Within a few years after I moved to Paris, I was to become familiar with a score of foreign lands. In my heart Catalonia remained my home, but I came to feel at home in St. Petersburg and Sao Paulo, Philadelphia and Budapest, London, Venice, Stockholm, Buenos Aires. Traveling then was not of course what it is today. To fly over the Atlantic now takes a few hours; my crossing with Emma Nevada and Leon Moreau took eighteen days. I traveled tens of thousands of miles. The years became a kaleidoscope of new places, new acquaintances, new impressions.
I lost track of the number of concerts I gave. I do know it was often around two hundred and fifty a year. Sometimes when I was traveling in countries where cities were close together, I'd give over thirty concerts a month-on Sundays I would often have one concert in the afternoon and another in the evening. It was a demanding schedule. I never missed an engagement. I had a strong constitution, but even so I sometimes felt exhausted. Once, in Berlin, I fainted in the middle of a performance, but after a short rest I finished the concert.
I must say it was not an ideal form of existence. I have never liked packing and unpacking. Even for a young man, full of energy and curiosity, the excitement of travel wears off; and to spend a night here, a weekend there, and to hurry on-to have to rush to catch trains after concerts when your clothing is still drenched with perspiration, and to travel all night and have a rehearsal the following morning-becomes fatiguing and frustrating. Then too there was the sadness of leaving newfound friends. Regardless of how successful my concert tours were, I was always glad when they were over and I returned to Paris. I was happiest of all when summer came-then I could visit Catalonia and see my mother and father.
However, though I often longed for home, I cannot say I was lonely. I had my constant companions-Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart. And on many concert tours I traveled with fellow musicians, dear friends, like Harold Bauer, Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud and Fritz Kreiser. And no matter in what country I was or where I performed-whether it was in the Hall of Nobles in Moscow or a high-school auditorium in Maryland, I never felt I was a stranger in a foreign land. I was often grateful that the Count de Morphy had insisted on my learning several foreign languages-I became quite fluent in seven-but it was essentially through music that I communicated with people wherever I went. If their native tongue was different from mine, the language of our hearts was the same. You could cross borders and sleep in strange towns, but always find this common comradeship of spirit.
To see people gathered in a concert hall came to have a symbolic significance for me. When I looked into their faces, and when we shared the beauty of music, I knew that we were brothers and sisters, all members of the same family. Despite the dreadful conflicts of the intervening years and all the false barriers between nations, that knowledge has never left me. It will remain with me until the end. I long for the day when the peoples of the world will sit together, bound by happiness and love of beauty, as in one great concert hall!
It was short after my debut with Lamoureux that I came to know Harold Bauer. He was then twenty-six and already widely known as a pianist. Actually, he had started his career as a violinist. He was a handsome young man with sparkling eyes and bushy red hair; once, when he was still a youngster in England, Paderewski had jokingly told him, "You would make a fine pianist; you have such beautiful hair." When Bauer settled in Paris a few years later, he did become a pianist. And what a superb one! He was an especially wonderful interpreter of Brahms, Schumann and Chopin. We took an immediate liking to one another when we met, and Bauer suggested we give some joint concerts. We arranged a number in Spain and Holland. That was in 1900. It was the beginning of a long and joyful association. In the ensuing years I would give more concerts with Bauer than with any other performer. We complemented one another wonderfully well. There was an instinctive communion between us, and we shared the same views about music. From the beginning it was as if we had been playing together for years.
Bauer was a delightfull companion-a brilliant man, sensitive, perceptive, with a keen sense of humor and a remarkable knack for mimicry. He was an omnivorous reader-he always traveled with a dozen or so books-and when we were on a boat he would spend hours rummaging through the ship's library, making copious notes and reading late into the night. Like me, he was fond of athletics, and quite often we would wrestle in our cabin. He was a good deal larger than I was, but I was very strong in those days and usually managed to get him down. Sometimes we made so much noise that the steward would come to our cabin in alarm. Bauer would tell them, "What's the matter? It's nothing. We're just doing our daily exercises."
Bauer, however, had one most vexing problem; he suffered greatly from seasickness. He tried every imaginable remedy-at one time, in fact, he even wore some sort of device which was supposed to hold his stomach muscles in such a position as to prevent his becoming ill. But nothing worked. It was a miserable affliction.
