! "Yes," he said, "that night I told Albeniz the time will come when this little one will make a big stir!"
A few days after the concert at the Albert Hall, I was invited to play at the BBC studio and to broadcast a message to my fellow countrymen in Catalonia. When I had finished playing and approached the microphone, I could not at first utter a word-the moment was too much for me. I lit my pipe, and it somehow comforted me and helped me find my voice. "My thoughts fly to you, my dear countrymen, to those in exile and those on our beloved soil," I said. "I have come here from my retreat in the shadow of Mount Canigou, on the other side of the Pyrenees. And first I want to thank my generous-hearted British hosts who showed such heroism in meeting the terrible tests of war and who deserve the gratitude of all who cherish liberty and justice. Now we look to them for the preservation of peace and the moral reconstruction of Europe."
I concluded my message to my compatriots by saying, "I would like to think that when our ancient melody, El Cant del Ocells, now reaches you, it will give voice to the love we bear Catalonia. That sentiment, which makes us proud of being her sons and binds us all together, must now make us work as one, as brothers united in a single faith, for a tomorrow of peace when Catalonia will again be Catalonia."
And then I played the "Song of the Birds," the haunting Catalan folk song with which I would conclude all my concert performances from that time on.
One episode after my return to Prades brought back with a sudden shock the darkest days of the war years. I was in my cottage there one morning when there was a knock on the front door. I opened it-and there stood Alfred Cortot.
I felt a terrible pain at the sight of him. The sorrowful past was suddenly with me, as if it all had happened the day before. We stood looking at each other without speaking. I motioned him into my room.
He began speaking haltingly, with his eyes on the floor. He had aged greatly, and he looked very tired. At first he made a half-hearted attempt to excuse what he had done, but I stopped him.
Then he blurted out, "It's true, Pablo. What they say is true. I was a collaborator. I worked with the Germans. I am ashamed, dreadfully ashamed. I have come to ask your forgiveness..." He could say no more.
I, too, found it hard to speak. I told him, "I am glad that you tell the truth. Because of that , I forgive you. I give you my hand."
That October I went back to England for another concert tour. The proceeds were to go to a fund for the widows and children of those brave flyers in the Royal Air Force who had died in the war-it was a small enough token of my gratitude to this noble land.
Less than six months had elapsed since the defeat of Germany, and yet, in that brief time, there was already cause for grave apprehensions about the postwar world. The atomic bombs, which in a flash had annihilated hundreds of thousands of hyman beings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cast a shadow over the future of all mankind. What a monstrous irony-that at the very moment of victory over the fascist threat to civilization, man should create a weapon threatening the extermination of the human race!
There were other developments that caused me grave disquiet as I traveled about England that summer. Throughout the dark years of the war I had longed for that day when victory would mean the end of fascism and the liberation of the nations enslaved by it. But now powerful forces seemed to be blocking the full achievement of those goals to which the United Nations were pledged. Though Hitler and Mussolini had been curshed, the fascist dictatorship they had fostered in Spain remained in power. Even more ominous-conciliatory gestures were now being made to the Franco regime. Prominent personages spoke of Franco with deference; newspaper articles praised his so-called accomplishments. Was it conceivable, I asked myself, that the Spanish people-the very people who had first taken up arms against fascism-were to be doomed to continue living under fascist rule? And the hundreds of thousands of refugees who had believed an Allied victory would mean the return of democracy in Spain-including those who had fought alongside the Allies-were they to be condemned to permanent exile? I recoiled at the thought of such a betrayal, but the evidence mounted on every side. Government dignitaries and other influential figures in England sought to reassure me. I must understand, they said, the complexities of diplomacy; I must be patient while matters took their course. Such counsel only served to confirm my worst fears.
I decided that at this crucial time I must act in such a way as to make clear my wholehearted protest against any appeasement of Franco and my complete identification with the plight of my suffering countrymen. Could I continue to be applauded at concerts and to receive awards when my people were in such misery? When I was invited to receive honorary degrees at Oxford and Cambridge universities, I replied that I could not-with the prevailing attitude toward Spain-accept any more such honors. I announced that I was canceling all future engagements in England. My last concert there, I said, would be the one I was scheduled to give in November in Liverpool. I acted with a sorrowful heart, but there could be no compromise under the circumstances.
