When I was eleven years old, I heard the cello played for the first time. That was the beginning of a long and cherished companionship! A trio had come to play at a concert in Vendrell-a pianist, a violinist and a cellist. My father took me to the concert. It was held at the small hall of the Catholic Center, with an audience of townspeople, fishermen and peasants, who, as always for such an occasion, were dress in their Sunday clothes. The cellist was Josep Garcia, teacher at the Municipal School of Music in Barcelona; he was a handsome man with a forehead and a handlebar mustache; and his figure somehow seemed fitted to his instrument. When I saw his cello I was fascinated by it-I had never seen one before. From the moment I heard the first notes I was overwhelmed. I felt as if I could not breathe. There was something so tender, beautiful and human-yes, so very human-about the sound. I had never heard such a beautiful sound before. A radiance filled me. When the first composition was ended, I told my father, "Father, that is the most wonderful instrument I have ever heard. That is what I want to play."
After the concert I kept talking to my father about the cello, pleading with him to get me one. From that time, more than eighty years ago, I was wedded to the instrument. It would be my companion and friend for the rest of my life. I had of course found joy in the violin, the piano and other instruments, but for me the cello was something special and unique. I began playing my violin holding it like a cello.
My mother understood what had happened. She told my father, "Pablo shows such enthusiasm for the cello that he must have the chance really to study it. There is no teacher here in Vendrell who is qualified to teach him properly. We must arrange for him to go to the School of Music in Barcelona."
My father was astonished. "What in the world are you talking about?" he asked. "How can Pablo possibly go to Barcelona? We simply do not have the money."
My mother said, "We will find a way. I will take him there. Pablo is a musician. This is his nature. This is what he was made to be. He must go anywhere necessary. There is no other choice."
My father was not at all convinced-he was, in fact, already thinking about my following the trade of carpenter in order to earn a living. "You have delusions of grandeur," he told my mother.
Their discussions on the subject became more and more frequent and intense. It troubled me greatly. I felt I was to blame for the disagreement between them. I asked myself how I could end it, but I didn't know what to do. Finally, my father reluctantly gave in. He wrote a letter to the Municipal School of Music in Barcelona asking if they would accept me as a pupil. He also said that I would need a small cello, three-quarter size, and asked if they knew an instrument maker who could make one for me.
Even so, after the school had responded favorably and as the time approached for my going to Barcelona, my father continued to express misgivings.
"Dear Carlos," my mother would tell him, "you may be sure that this is right. This is what has to be, It is the only thing for Pablo."
My father would shake his head. "I do not understand, I do not understand,."
And she would say, "I know that, but you must have faith. You must be confident; you must."
It was a truly remarkable thing. My mother had had some musical training, but she was not of course a musician in the sense my father was. Yet she knew what my future was to be. She had known, I believe, from the beginning; it was as if she had some special sensitivity, a peculiar prescience. She knew; and she always acted on the knowledge with a firmness and certainty and calmness that has never ceased to amaze me. This was so not only about my studying in Barcelona, but in later years, on other occasions when I was at a crossroads in my career. It was so also with my younger brothers, Luis and Enrique; when they were still children, she knew the paths that they would follow. And later when I was playing concerts in many parts of the world and some success had come to me, she was happy but I would not say impressed. She had assumed this would be so.
During my life I myself have come to understand what she believed. I have come to the feeling that what happens must happen. I do not mean of course that there is nothing we can do about what we are or what we shall become. Everything about us is in a constant state of change-that is the way of nature; and we ourselves are changing all the time, for we are part of nature. We have the duty always to work to change ourselves for the better. But I do believe we have our destinies.
I departed from Vendrell with mixed feelings. It was my home, the scene of my childhood. The winding streets along which I rode my bicycle, our little house with its living room where my father practiced the piano and gave lessons, the church where I spent so many hours of joy, my school chums with whom I wrestled and played games-all those dear, familiar things, I did not want to leave them. I was, after all, eleven and a half; and, even for a musician, that is not very old. Barcelona is only fifty miles or so from Vendrell; but for me it was like voyaging to another land. What would it like? Where would I stay? Who would my friends and teachers be? At the same time, of course, I was tingling with excitement...My mother traveled with me on the train. When my father tenderly embraced me at the station saying goodbye, I tried to remember what he had told me once when I had been bitten by a dog and taken to the hospital: "Say to yourself that men don't cry."