One of our early trips took us to Brazil in 1903. It was my first trip to South America. We performed in Rio de Janeiro and a number of other cities. The tour was arranged by a most remarkable man who had previously organized a concert for me in Oporto. Portugal. His name was Moreira de Sa, and he was one of those rare individuals who can do almost anything-and do it well. Besides being a successful businessman, he was an eminent scholar, a brilliant mathematician, an author of school textbooks, a philosopher, an artist. In addition to everything else, he was a fine musician-he played the violin exceedingly well. He traveled with Bauer and me to Brazil and performed with us on a number of occasions. At the end of the tour, shortly before we were due to sail back to Europe, Moreira de Sa came to Bauer and me and told us very apologetically that he couldn't return with us. An unexpected development, he said, made it imperative for him to remain in Rio for several more weeks. Then, with great excitement, he told us what it was. He had just met a man who was an expert in the technique of Japanese lacquer, an art, he said, which he himself had always longed to learn; and the man had offered to teach it to him. And so Moreira de Sa stayed on in Brazil!
Traveling with Bauer was never dull, and we frequently shared amusing experiences. One occurred during that first visit of ours to Brazil in the city of Sao Paolo. We were rehearsing at our hotel before the performance and didn't realize how late it was until it was almost time for the concert to begin. We rushed into our evening clothes. I was pulling on my trousers when one of my feet got stuck. I pushed hard in exasperation-and, all at once, my foot went right through the trouser leg! I was horrified. The damage looked beyond repair-the whole bottom portion was ripped open. What was I to do? Even Bauer for once had nothing witty to say. We summoned a maid and showed her the torn trousers. She scurried off and returned with needle and thread. While we counted the seconds, she sewed up the rip as best she could. The workmanship might have been neater, but I could not have been more grateful-at least, I had a pair of trousers to wear during the concert.
I was reminded of that incident only recently when a friend sent me a newspaper clipping form San Francisco. A young woman, apparently influenced by the topless fad, was on trial for playing the cello in a state of dishabille. The judge told her that he questioned the artistic merits of a topless performance on the cello. He said, "I doubt if Pablo Casals would have been a better cellist if he had played without trousers." Since I have never given a concert in that condition, I cannot challenge the judge's opinion. That night in Sao Paolo almost seventy years ago was the closest I have ever come to performing without trousers-though sometimes, I must admit, when it is warm here in Puerto Rico, I do wear shorts while practicing.
In 1905, following my return from my second tour of the United States, I began my musical collaboration with the Swiss-born painist, Alfred Cortot, and the French violinist, Jacques Thibaud. It was an association that would continue over a period of three decades. When we started playing together as a trio, I was twenty-eight, Cortot twenty-seven, and Thibaud twenty-four-and our combined ages were considerably less than mine is today!
I have mentioned I would far rather play chamber music than solos, and our trio offered me the ideal opportunity. We undersood each other perfectly in our music, and we formed a marvelously gratifying team-not only as an ensemble but as friends. We began the custom of devoting one month each year to traveling together to give chamber music concerts, and our trio soon became widely known.
We also joined in making some of the earliest recordings of classical music on the gramophone-I had already made some on a cylinder around 1903. Certain of these recordings of ours, like the one of the Schubert Trio in B Flat, which was to remain in demand for many years, helped dispel the early prejudice among musicians against the gramophone. Of course the instrument was then in its infancy, and it left much to be desired. As a matter of fact, even to this day I find phonograph recordings far from fully satisfying.
Cortot and Thibaud were superlative artists. Cortot was unquestionably one of the great pianists of our time-he had boundless elan and astonishing power. He was also a brilliant musical scholar, whose writings on piano technique and musical appreciation gained international recognition. He interpreted Beethoven magnificently, and he had a consuming admiration for Wagner. For a time, when still in his twenties, he had been an assistant conductor at Baureuth, and at the age of twenty-four he conducted the first Paris performance of Gotterdammerung. Perhaps his most treasured possession was a portrait of Wagner by Renoir. He was an indefatigable, highly disciplined worker, both as a musician and as a scholar, and he was very ambitious for his career. I think it was perhaps this ambition which led to the sorrowful events that later overtook him.
Thibaud had been a protege of the famous French conductor, Edouard Colonne-Colonne had discovered him when he was playing as a youth in the Cafe Rouge in Paris and had launched him on his concert career. Like Cortot, he was a consummate instrumentalist-he played the violin with an incomparable elegance. But in many ways he was Cortot's opposite. He hated work and rarely practiced. He had, you might say, no sense of responsibility-he often behaved like a child, a naughty child. But he was wonderfully witty and gay. When the three of us were on tour, he kept us constantly entertained. He loved practical jokes, and he had a really remarkable inventiveness for them.