Some of my friends sought to persuade me to reconsider or at least postpone my decision. That marvelous artist, Dame Myra Hess, with whom I had played several concerts on my British tour, urged that I meet with the secretary to King George VI and arranged an appointment. Our meeting took place at Buckingham Palace. I told the secretary that England and the other members of the United Nations had a clear moral duty to see democracy restored in Spain, and I reminded him of the disastrous role of the Non-intervention Agreement in helping Franco overthrow the Spainish Republic. The secretary listened with respectful attention and assured me he would convey my sentiments to the king. But in my heart I knew it was to no avail.
Back in Paris, I received a wire from Sir Stafford Cripps, who was then prominently associated with the Labour Government, inviting me to meet with him. But by then I was too weary and disillusioned for further discussions. "We would not understand each other," I replied. "We would speak different languages. You would speak about politics, and I would speak about principles."
In France I gave a few more benefit concerts. I still hoped against hope that some of the governments might keep their word to the Spanish people. But, alas, it became ever more clear that their policies toward Spain were now dictated by political expediency instead of the humanistic code of the United Nations. After a short time I announced I would not play again in public until the democracies changed their attitude toward Spain.
I retired to Prades. For the second time, as it were, I went into exile. I cannot say it was an easy thing to do, and I knew that in a world where cynicism widely held sway, my action could hardly affect the course of nations-it was, after all,only the action of a single individual. But how else could I act? One has to live with himself.
If of my own volition I returned in protest to my refuge in Prades and became, you might say, an artist in isolation, I was never really alone in the years that followed. It was not the same as it had been during the German occupation of France. Then I had been entirely cut off from the world. Now I was in close communication with it. True, I had silenced my instrument on the concert stage, but I continued to have not only its companionship but that of dear friends who came to Prades to see me and of friends who wrote to me from other lands. Indeed, many who wrote to me I had never met. Long distances often separated us-yet I felt we reached across the seas and embraced one another.
And what heart-warming support I received from them! An unforgettable demonstration was the occasion of my seventieth birthday in the winter of 1946. On that day messages poured into the little village of Prades from every part of the world-letters, postcards, cables, communications of every sort-from Japan, Palestine, the United States, Czechoslovakia, Africa. Hundreds, thousands of messages! They came form artists and trade unionists, from writers and scholars, from churchmen, Spanish refugees, and former members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Among the greetings from the Soviet Union was a lovely cable signed by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian and other Soviet composers and musicians. In Mexico and other countries, I was told, radio stations played recordings of mine throughout the day.
And in the evening, in my little house in Prades, I heard a concert program on BBC arranged by friends of mine in England. At the beginning of the program Sir Adrian Boult addressed a message to me expressing, as he put it, the greetings of thousands of musicians and music lovers in his country. He spoke about our friendship which had begun more than a quarter of century before when he, as a young man, conducted a concert in Liverpool at which I performed the Schumann concerto, and he told how he'd later come to Barcelona to study my conducting methods. He spoke of my many concerts in England since the turn of the century. He spoke so intimately it was as if he were sitting in my room talking with me. "Maestro," he said, "here we are in the studio with many friends, including fifty cellists. How we wish you were with us! And we hope you will soon visit us again. But we know you are with us in spirit. We are going to play a short program under the direction of your old friend, John Barbirolli. We shall play music that will carry our thoughts to you in Prades."
Then Barbirolli conducted the fifty cellists in the playing of a composition I had written in 1927 for students at the London Violoncello school. It was a sardana, and the music for it had been inspired by the fiestas I had witnessed as a child in Vendrelll with the sounds of the grallas and the singing of the villagers....
The following day I wrote a letter to The Times in which I said:
Ever since my youth when I had the honor of playing before Queen Victoria, I have received many touching proofs of affection from the British public. I count them among the most precious awards of my whole life as an artist. Now, on the occasion of my seventieth birthday, the tokens of affection from all quarters of your country that have reached me in my exile are so numerous that I have to ask the hospitality of The Times for the expression of my deepest gratitude to all.
The life of an artist is inseparable from his ideals. I hope that conditions will soon make it possible for me to come and express personally all the affection I feel for the British people.