So it was that eighty years ago I went to Barcelona. Then, as now, it was a great and sprawling city with busy streets and colorful cafes, parks and museums, crowded shops and bustling wharves, where ships from many lands anchored. It was for me, in more senses than one, the gateway to the world: this city where I was destined to pass so rich a portion of my life, with whose splended citizens I would share so many hours of happiness and creativity, with whose artists and workingmen I would form such cherished ties, this city where I would learn so much about the nobility of man-and alas, so much about man's suffering too! Half a century later, I would see this dear city under siege by the fascists, with bombing planes overhead, and militiamen and sandbags in the streets. What child could dream such things would come to pass?
My mother entered me in the Municipal School of Music in Barcelona and returned to Vendrell-she was to come back to Barcelona after a month or so and remain there with me. She had made arrangements for me to stay with some distant relatives of hers, a carpenter and his wife who lived in a working-class neighborhood in one of the older districts of the city. They were kind and gentle people; they treated me as if I were their own child. The carpenter-his name was Benet-was a fantastic person. Not a large man but absolutely fearless, he was a crusader who waged his own one-man war against crime. I found out about it one day when he opened a drawer and I saw to my astonishment that it was full of knives and pistols. I asked in wonder what all those weapons were for. He then told me of his unique avocation. Almost every evening, after he had finished work and eaten his supper, Benet would disappear from the house. He would sally forth into the roughest districts of the city-there was a good deal of crime in Barcelona in those days. All he carried with him was a heavy ash stick, but in his hands it was a formidable weapon. Holding that stick-not too ostentatiously but in clear sight-he would confront notorious criminals: robbers, thieves and other desperadoes. He would walk up to one and tell him that he was a bad man and had done this or that. "You must change your ways," he would say. "Now give me your pistol." Or knife, whichever the case might be. The criminals knew his reputation; they had respect for him, and usually they obeyed him. Some, of course, did not want to; and then he used his stick. One night he came home with a knife wound. He shrugged. "Never mind, it's nothing," he told his wife and me. "I'll settle the affair tomorrow." The following night he came in smiling cheerfully. "I squared things up with that fellow," he said. He was, I suppose one might say, an apostle of a sort. He made a very great impression upon me.
Shortly after my arrival in Barcelona, I went to pick up the small cello that my father had arranged to have made for me. The instrument maker was a very affable man in his early thirties whose name was Maire. When he gave me the cello, he also gave me a bow. I had never held a cello before, but I immediately played something on it. Maire was astonished and delighted...
I worked very hard at the music school, studying harmony and counterpoint, composition, as well as the cello and piano. My cello teacher was the same Josep Garcia whose playing in Vendrell had had such a profound effect upon me. He belonged to the famous Garcia family. He was related to celebrated Manuel Garcia, singer, composer, actor and teacher, who founded what was perhaps the most extraordinary family of singers there has ever been-his daughter was the great Maria Malibran, and his son Manuel, himself a teacher, invented the laryngoscope. Josep Garcia was a fine cellist-I have never seen a more beautiful hand on the strings-and he was an excellent teacher. He was demanding in his discipline, and in spite of being really a gentle man, he sometimes frightened his pupils. He rarely gave signs of approval during our lessons. But sometimes when I was playing, he would turn his back to me, and he would stay like that for a long time. When he turned toward me again, he had a very strange expression on his face. I did not understand it at the time, but later I realized that he was moved. Many years afterwards, when I was in full career, I saw Garcia in Buenos Aires, where he had gone to live. What a joyous reunion that was! He was so proud that he had been my teacher, and I was so grateful for all that he had taught me and for his tenderness with me. When we embraced, we wept.
While I was at the school in Barcelona, I began making certain changes in the then accepted technique of playing the cello. It is true I was only twelve or so at the time, but certain things are obvious even to children. And it was clear to me that there was something very awkward and unnatural in playing with a stiff arm and with one's elbows close to one's sides, as cellists were taught in those days-as a matter of fact, we had to hold a book under the armpit of our bowing arm while we were learning! That all seemed foolish to me. So at home, while I was practicing, I began to devise a method of palying which would free the arms and get rid of that very cramped and artificial position. I also felt that the technique of fingering and the action of the left hand could be improved-the hand in those days was cramped and cellists had to move it constantly up and down in fingering. I tried opening up the hand, enlarging and extending its reach, and I found I could paly four notes without moving it, Whereas players up until then had been able to paly only three. When I began employing some of my innovations at the school, there was consternation among the students; my teacher too was rather startled at first, but he was an understanding man, as I have said, and he came to see there was a method in my seeming madness. Anyway, today nobody learns the cello with a book under his armpit!