Once, I remember, when we had to catch a train quite early in the morning and were getting ready to leave our hotel, Thibaud suddenly went to a room near ours and knocked loudly on the door. A man;s sleepy voice asked, "Who is there?"
Thibaud said, "The barber, sir."
"The barber? There's some mistake. I don't want a barber."
Thibaud said, "I beg your pardon, sir."
A few minutes later, he knocked on teh door again.
"Yes?"
"It's the barber, sir."
"I already told you I don't want a barber!"
Then Thibaud went downstairs to the barber and told him the guest in that room wanted his services immediately-the man, said Thibaud, was very annoyed because he'd left word the night before that he wanted a barber the first thing in the morning. The barber hurried off. One can imagine the reception he got!
Sometimes our impresario, Boquel, traveled with us, and Thibaud was constantly playing jokes on him. Boquel was very fastidious-he even wore gloves when playing cards. On one occasion he went out of the room during a card game and left his gloves on the table. When he put them on after coming back, he found his fingers projecting from their ends. In his absence Thibaujd had cut off the finger tips! Another time, when Boquel started to brush his hair just before one of our concerts, he found to his horror that his brush was coated with butter-it was, of course, Thibaud's doing. Naturally, Boquel became rather piqued by this sort of thing.
Around the time that I began giving concerts with Cortot and Thibaud, I met another musician-a very much younger one-who is today my oldest friend and associate. I speak of that marvelous pianist, Mieczyslaw Horszowski. He was a boy when we met. I have known him for more than sixty years, and we have now been playing together for half a century! He is the one remaining friend with whom I can reminisce about associates and experiences that date back to my youth.
Horszowski was born in Poland in the early 1890's and was a child prodigy-he made a sensational debut at the age of nine. He came to Spain with his mother in 1905 on one of his earliest concert tours and played in Barcelona. I was in Paris at the time, but ny brother Enrique heard him play and was greatly excited. Enrique arranged for Mme. Horszowski and her son to meet my mother. Our two mothers got on wonderfully well-they had much in common and loved to be together. My mother wrote me about all of this. A few months later, I met Horszowski in Italy.
He was brought to see me at the house of a friend after one of my concerts. I can vividly remember the occasion. He was very small-diminutive-and very shy, and he was dressed in a sailor suit with short trousers and a large white collar trimmed with lace. He looked about ten years old, though he tells me he was thirteen; and this must be right, because he is always extremely precise and meticulous. He played for me, and I was deeply impressed. I knew he had a great talent.
Two or three years later he came to see me in Paris, and I worked with him, especially on Bach. After the First World War, we were to give many chamber-music concerts together in Italy, England, Switzerland and other countries. Later he played for my orchestra in Barcelona and at my music festivals in Prades and Puerto Rico. To this day we play together.
A remarkable thing about Horszowski is that in many ways he seems to have hardly changed since we first met. Despite his immense talent as a musician, he is still very shy and extraodinarily modest and retiring. And still very small-in fact, smaller than I am! I've really never known anyone who has remained so unchanged over the years. When I look at him now, I see him as a small boy-though I must say he has given up one infatuation he used to have. As a young man, before the Great War, he had a passion for sprots cars, racing cars; and each summer he used to take one of those little cars with two seats and drive it at a great pace from Paris to the French Riviera and on into Italy. Of couse that sort of thing was much more difficult in those days than today. The roads, he has told me, were terrible-they were very dusty and full of nails, which oftern got into his tires....
In 1905 I made my Russian debut. The time at which I arrived was hardly a propitious one for a concert tour. Though I did not know it when I left Paris for an engagement in Moscow, the Revolution of 1905 had already begun.
Shortly after we crossed the Russian frontier, our train was stopped at Vilna and everyone was told to get off. There was bedlam at the railroad station. Baggage was piled high, and scores of people were milling about, shouting and gesticulating. I could understand little of what was being said, because most of the people were, of course, speaking Russian. In the waiting room I was approached by a man wearing a uniform, who introduced himself to me. He was a high railway official and a general in the Russian army, and he seemed to know a great deal about my work. All traffic to Moscow, he said, had been halted by a railroad strike. However,a special train was about to depart for St. Petersburg. Did I wish to acompany him on it? I thought of the return trip of more than a thousand miles to Paris and gratefully accepted his offer. As we traveled north across the snowy Russian countryside, I wondered what lay in store for me.