In the months following my retirement to Prades, I received many communications from England, the United States and other countries, urging me to reconsider my withdrawal from the concert stage. The people who sent these messages had of course the best of intentions, and many said that my music could do more for the causes in which I believe than my silence. From the United States in particular came generous offers, inviting me to give as few or as many concerts as I wished, under any terms I cared to name. I received an especially moving message from a group of eminent intellectuals headed by Albert Einstein urging me to make my home in America. The United States government offered me a special passport. But to all of these communications I replied that, much as I appreciated the spirit that prompted them, I considered it my duty to remain in Prades.
In the summer of 1947 the American violinist, Alexander Schneider, came to visit me for a few days. There was an immediate rapport between us. I was especially taken with his lively humor and passionate enthusiasms-sometimes when he talked his bushy hair seemed to stand on end and I had the feeling his body must have difficulty to keep from flying apart with the energy it contained! Our meeting was to prove the beginning of a precious friendship and one of the most fruitful working relationships of my whole career. Schneider-or Sasha, as his friends call him-is not only a brilliant musician, whose name was linked for years with the splendid Budapest String Quartet; he is also a remarkable organizer and initiator of musical projects of all sorts, whose mind teems with ideas. He would, I am sure, have succeeded in any field of endeavor-in the theater, politics, business, anything. In one of our first conversations, Sasha urged me to come and give a series of concerts in the United States-the fee he proposed was astronomical. I told him, "But it is not a question of money. It is a purely moral question." And of course he understood.
Some time after he had returned to America, Schneider sent me a wonderful present from some fellow musicians and himself. It was a forty-five-volume edition of all of Bach's works, reproduced from the original Bach-Gesellschaft edition, and in it was a touching dedication to me signed by Toscanini, Koussevitzky, Stokowski, Paul Hindemith, Schnabel, Schneider, Artur Rubinstein and about fifty other outstanding musicians.
It was not much later that Schneider wrote me that he had been talking with my old friend Horszowski, and that Horszowski had made a suggestion about which he, Schneider, was very excited. What Horszowski proposed was that a Bach festival under my direction be arranged in Prades. Surely, said Sasha, this would not be inconsistent with my protest in retiring to Prades. The proceeds, he said, could go to the hospital at Perpignan, where many Spanish refugees were still being cared for, or to any other such cause I had in mind. Would I, Sasha wanted to know, be willing to consider such a festival? With that letter, the idea for the annual Prades Festivals was born.
At first I hesitated to agree. I wrote Schneider that some people might misconstrue my taking part in this festival. Sasha replied, "You cannot continue to condemn your art to complete silence. If you won't play in public in other countries, then why not let your fellow musicians come from other parts of the world and play with you in Prades?Your protest will remain no less clear." Schneider added that the year 1950 was the bicentenary of Bach's death and that this would be the ideal time for the event. My doubts were resolved, and I agreed to the festival. I was especially gratified by the thought that it would provide me with a means of helping my compatriots, many of whom were still in desperate need.
The Bach Festival took place in June 1950 in Prades. Sasha supervised all of the preparations and also agreed to my request that he act as concertmaster. He arranged for the whole orchestra and for the violinists Joseph Szigeti and Isaac Stern, and the pianists Horszowski, Rudolf Serkin and Eugene Istomin to participate as soloists. The program, which lasted over a period of three weeks, included the six Brandenberg concertos, the six unaccompanied suites for cello, and also violin and clavier concertos. The concerts were held in the fourteenth-century Church of St. Pierre, which faced the village plaza.
What excitement there was in Prades as the opening day of the festival approached! The whole appearance of the village was transformed-the streets were festooned with banners, streamers and posters, and Catalan flags flew everywhere. I have often wondered how it was possible for that tiny town and the neighboring villages to accommodate the fifty musicians who came from all over France and from other countries to attend the concerts. I was told that some had even come from China! "Today," a local shopkeeper said to me, "our village is the music capital of the world!"
Shortly before the first concert, one of the festival officials asked me if I would address a group of Catalans. I thought at first he meant refugees, but no, he told me, they were men and women who had come from Spain.