After about six months at the school, I had made sufficient progress on the cello to enable me to secure a job playing in a cafe in a suburb of the city. It was a nice family place called Cafe Tost after its proprietor, Senor Tost. I palyed there every day, and my salary was four pesetas a day. We were a trio-a violin, a piano, and a cello. Our repertoire consisted mainly of light music: popular tunes of the day, familiar operatic selections, and waltzes. However, at that time my young brain was already humming with the music of the masters-of Bach, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Beethoven. Before long-and with a certain subtlety, I think, for one of my youth-I managed to begin introducing better music into the program. The customers liked it . So then I felt ready to suggest to the management and to the other members of the trio that we devote one night a week to a program of classical music. That night proved to be a real success. Soon I was also playing solos. Talk spread about the music at the Cafe Tost and about the palying of el nen "the little one"-as I had come to be known. Customers began coming from quite a distance to spend an evening at the cafe. Senor Tost was pleased at this development, and he was proud of me. Sometimes he would take me to concerts; once we heard Richard Strauss conducting some of his works at the Teatro Lirico-Strauss was then a young man, at the beginning of his career. The experience had a great impact on me.
One thing about me annoyed Senor Tost-that was when I did not arrive punctually at his cafe; I was supposed to be there on the dot of nine o'clock. However, there were exciting things to see in the city, and lots of new ideas for a young boy to think about. I might be strolling down the boulevard of Las Ramblas with its fascinating bird markets and flower stalls, or exploring some neighborhood I'd never seen before, or reading a new book, or just daydreaming in the gardens of the Teatro Lirico; so sometimes I was late to work. One evening Senor Tost was standing sternly in the doorway when I arrived. He reached into his pocket and handed me a watch. "All right," he said. "Perhaps this will help teach you the meaning of time." It was my first watch. I think I can say that as the years have passed I have learned more about the meaning of time and I use time carefully and am well organized, though sometimes Marta has to remind me-especially when I am practicing or studying a score-that the moment has arrived for an appointment. For me organization is essential to creative work, and I often repeat to my pupils this motto: "Freedom-and order!"
In the summer months, when school was out, I joined traveling bands of musicians. We journeyed across the Catalan countryside-in horse-drawn buses along hot and dusty roads-from village to village, playing at fairs, dances and festivals. We played folk music and dances-waltzes, mazurkas, sardanas, pieces from America, everything. Often we started playing in the early evening and continued into the morning hours. The peasants and fishermen were sturdy folk, and they could dance all night-and all the next day, for that matter! Those summer tours were strenuous and allowed little time for rest, but how I relished them! And I found a special happiness in the wonderful camaraderie with the villagers for whom I played, in the communication between them and me when they danced, and the look on their faces afterwards as they shouted and applauded. We conversed through the language of music, and in my performances ever since-whether at small recitals or before large audiences in great concert halls-I have never lost the feeling I then came to have of intimate understanding between myself and those for whom I played...
After a couple of years of playing at the Cafe Tost, I was offered a better job. It was at the Cafe Pajarera. In Spanish, pajarera means "birdcage," and the cafe was a large circular building with glass walls, quite impressive-looking. There I was paid more money, and I played in an ensemble of seven instead of three.
I gave my first real concert in Barcelona when I was fourteen. It was a benefit performance at the Teatro de Novedades for a famous old actress. Her name was Concepcion Pala. My father, who had come to Barcelona for the occasion, took me on the tramway. I was terribly nervous. When we got to the concert hall, I said, "Father, I've forgotten the beginning of the piece! I can't remember a note of it! What shall I do?" He calmed me down. That was eighty years ago, but I've never conquered that dreadful feeling of nervousness before a performance. It is always an ordeal. Before I go onstage, I have a pain in my chest. I'm tormented. The thought of a public performance is still a nightmare...