As soon as we reached St. Petersburg, I went to see the conductor Alexander Siloti. I had corresponded with him and knew his reputation. As a young man he had been a brilliant pianist-he had studied for a time with Tchaikovsky and then with Liszt, who exercised a great influence upon him-and later he had emerged as one of the foremost conductors in Russia. Now he was directing an orchestra in St. Petersburg. Siloti received me most cordially. I was astonished at his resemblance to Liszt; He could have been Liszt's twin brother, he even had a wart on his face like Liszt. He insisted that I stay with him-he had a lovely house near the River Neva with a magnificent music library. When I told him about being unable to get to Moscow, he said he too faced a problem because of the railroad stike-a soloist he had engaged couldn't reach St. Petersburg. He asked me if I would play in the soloist's place. I readily agreed. The concert was held in a highly dramatic atmosphere. There was no electricity because of a general strike in the city, and the hall was lit by candlelight. The audience was wondrfully responsive.
I remained in St. Petersburg for two or three weeks and gave a series of concerts with Siloti. A tense and ominous mood hung over the city. The nights were punctuated with gunfire.One had the feeling that anything might happen at any moment. There were riots across the River Neva, and I told Siloti I wanted to go and see what was happening. He said, "Don't be foolish. Do you want to get shot?" But finally, one night after a concert, he gave in to me. We took a carriage across one of the bridges. On the other side, we heard shots nearby. Suddenly a man waving a flag came rushing around a corner. He shouted wildly in Russian as he passed our carriage. I asked what he was shouting. Siloti told me, "He's shouting, 'Long live the Republic of the Czars!' "
Such was the state of mind at the time! The Russians desperately wanted an end to the autocracy under which they had suffered for so long, but many had been so indoctrinated that they could not conceive of a republic without a czar at the head of it!
On a subsequent trip to Russia, I myself experienced something of the repressive measures of the period following the suppression of the Revolution of 1905. I was challenged at the border by several Czarist officials-big hulking men in uniform-who acted as if I were some sort of dangerous subversive. I couldn't imagine what they suspected. They barked at me in Russian, and when I replied in German that I couldn't understand them, they paid no attention. After rummaging through my baggage, they searched me from head to foot-they even forced me to undress! I was furious. When I reached St. Petersburg, I told Siloti what had happened. He was , if anything, more outraged than I was. He reported the affair to the government authorities, and I received an official apology. The episode, I was told, was all an unfortunate mistake. The explanation did little to assuage my feelings.
There was ample evidence of the heavy hand of the rulers. On all sides one felt apprehension, suspicion, fear. Everyone was spied on. Doormen and janitors had to report to the Czarist police what happened in the houses where they worked. The secret police themselves were everywhere. The great composer Rimski-Korsakov was dismissed for a time from his professorship at the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music for publishing a protest against secret police surveillance of the students. People were aftaid to say anything against the government. You often felt as if you wer in a prison.
On my various trips to Russia, besides playing in St. Petersburg, I gave concerts in Moscow, Riga, Kiev and other cities. And wherever I went, I was struck by the glaring contrasts-on the one hand, the dreadful poverty among the working people, and, on the other , the flagrantly ostentatious wealth of the aristocrats. I was convinced it was only a matter of time before the people revolted again against these unbearable conditions. When the storm finally burst in 1917, I felt that the inevitable had happened. At the same time, I must say that I have been appalled by the injustices and repressions that have followed that Revolution. I am aware that in every revolution certain excesses seem inevitable-I myself have witnessed something of the violent extremes to which people in rebellion will go. But I cannot condone the actions of those who, in the name of social change, persecute innocent people, many of whom have themselves worked for the betterment of society. No ends and no achievements can justify such means.
It was my good fortune to become acquainted with a numer of the noted Russian composers-Rimski-Korsakov, Scriabin, Cesar Cui, Glazunov, and others. In Moscow I frequently played under the direction of Rachmaninoff. Immensely gifted men! when one realizes the phenomenal rapidity with which classical music had flowered in Russia, their works seem all the more remarkable. And with what kindness they treated me!
