That splendid Catalan poet, Joan Maragall, once wrote, "To take flight to Heaven, we must stand on the firm soil of our native land." Catalonia is my native land. I had been gone for almost three years, and it was a joy for me to be back.
During my lifetime, I have traveled in many lands, and I have found beauty everywhere. But the beauty of Catalonia nourished me since infancy. And when I close my eyes, I see the ocean at San Salvador and the seaside village of Sitges with the little fishing boats on the sand, the vineyards and olive groves and pomegranate trees of the province of Tarragona, the River Llobregat and the peaks of Montserrat. Catalonia is the land of my birth, and I love her as a mother....
I am, of course, a Spanish citizen. Though I have lived in exile for more than thirty years, I still carry a Spanish passport. I could not dream of parting with it. An official at the Spanish consulate at Perpignan once asked me why I did not relinquish my passport if I chose not to return to Spain. I replied, "Why should I give it up? Let Franco give up his. And then I shall return." But first and foremost I am a Catalan. Since I have felt this way for almost a century, I do not expect to change.
We Catalans have our own national language-it is an ancient Romance language, completely distinct from Castilian Spanish. We have our own culture-the sardana is our dance, and what a lovely dance it is! And we have our own history. Already in the Middle Ages, Catalonia was a great nation, and her influence reached into France and Italy-even today in both countries you will find many people still speaking Catalan. We had no kings-we were satisfied to have counts as our rulers. And in our constitution in the Middle Ages were these words that the Catalan people had addressed to their ruler: "Each of us is equal to you, and together all of us are greater than you." As early as the eleventh century, Catalonia summoned a convocation that called for the abolishment of was in the world. What better evidence of a high civilization could there be than that?
All nations have a diminuendo. Not many years ago it was said that the sun never set on the British Empire; today England remains, but her empire is no more. Catalonia too is not the powerful nation she once was. But that does not diminish her history or justify the denial of her national rights.Yet Catalans has become little more than a Spanish subject. We Catalans want to live with the other peoples of Spain as brothers-not as servants, which is what happens under the present Spanish regime. We are forbidden in our public schools to teach our native tongue; instead, Castilian is taught. Our culture is stifled.
I have always been opposed to extreme nationalism. The people of no one nation are superior to those of any other-different, yes, but superior, no. Extreme nationalists believe they have the right to dominate other nations. Patriotism is something wholly different. Love of one's soil is deep in the nature of man. I think of the death of Luis Companys. I came to know Companys when he was President of Catalonia during the days of the Spanish Republic. There were matters in which I disagreed with Companys, but he was a patriot. He had been a brilliant lawyer who championed the cause of the Catalan working people. When the fascists seized power, Companys was among the Republican leaders who escaped to France. Franco demanded he be sent back, and the Petain government obliged. The Spanish fascists executed him. When he faced the firing squad, Companys lit a cigarette and then he removed his shoes and socks. He wanted to die with his feet touching the soil of Catalonia.
In Barcelona, my fortunes under went a sudden change. The difficult days of Paris, with all their privations and uncertainties, soon receded into the past. My old friend and teacher, Josep Garcia, who had introduced me to the wonders of the cello when I was a boy of eleven, had just resigned from his professorship at the Municipal School of Music-he was about to go to live in Argentina. I was invited to fill his post at the school. At the same time, it was arranged for me to take over the instruction of Garcia's private pupils and his engagemants to play at church services. Before many months had passed, I was also asked to teach at the Liceu School of Music, and I was appointed principal cellist in the opera orchestra. Suddenly, I had more work than I could handle!
My work as a teacher now absorbed most of my time. It was an important period in my maturing as a musician. I have never drawn an artificial line between teaching and learning. A teacher, of course, should know more than his pupil. But for me, to teach is to learn. It was so for me then at the Municipal School of Barcelona; and it remains so for me today.
I continued to work on the development of my techinque. I was determined not to be hampered by any of the restrictions of the past-to learn from the past but not be shackled by it. My aim was to achieve the best possible effects on the cello. I have always regarded technique as a means, not an end in itself. One must, of course, master techniques; at the same time, one must not become enslaved by it-one must understand that the purpose of technique is to transmit the inner meaning, the message, of the music. The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all. I constantly asked myself, "What is the most natural way of doing this?" I taught my pupils the methods of fingering and bowing that I had begun to develop when I was a student at the Municipal School. I taught the importance of relaxation-cello playing demands such tension in the left hand that one must constantly exercise it to maintain flexibility. I showed my pupils how, at certain moments, it was possible to relax the hand and the arm-if only for a fraction of a second-while performing. Above all, I emphasized that the most important thing is to have respect for the music and to understand the great responsibility the artist has in bringing a composer's music to life.