"But how is that possible?" I said. "I was told the Franco government had forbidden Spanish citizens to cross the border to attend the concerts."
"They've come anyway," he said. "They crossed the Pyreees secretly, on foot."
That group of Catalans included musicians, professors, workingmen-and one bishop! Some were old friends of mine who had been political prisoners in Spain. One of the group was an elderly shepherd from Spain." "I brought my sheep with me over the mountain," he told me.
On the opening night the village plaza was massed with people. The bishop of St. Fleur gave a welcoming speech before the first concert. He requested that there be no applause in the church throughout the performances. And then the festival commenced with my playing Bach's unaccompanied Suite in G Major.
Three weeks later, at the conclusion of the final concert the bishop of St. Fleur and the bishop of Perpignan arose in the audience and began to applaud. Everyone else in the church stood up and joined in the ovation.
Some time later I received from Japan an album containing the signatures of hundreds of Japanese citizens who had heard recordings of the Bach Festival played in Tokyo. One page was headed "Hiroshima." It was filled with the awkward signatures of young children, boys and girls who were four, five and six years old. And on the page was written this message: "We were born after the dropping of the atom bomb, and already we have learned to love your music." If any doubts about the rightness of my playing at the Bach Festival had lingered in my mind, they would have been dispelled by that message from the children of Japan.
The response to the Bach Festival was so spontaneous-so enthusiastic-that afterwards it was decided to hold an annual music festival in Prades. Schneider again agreed to supervise the arrangements. The second festival was held at Perpignan in the ancient Palace of the Kings of Majorca. It too was an immense success. One thousand people were expected to attend, and almost two thousand came. The festivals of the next two years took place in the ruins of the Abbey of Saint-Michael de Cuxa, the very same abbey where Ventura Gassol and I had rung the bell as a gesture of Catalan patriotism during the days of the German occupation of France-and this time nobody called me an anarchist or assassin for making music at the abbey!
After that, all the festivals were held at Prades in the Church of St. Pierre, where the original Bach Festival had taken place.
The last festival I attended occured in the summer of 1966. It was shortly before my ninetieth birthday. Many dear friends came from different countries to give me their greetings, and I was deeply moved by their presence.
On the day before the opening of the festival-it was Sunday-two busloads of Catalan workers arrived in the morning from Barcelona. They had come on Sunday because on weekdays they could not get away from their jobs. They left their homes before dawn and drove 150 miles, over the mountains, to Molitg-les-Bains, the village-near Prades-where I was staying. Most of these workers had formerly belonged to the Workingmen's Concert Association which I had founded in Barcelona in 1928-it was banned after the fascists seized power-and some of them were the sons and daughters of former members of the Association. They gathered outside my cottage and gave me flowers. Then, with a small stringed-instrument orchestra they serenaded me with Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. After that, they left.
Toward the end of the festival another group of my countrymen visited me. These men and women came from my birthplace, Vendrell. Some were members of the choral society which my father had formed there a hundred years before and which exists to this day. The mayor and a priest from Vendrell accompanied the group. In the Catalan tradition of the fiestas I had known so well since childhood, they formed a human pyramid beneath the cottage balcony where I was standing. Perched on one another's shoulders, with the largest men on the bottom, they raised to the top of the pyramid a small boy who was carrying a goatskin wine bag. I took the boy in my arms and drank from the wine bag. I gave him my pipe as a present.
Members of the group-they were wearing the Catalan folk costume of white shirts, red cummerbunds, and red kerchiefs-danced the sardana. And afterward they sang a choral work of mine which I had dedicated to Vendrell.
My heart was so very full-I tried to tell those dear friends what was in it. "People of Vendrell," I said, "I feel that you have come as friends not only to visit me but to invite me to visit you. I have longed to do that ever since the day I left my dear land. But I must tell you that my faith in the people of Catalonia has made me strong enough to resist that longing. I hope that God will grant I live long enough to see again our church's beautiful campanilla whose bells we all love so much, and the guardian angel, and the organ where my father played and I assisted him when I was nine years old. I beg you remember what that means to me and, above all, my love for Vanedrll and all of you. Thank you, dear ones, for having come to me."
We all embraced. We wept together both because of sadness and joy. Then they got into their buses and drove back to Catalonia.