I remember in particular one experience with Rimski-Korsakov. It happened in St. Petersburg when Siloti took me to a performance of one of Rimski-Korsakov's operas at the Maryinsky Theater. During the intermission after the first act, Glazunov-he had been a pupil of Rimski-Korsakov-came to the box where Siloti and I were seated. He told me, "I've just been talking with Nikolai Andreevich, and he's nervous because you're here. He's afraid you won't like the music." Imagine the modesty of the man! He was then in his sixties and at the height of his career, and I was not yet thirty. I felt embarrassed to reply. But I asked Glazunov to please let Rimski-Korsakov know how greatly I was enjoying the opera. After the performance I met with Rimski-Korsakov, and I told him how much I loved his music. And he evidence such appreciation!
It always struck me as curious that this great Russian composer was also a high officer in the Russian navy. However, I never saw him in his uniform. The composer who often did wear his uniform was Cesar Cui, and-with his full white beard and piercing eyes-he cut a very distinguished figure in it. He was a general in the czar's army. and I was told he was a leading authority on artillery and things of that sort. His father had been a French officer who stayed behind during Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in 1812. Cesar Cui was, I think you could say, one of the few blessings that Napoleon brought to Russia.
Of the Russian composers I met, Alexander Scriabin unquestionably made the most dramatic impression on me. He was a truly astonishing person. He was a real innovator and, in fact, an inventor, a pioneer who explored ideas not only in music but in philosophy. He was always experimenting with harmonics and orchestration. Like Rimski-Korsakov and Cesar Cui, interestingly enough, he had started his career in the military service. Then he had turned to music and become widely known as a pianist before he became a composer. He was still in his thirties when we met- a handsome man with a waxed mustache and a small beard. he discussed many of his ideas with me. It was his contention that music as we knew it was in many ways crude and rudimentary, and that our musical scale was far too limited and superficial. He was intensely interested in a relationship between music and color, and he believed, in fact, that scales, corresponding to musical scales, should be developed for other senses, for color, taste and smell. He felt that all possibilities of aesthetic sensations should be investigated. He asserted that someone listening to music was inevitably affected by the surroundings in which the music was played-that the effects of music heard in darkness were quite different from those of music heard in light, and that one's sensations responded to variations in color just as to changes in temperature. He invited me to his house in Moscow and showed me an apparatus he had developed for reproducing sound in color. I think I must have been one of the first to see it. It was really remarkable and produced marvelous effects. He was composing a new orchestral work, Prometheus, for which he was writing a part for a keyboard of light, so that various colors could play on a screen while the work was performed. It was the first time that anything like this had been done. And to think that this amazing genius was only forty-three when he died a few years after we met! At the time of his death, he was composing a monumental work, which involved some two thousand participants and combined musical effects with those of dance, song, speech, color and even perfume!
In the years following my settling in Paris, I performed in every European capital-with
one exception. That exception was, incongruously, the city for which I felt the greatest musical affinity-Vienna. Much as I longed to play there, I could not muster the courage. For almost a decade I declined one invitation after another and kept away, like a man who fears to come too close to the thing he loves the most. I was drawn to that city of legendary charm as by a magnet, but I was haunted by the living ghosts that dwelt there. For me, Vienna was the very Temple of Music, which still echoed with the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Haydn. Their spirits had inhabited me since my childhood; yet now I hesitated to enter their home. For this was where they had lived and loved, labored, suffered and died. Finally, and with great trepidation, I accepted an engagement to play in Vienna. I have never known such apprehension before a concert. I wandered through the streets with my heart pounding-I had the feeling that at any moment I might come face to face with Mozart or Schubert, that suddenly Beethoven would stand before me, looking at me silently and with immeasurable sadness, as over the years I had seen him in my dreams. The concert was held at the Musikfreunde hall. Not a seat was vacant. The work I had selected to play was Emanuel Moor's Concerto in C-Sharp Minor. I drew my bow across the strings for the first notes and suddenly, with panic, I felt it slipping form my fingers. I tried desperately to regain control of it but my movement was too abrupt. The bow shot from my grasp, and as I watched in helpless horror, it flew over the heads of the first rows of audience! There was not a sound in the hall. Someone retrieved the bow. It was handed with tender care from person to person-still in utter silence; and as I followed its slow passage toward me with fascination, a strange thing happened. My nervousness completely vanished. When the bow reached me, I immediately began the concerto again and this time with absolute confidence. I think I have never played better than I did that night.
From then on, I visited Vienna every year.
As I have already related, my first visit to the city of Brussels at the age of nineteen was not a happy one and I gladly left after two days. On a later occasion, when my reputation as a cellist was already established, I had another experience which was also disturbing, though it ended more fortunately.