There is of course no substitute for work. I myself practiced constantly, as I have all my life. I have been told I play the cello with the ease of a bird flying. I do not know with how much effort a bird learns to fly, but I do know what effort has gone into my cello. What seems ease of performance comes from the greatest labor. There are, of course, exceptions, as with my friend Albeniz, who never practiced. But such cases are rarities. Almost always, facility results only from maximum effort. Art is the product of labor.
When summer came, my work in Barcelona slackened off. I had no classes at the Municipal School, and other jobs were temporarily discontinued. So when I received the offer of an engagement at a casino at Espinho, a resort south of Oporto on the coast of Portugal, I readily accepted it. My route lay through Madrid, and I thought how wonderful it would be if I could see the Count de Morphy again. I still felt unhappy about the misunderstanding that had arisen between us the year before when I had gone to Paris. I wrote the count a letter relating everything that had happened and telling him of the engagement I now had in Espinho. Would he like to see me, I asked, when I came through Madrid? I awaited his answer anxiously. "Come as soon as possible," he wrote back. It was characteristic of his gentleness and understanding.
The moment I arrived in Madrid, I hurried to his house. He welcomed me as a son. We talked and talked-it was as if there had never been any difficulty between us.
In Madrid I also saw Queen Maria Cristina. She greeted me with great warmth and made me tell her all the details of my adventures since we had last seen each other. She was deeply affected when I described the trials my mother and I had endured in Paris, and she was delighted to know about the work I was now carrying on in Barcelona. She asked me to play for her at the palace. After the recital, she took me aside. "Pablo,' she said, "I want to give you something that you can always keep as a remembrance of me. I want it to be something you can touch." She pointed to an exquisite bracelet she was wearing. "Whcih of these stones do you like best?" she asked.
I was almost too moved to answer. "They are all so beautiful, Your Majesty," I told her.
"Then you shall have this one," she said, singling out a magnificent sapphire.
Later, I had the stone mounted in my bow as a cherished memento of that most gracious woman whom I remember with love.
From Madrid I went to Espinho. The casino, an ornately furnished establisment overlooking the sea, was mainly a gambling place where Portuguese aristocrats, wealthy merchants and other fashionable folk came to wile away their summer days. The management wanted to keep them happy-perhaps in case their losings were too great-with pleasant music. There was dancing too, of course. We had a septet, and, as at the Cafe Tost, I played a solo once a week. We played in a cafe adjoining the gambling room. Word about the concerts spread, and music lovers started coming to the casino from all parts of Portugal. Toward the end of the season, to my considerable surprise, I received an invitation from the King and Queen of Portugal to visit them at their palace. I hurriedly packed and took the train to Lisbon. When I arrived at the palace, King Carlos and Queen Mari-Amelie received me most cordially. "And will you play for us?" they inquired. At that point I realized I hadn't brought my cello with me! I said, "Yes, I shall be glad to play...only I have no cello. I left it at the hotel in Espinho." They laughed good-naturedly at my embarrassment. My cello was sent for, and I played the following day. That was the only occasion in my musical career when I arrived for a recital without my cello.
I was to return to the palace in Lisbon several years later with my dear friend, the pianist Harold Bauer. He was, I remember, greatly impressed with the beauty of Queen Marie-Amelie, who was a very striking-looking woman. He was also impressed with her height-she was more than six feet tall. He commented to me afterwards on the difference between her size and mine-I have never been much taller than my cello. I told him, "It's not that I'm too small; it's that the queen's too tall."
At the end of the summer, on my way home, I stopped again in Madrid. On that visit I played my first concert as a soloist with an orchestra. I played the Lalo Concerto in D Minor. My former teacher, Tomas Breton, conducted, and many friends from my student days in Madrid attended the performance. Again I visited the Count de Morphy and Queen Maria Cristina. The queen presented me with a superb Gagliano cello. She also conferred on me a decoration-the second she had given me; the first had been when I was a pupil at the Royal Conservatory. This time she gave me the Order of Carlos III. It was a high honor for a youth of twenty, but I regarded it especially as a mark of her personal affection and her faith in me.