My father used to come once a week from Vendrell to visit me. We would go for walks together, sometimes wandering into music shops looking for music scores; and after a few hours he would have to go back home. The repertoire of the ensemble at the Cafe Pajarera was broader than the Cafe Tost; I continued my solos, and of course I needed more music. One day I told my father I needed especially to find some new solo music for the Cafe Pajarera. Together we set off on the search. For two reasons I shall never forget that afternoon. First, my father bought me my first fullsized cello-how proud I was to have that wonderful instrument! Then we stopped at an old music shop near the harbor. I began browsing through a bundle of musical scores. Suddenly I came upon a sheaf of pages, crumbled and discolored with age. They were unaccompanied suties by Johann Sebastian Bach-for the cello only! I looked at them with wonder: Six Suites for Violoncello Solo. What magic and mystery, I thought, were hidden in those words? I had never heard of the existence of the suites; nobody-not even my teachers-had ever mentioned them to me. I forgot our reason for being at the shop. All I could do was stare at the pages and caress them. That scence has never grown dim. Even today, when I look at the cover of that music, I am back again in the old musty shop with its faint smell of the sea. I hurried home, clutching the suites as if they were the crown jewels, and once in my room I pored over them. I read and reread them. I was thirteen at the time, but for the following eighty years the wonder of my discovery has continued to grow on me. Those suites opened up a whole new world. I began playing them with indescribable excitement. They became my most cherished music. I studied and worked at them every day for the next twelve years. Yes, twelve years would elapse and I would be twenty-five before I had the courage to play one of the suites in public at a concert. Up until then, no violinist or cellist had ever played one of the Bach suites in its entirety. They would paly just a single section-a Saraband, a Gavotte or a Minuet. But I played them as a whole; from the prelude through the five dance movements, with all the repeats that give the wonderful entity and pacing and structure of every movement, the full architecture and artistry. They had been considered academic works, mechanical, without warmth. Imagine that! How could anyone think of them as being cold, when a whole radiance of space and poetry pours forth from them! They are the very essence of Bach, and Bach is the essence of music.
It was shortly before my discovery of the Bach suites that another event occurred which was to have a far-reaching effect upon my life as an artist. I was still at the Cafe Tost when it happened. An important visitor came one evening to the cafe. he was the celebrated Catalan composer and pianist, Isaac Albeniz. With him were his friends, the violinist Enrique Arbos and cellist Agustin Rubio. Albeniz had heard about el nen, the boy who was said to play so well on the cello, and he wanted to see for himself. He sat there listening intently-a small plump man of about thirty with a little beard and a mustache, smoking a long cigar. When the program was over, he came up and embraced me. I had, he said, a rare talent. "You must come with me to London!" he said-he had a buoyant, infectious air. "You must come and work with me there." I was naturally very flattered at such a proposal from this famous musician. But when he repeated it to my mother, her reception was quite different. She said she appreciated the offer but was abasolutely opposed to my going. "My child is still a child," she told Albeniz. "He is much too young to go to London and to start traveling around. He must stay here in Barcelona and complete his studies. There will be plenty of time later for other things."
Albeniz could see that my mother was not a woman whose mind could be changed. He said, "All right, but your son has a great gift, and I feel I must do whateve I can to help him. Let me give you a letter of introduction to the Count de Morphy in Madrid. He is a wonderful man, a patron of the arts, a splendid musician and brilliant scholar, he is the personal adivser to Queen Maria Cristina. He has much influence. He can help Pablo's career. When you are ready, take the letter to him." My mother said all right, and Albeniz gave her the letter.
Three years would pass before my mother used that letter. She kept it, waiting for the time she thought appropriate; when she did use it, the moment would prove to be one of the most important milestones in my career. And it came about in so simple a way. Life is sometimes like that.
Later, Albeniz would become one of my dear friends. He was not only a great artist, a magnificent pianist, but a most amazing man.
He had been a child prodigy-he made his debut as a pianist at the Teatro Romea in Barcelona when he was four years old. When he was seven, he composed a march that came to be widely played by military bands. As a youngster, he became involved in all sorts of wild adventures. He ran away from home at thirteen and wandered all over Europe, playing the piano and getting involved in mad escapades; then he got on a ship-he was a stowaway, I think-and went to America, where he had adventures with Indians, and things of that sort. What stories he used to tell! He came back to Spain when he was still a young man. Finally he settled down in London. He had an astonishing virutosity; he never practiced-not even for concerts; his hands were little but amazingly strong and supple. The music he composed was greatly affected by his homeland of Catalonia, by its wonderful scenery and its folk melodies, and by the Arabic derivations of some of them, too. "I am a Moor," he used to say. He had a rare sense of humor; and he was a real Bohemian. I have heard that he sold his well known composition, Pavana, for the lordly sum of fifteen pesetas-the price of a ticket to a bullfight that he wanted very much to see.
The way in which Count de Morphy had first met Albeniz was typical of this artist's life. The count was traveling by train-to Switzerland, I believe-when he heard a peculiar sound under his seat. He leaned down and there, beneath his seat, he found a boy hiding. It was Albeniz, and he was hiding there of course to avoid paying the fare. "And who are you, may I inquire?" said the count. Albeniz-he was then about thirteen-replied, "I am a great artist." That was the beginning of their acquaintanceship.
Throughout my adult life I have believed in the perfectibility of man. What a marvel he is -what fantastic things he can do, with himself and with the world about him! What a summit nature has achieved in his creation! And yet if there is in man infinite capacity for good, there is also infinite capacity for evil. Every one of us has within himself the possibilities of both. I have long recognized within myself the potentiality for great evil-of the worst crime, just as I have within me the potentiality for great good. My mother used to say, "Every man has good and bad within him. He must make his choice. It is the choice that counts. You must hear the good in you and obey it."