This experience occurred at the rehearsal for a concert at which I was to perform with a symphony orchestra. There was a custom which I regarded as long outdated and an imposition on musicians. The final rehearsal before a concert would be attended by an audience which was charged admission-but the artists themselves were paid only for their performance at the actual concert. On this occasion, I decided that the time had come to do something about this custom. So during the final rehearsal, which took place in a full auditorium, I acted as I would at any other rehearsal. I stopped whenever I felt the need for any correction in the concerto I was playing and discussed the point in detail with the conductor. Before long the audience began getting restless. When the concerto was finished, the director of the conservatory asked me to proceed with the Bach suite which was scheduled for the second part of the program. I told him,"Oh, that's not necessary. I've already practiced that enough. I don't need to rehearse it now." He said, "But you must play it. Everyone is expecting you to." I said I was very sorry but I had no intention of doing so. In the meantime quite a commotion arose in the hall and some of the audience began calling out and asking when the music was going to continue. Finally the director said, "I must beseech you, Monsieur Casals-please play the Bach suite. Consider yourself engaged for two concert performances. I shall see to it that you are paid for both." I said all right and went ahead. When the actual concert was over, I received two fees, but I told the director I would keep only one. The other, I insisted, was to go to the orchestra's fund. After that, the practice of having paying audiences at dress rehearsals was discontinued. Even on the concert stage one should protest against injustices!
But such episodes are not uppermost in my mind when I think of Brussels. I associate with that city some of my happiest memories, and not only because of the many gratifying performances I gave there. For me, the city is irrevocably linked with the names of two unique human beings, whose lives became closely interwoven with mine-the incomparable Belgian violinist, Eugene Ysaye, and that noble woman, Queen Elisabeth of Belgium.
I came to know Ysaye shortly after my Paris debut with Lamoureux. We gave concerts together, and periodically I would play with his orchestra in Brussels-he was, of course, world-famed as a violinist but he was also a splendid conductor, whose orchestra was one of the best in Europe. When we first met he was in his early forties-twenty years my senior-but, in a way, it was as if there were no difference in our ages. We became like brothers. A small brother and a big brother. He was a giant of a man, but a graceful giant who moved with effortless ease-he reminded me of a lion with his majestic head and wonderful eyes. I have never known an artist with a more imposing stage presence. And he had a heart to match his body. He was a man of embracing warmth and magnanimity, with an unquenchaable zest for life. He lived to the full-he used to say he burned his candle at both ends-and his music reflected his fiery spirit. When he played, one felt ennobled.
Ysaye's career, like mine, began in a way in a cafe. It was the great Hungarian violinist, Joseph Joachim, who discovered him in a cafe in Berlin and persuaded him to pursue a concert career. Of course his mode of playing differed greatly from Joachim's. Ysaye liberated the violin from the strictures of the past. I cannot agree with those who feel he took too many liberties with a score and couldn't curb his imagination. One has to remember the time at which his artistry developed and the inhibiting traditions of "classicism" he overcame. Indeed, his imaginative powers were integral to his genius, and his influence on the art of the violin has been immeasurable. For me, he remains the greatest violinist of them all. You might say he discovered the true soul of the instrument.
Recently I came on some notes I made a number of years ago about Ysaye. This is part of what I wrote:
Once Ysaye came into the picture, he outdated all the schools and trends of violin playing of his time.
Ysaye was the greatest violinist of his period not because he made more notes than his contemporaries but because he made them better. His influence has lasted irresistibly. The younger generations of violinists continue to be shaped by that influence.
The advent of Ysaye was a revelation not only because of his technical mastery but especially because of the qualities of color, accent, warmth, freedom, expressiveness, which he brought to the interpretation of music. He was the first to break down the barriers of the German traditions.
Sometimes I used to visit Ysaye at his summer home at Gedinne near the River Meuse. He loved to fish, and I can still see him sitting beside the river with his rod-and his pipe. He relished a pipe and, like me, was rarely without one. But I didn't share Ysaye's fondness for fishing; even as a boy I couldn't stand the sight of those beautiful creatures wriggling helplessly when caught....
How tragic it was that this vibrant and magnificent man was fated to ultimately suffer as he did from diabetes and die a crippling, lingerng death!