Following my return to Barcelona, some fellow musicians and I formed a string quartet, and we began giving chamber music recitals in Valencia, Madrid and other cities. The other members of the quartet were the eminent Belgian violinist Mathieu Crickboom, who had settled in Barcelona, the violist Galvez, and the painist and compose Enrique Granados. Granados and I had become close friends-I had conducted the rehearsals at the Liceu of his first opera, Maria del Carmen, when he himself felt too nervous to do so. Granados, who was in his late twenties when we met, was already recognized as one of the most talented musicians in Spain. The son of an army officer, he had received his first music lessons from the local bandmaster in the town of Lerida, where he had been born. Later he had studied with the renowned musicologist and composer Felipe Pedrell, who had rediscovered much of the Spanish folk music of earlier centuries and, together with the Count de Morphy, worked to create a true Spanish opera. Though Pedrell had a major influence on many young composers, Granados was actually almost entirely self-taught, and his exquisite and poetic compositions-which so embody the spirit of Spain-were largely the fruit of his own special genius. He was a wonderful, natural pianist, and he had a remarkable habit: in the middle of a work by Beethoven, Schubert or some other great composer, it did not matter who, he would suddenly decide to improvise and would proceed to do so without the slightest hesitation! He was a lovely man, and a lovely-looking man, with large dark eyes, dark wavy hair, and the face of a poet. Our friendship, which was so precious to me, lasted until his untimely death twenty years later.
Playing with Granados was a source of much happiness to me. I have always preferred not to play as a soloist. I prefer playing sonatas or any other form of chamber music. For one thing, I am much less nervous beforehand-I can share the responsibility with the others! What I like most is when I don't play at all but conduct!
Another musician I came to know in those days was that amazing violinist Pablo Sarasate. He was then in his fifties and for some time he had been the most famous virtuoso in Spain. Actually, we had met before. I first heard him play when I was a boy studying in Barcelona. Senor Tost, the proprietor of the cafe where I played, took me to one of Sarasate's performances, and I was overwhelmed by the brilliance of his playing-I had never heard anything like it. Later, when I was studying in Madrid, the Count de Morphy took me to meet Sarasate at the hotel where he was staying. He was very elegant, very debonair, with a long slender mustache, flowing black hair and gleaming black eyes. He smoked cigars incessantly. At one point during the conversation, he offered me some brandy. When I declined, he said, "What? You intend to be an artist, and you don't drink? Why, that's impossible!"
Sarasate played the violin with fantastic facility. His performances were dazzling, spectacular-like fireworks! He was a born showman, and when he played he would look straight at the audience as if saying, "See what I can do? Yes, I know you're spellbound!" He never practiced or prepared for a concert. He just came and played. He was a great violinist without being a great artist in the true sense of the word.
He was a very amusing man with a wry sense of humor, always making jokes. Sometimes he came with his friends the violinist Arbos and the cellist Rubio to stay at the casino in San Sebastian where I used to play in the summers. And every morning a little mock ceremony would take place when Arbos and Rubio went to see him in his room.
"Have I shown you my new cane?" Sarasate would say-he had a wonderful collection of canes, which he had accumulated on his travels around the world. Arbos and Rubio would say, "No, Pablo, we haven't seen the new one." He would get out of bed in his long nightshirt, stride over to the stand where he kept his canes and select one of them with a flourish. "Here it is. What a marvelous cane! Observe it closely. So strong-and yet so supple I can stretch it at will or bend it into a perfect circle." While he gestured with the cane, they watched with simulated wonder as if he were doing with it exactly what he said he was. "Another thing," he would say. "Really extraordinary, the way in which it responds to weather conditions. When the temperature falls you can see my initials on the cane, and when it rises they disappear. Look-today, because it's warmer, you can't see them at all!"
The ceremony would vary.
One morning when Arbos and Rubio asked Sarasate how he had slept, he threw up his arms and said with exasperation, "Sleep! How could I possibly sleep?"
"What do you mean, Paablo?"
"Well, how could anyone sleep in a room full of turtles?"
Arbos and Rubio nodded understandingly, as if they were surrounded by turtles. "Ah yes, that is very disagreeable...."
This same routine went on for several days. Then one morning, when Arbos and Rubio had asked the same question about how Sarasate had slept, and had received the same answer, they said, "You're right, Pablo. You really should complain. It's an impossible situation. Just look at them!" And they pointed around the room.
When Sarasate looked, he saw there were turtles crawling all around the room! Arbos and Rubio had come in the night and put them there.
But Sarasate didn't show any surprise. He just sighed with resignation and said, "You see how it is..."