When I was in my teens, the first major crisis developed in my life. I cannot say what its precise causes were. I was nearing the end of my studies at the school, and my future was not yet really determined. I was intensely troubled by the continuing difference between my parents about my career. They had not yet resolved this disagreement. My father still felt it was foolhardy for me to think of devoting myself to a musical career; my mother was determined that I should. The thought that I was the cause of this dissension pained me deeply. I longed for it to be ended. Meanwhile, my mind was teeming with new ideas, new concepts and thoughts, constantly exploring, searching and examining the world about me. My horizons had greatly expanded; I read everything I could get my hands on, and thought more and more about the meaning of life. Before, I had found so much of beauty. Yet now how much ugliness there was that I saw! How much evil! How much pain and human travail! I would ask myself: Was man created to live in such squalor and degradation? All about me I saw evidence of suffering, of poverty, of misery, of man's inhumanity to man. I saw people who lived in hunger and had almost nothing to feed their children. I saw beggars in the streets and the age-old inequality of the rich and the poor. I became a witness to the oppression that simple people endured in their lives, and to harsh laws and repressive measures. Injustice and violence revolted me. I shuddered at the sight of an officer with his sword. Day and night I brooded on these conditions. I walked the streets of Barcelona feeling sick and full of apprehension. I was in a pit of darkness, at odds with the world. I dreaded the dawning of the day, and at night I sought escape in sleep. I could not understand why there was such evil in the world, why men should do such things to one another, or what, indeed, was the purpose of life under such circumstances-or of my own existence. Selfishness was rampant; and where, I asked myself, was compassion to be found?
I could no longer lose myself in my music. I did not feel then-nor have I ever felt-that music, or any form of art, can be an answer in itself. Music must serve a purpose; it must be a part of something larger than itself, a part of human, and more important than his music is his attitude toward life. Nor can the two be separated.
The anguish in me became such that I thought perhaps the only way in which I could put an end to my torment was to put an end to myself. I became obsessed with the idea of suicide. I did not tell my mother that I had thoughts of killing myself. I could not give her that anxiety. But she-looking at me-sensed my inner agony; she could always see what was inside me. "What is it?" she would say to me. "What is it, dear Pablo, that is troubling you so?" I would say, "It is nothing, dear Mother." She would be silent; she did not probe; but I could see the apprehension and pain in her eyes.
Something in me, some innate will to live, some deep elan vital perhaps, fought against my killing myself. There was a war within me. I sought other avenues of escape, of respite. Perhaps, I thought, I could find solace in religion. I spoke of religion to my mother. She herself was not religious in a formal sense; she never went to Mass. Ordinarily she did not talk about religion, though I never heard her say anything against another person's religion or faith. She respected the beliefs of others. She did not try to influence me in this regard. She said to me, "This is something you must find for yourself, my son. You have everything within youself, dear Pablo. You must find yourself." I turned to religious mysticism. I would go to a church near school after my classes, and I would sit there in the shadows, trying to lose myself in prayer, trying desperately to find consolation and an answer to my questions, searching for calm and some easement of the torment afflicting me. I would leave the church, go a few steps, then hurry back to it. But it was to no avail. And failing to find an answer in man's dreams of heaven, I sought for one in the panaceas he dreamed of on earth. I had read some of the writings of Karl Marx and Engels; and there were socialists among my friends. I thought that in the doctrine of socialism I might find an answer. It was not so-here too I found a dogma that could not satisfy me and a utopian dream that was unreal to me. It was full of illusions about changing society and man. And how, I asked myself, is man to be changed when he is full of selfishness and cynicism, when aggression is part of his nature?
It is difficult to say what brought me out of the abyss. Perhaps the inner struggle and love of life, the hope in me that would not be destroyed. Then, too, about this time my mother-who gave me every support in this hour of my great need-decided that the time had come for me to leave Barcelona. Though I had not confided in her the depths of my despair, she sensed it. That was when she proposed our going to Madrid. "The time has come," she said, "for us to take Albeniz's advice and to use his letter of introduction to the Count de Morphy."
There were long and agitated conversations between my mother and my father. He was full of misgivings. There was also the question of my mother's taking along my brothers, Luis and Enrique-they had both been born while we were in Barcelona. Luis was about three and Enrique was still an infant. But in the end it was decided that my mother and I and the two children would go. What would have happened to me if I had not gone to Madrid at that time, I do not know.