It was at one of my concerts in the early 1900's in Brussels that I first met Queen Elisabeth of Belgium. During the intermission, a messenger came backstage and told me that King Albert and Queen Elisabeth would like me to join them in their box. On that occasion the king presented me with a decoration. Queen Elisabeth was then in her mid- twenties-we were, in fact, the same age. After that, she came to all my concerts in Brussels.
But when I speak of Queen Elisabeth, one of the first things I think of is another public occasion, when an incident occurred that really gives an insight into her character. This happened after we had already known each other for some years, at a conference sponsored by the Royal Institute. The gathering was in a large hall-Jean Cocteau, who was receiving a tribute of some sort, delivered an address about the works of Colette-and again I was invited to the royal box. When I came there, Queen Elisabeth indicated an empty chair beside her and invited me to be seated. I realized the chair was the king's and I hesitated-it was, I knew, against protocol for anyone else to occupy it. But she smiled and said again, pointing to the chair, "Please be seated, Pau." So I sat down. I remained in the king's chair for the rest of the conference. People in the hall kept glancing toward the box, and I later learned that the episode had created something of a scandal. That action of hers was typical. "Protocol is sometimes necessary," she once told me, "but I don't like the word."
Queen Elisabeth was a small fragile-looking woman, but she had a will of iron. When she did something, it was because she believed it the right thing to do. She wanted to stand alone and to decide for herself, no matter what others said. In many ways she was the most unconventional member of royalty I have ever met. But in every way she was queenlike-she had an inner nobility. Perhaps one day someone will write the full story of her life. It would be an inspiring book.
She was born a German princess. Her fataher, Duke Theodor of Bavaria, was a highly cultured man, whose palace was frequented by writers and artist; he was also, remarkably enough, a distinguished physician. Elisabeth became interested in medicine through him and took a medical degree at the University of Leipzig. She also shared her father's love for the arts. She loved music most of all. It remained a passion with her throughout her life. She herself played the violin well-she studied under Ysaye-and in later years she founded an international musical contest in Belgium. the Concours International Reine Elisabeth.
Though German by birth, she became probably the most beloved citrizen of her adopted country after her marriage to Prince Albert-they were married at the turn of the century. She was especially concerned about the problems of the working people. She dedicated herself to every sort of social cause; and she founded a medical clinic, at which she herself taught nursing. When the First World War came and the Germans invaded Belgium, she refused to leave. She stayed in Brussels until the Germans were at the gates of the city. Then she retreated with the Belgian army, serving as a nurse. "As long as a single foot of free Belgian soil remains," she said, "I will be on it." When only a few miles of unconquered territory were left, she stayed there, living with King Albert in a little house in a coastal town that was under heavy bombardment-her life was in constant danger. She set up a hospital in an old hotel, where she helped care for the sick and wounded, and she organized a school for the children of refugees. When the Germans at last began to withdraw, she followed on the heels of their retreating army.
In the years after the war, Queen Elisabeth championed all kinds of liberal causes. Sometimes her conduct shocked the aristocrats, but she did not care. Her greatest concern was world peace, and after the Second World War, she helped sponsor the Stockholm Peace Appeal, calling for the banning of all atomic weapons. She was interested in what happened everywhere in the world. She traveled widely-in Europe, Asia, Africa, America. When she was over eighty, she went to visit Premier Khrushchev in the Soviet Union and Mao Tse-tung in China. Always she had a great love of nature-her knowledge of flowers and trees was like a botanist's-somehow she found time to study birds and to write a scholarly book called The Songbirds of Laeken. In the introductrion, she wrote: "I dedicate this book to all children, and I urge them to listen to our brothers, the birds."
Our paths were to cross repeatedly for more than sixty years. We never lost touch-never, despite all the vicissitudes of her life and mine, despite the two world wars and the Spanish Civil War. Whenever I went to Belgium, I visited her. I would give recitals for her at the palace, and sometimes she joined me in playing chamber music-she was immensely fond of chamber music and often invited musicians for an evening of trios or quartets. During my exile in Prades she wrote me frequently-her letters were a source of joy and comfort to me. Later she attended my music festivals in Prades and, after I settled in Puerto Rico, the festivals in San Juan and Marlboro, Vermont. In the summer Martita and I would go to Brussels and visit Queen Elisabeth as her guests at the palace. The last time we visited her was in the summer of 1966. A few months later this great spirit died at the age of eighty-nine.
In her will she left a jewel to me as a gift-with the instruction that I was to give the jewel to Martita.