My father had suffered increasingly from attacks of asthma in the years after I moved to Paris. He never mentioned it in his letters to me, and when I came home for vacations he would make light of his sickness, but I knew from my mother and the doctors how serious it was. The doctors said it was imperative that he move to another climate-he needed mountain air, they said-and I insisted that he act on their advice. I bought him a house in a mountain village called Bonastre, and he went to live there. But his health continued to deteriorate.
In the autumn of 1906, I was in Basel, Switzerland, taking part in a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. The great Dutch singer, Johannes Messchaert, was singing one of the most magnificent arias in the work, and I was playing the cello part, when suddenly I was overwhelmed by a terrible feeling. At that moment I knew with dreadful certainty that my father was dying. As soon as the performance was over, I canceled all other engagements of my concert tour, and I left directly for Vendrell. When I arrived, I learned that my beloved father had died on the day I had been playing in Basel. He was buried not far from the church where he had been organist and where, as a child, I had sung while he played.
At the time of my father's death, I had taken up residence in a house in the Auteuil district in Paris. It was one of a cluster of houses for rent on a small estate called the Villa Molitor. In back of the house was a tiny garden-I used to sit there in the early evenings, smoking my pipe. The house became a gathering place for my friends, and a day rarely passed without some of them coming to visit me. We would play chess and talk and sometimes play music together. I was always glad to get back to the Villa Molitor at the end of one of my concert tours.
It was, however, my mother's feeling that I should have a house of my own in Catalonia. "With all the traveling your are doing," she said on one of my summer visits home, "you need a place where you can really rest. You cannot do that in Paris. You need to be here in your own land by the sea." Shortly after my father's death, she suggested we build a house at San Salvador. We bought a number of acres right beside the sea. She designed the house herself-a simple but charming house on the beach where I had spent so many hours as a child-and she made all the arrangements for its construction. She supervised the planting of the gardens and orchards and directed all the operations of the farm. The people who worked on the place had the greatest respect for her-they felt she knew more than the experts.
Every summer I would spend my vacation of two or three months at San Salvador with my mother and my brothers, Luis and Enrique, who were still in their teens. Luis was studying agriculture, and Enrique already showed unusual talent as a violinist. It was a joy for me to be there. I would get up early in the morning and walk along the beach, watching the sun rise over the ocean and stopping to talk with the fishermen. The place had lost none of the fascination it held for me as a child. The moment I returned I had the feeling of being liberated. I have always found in nature an inexhaustible source of sustenance. And my visits to San Salvador provided me with the only real opportunity I had in those days for composing.
What my mother said about my life in Paris was true. Intense activities consumed much of my time. There were of course frequent concerts and musicales, rehearsals and various other obligations. In addition to everything else, I was interested in the work at the Ecole Normale de Musique, which I had helped found together with Thibaud and Cortot. It was a period when I did a great deal of teaching. One of my most talented pupils was Maurice Eisenberg, with whom I was to form a friendship that would prove so precious to me in future years. Anyway, when I returned to Paris from a concert tour, there was little time for relaxation. Usually, in fact, it was just the opposite.
I recall one experience in particular. I cannot say that it was typical-fortunately, I have never had another quite like it. But it does illustrate the sort of thing that could disturb a musician's life in Paris.
It had become a custom of mine to take part in an annual baenefit concert for the Lamoureux and Colonne orchestras. On this particular occasion, the date set for the concert was a very day on which I returned to Paris after a lengthy tour. A public rehearsal was scheduled for the morning, as was customary in those days, and though I was tired after a night on the train, I went directly to the concert hall. The conductor, Gabriel Pierne, and I had agreed some weeks previously that I would play the Dvorak concerto. Shortly before the rehearsal was to start, Pierne came to my dressing room to go over the score and discuss my approach to the work. Something in his manner struck me as odd-he seemed almost uninterested in what we were discussing, but I thought he was probably preoccupied with other matters. Then, all at once, he tossed the score down and exclaimed with a grimace, "What a ghastly peice of music!" I thought at first he was being facetious-I couldn't imagine his really meaning such a thing. He was, after all, a composer himself who had studied under Massenet and Cesar Franck. But he added, "It's hardly worth playing. It's not really music at all." He said it in such a way that there was no doubting he was serious.
I stared at him incredulously. "Are you out of your mind?" I said. "How can you talk that way about such a magnificent work?" Didn't he know, I asked, that Brahms considered it a classic and said he himself would have composed a concerto for the cello if he'd known such effects were possible?
Pierne shrugged. "What of it? Was Brahms infallible? You're enough of a musician to know how bad the music is."
I was almost speechless with anger. "If that's the way you feel about the work," I said, "then you're clearly not capable of conducting it. Since I happen to love the music, I couldn't take part in its desecration. And I won't. I refuse to play."
Members of the orchestra began pressing around us. Someone said the hall was full, and it was time to go onstage. Pierne told me, "Well, we have no choice. You'll have to play."
"On the contrary," I said, "I'm going home."
Pierne rushed onstage. He stood there with his hands raised, his hair and beard disheveled. He declared dramatically, "Pablo Casals refuses to play for us today!"
A great commotion broke out in the hall. I wanted to explain what had happened, but I couldn't make myself heard above the din. Peoplel started crowding onto the stage, arguing and protesting that they had paid for their tickets.I caught sight of the composer Claude Debussy standing nearby. I told him about the situation. "Ask Debussy," I said to Pierne, "if he thinks any artist could perform under the circumstances."
To my astonishment, Debussy shrugged and said, "If you really wanted to play, you could."
I replied, "That may be your opinion, Monsieur Debussy, but I can tell you I haven't the slightest intention of doing so."
I got my things together and left the hall.
Next day I received a court summons indicating I was being sued for breach of contract. The legal technicalities dragged on for weeks. When the case finally came to court, the prosecutor himself said he thought my conduct was justified from an artistic viewpoint. But of course there are certain discrepancies between the requirements of art and those of the law. The judge ruled against me. I was fined 3,000 francs, which-with the rate of exchange at the time-was no pittance!
I must confess that-court verdict or not-I would act the same way today. Either you believe in what you are doing or you do not. Music is something to be approached with integrity, not something to be turned on or off like tap water.
At the time of my controversy with Pierne, the news papers in Paris criticized me as being contentious and temperamental. Actually, it is not my nature to seek quarrels. The opposite, I think, is true-I find so much of interest in other people, and especially in their different ways of thinking, that whether I agree with them or not my inclination is not to be argumentative but to try to learn from them. The question of temperament is perhaps more complicated. I suppose most individuals have certain idiosyncrasies-that is doubtless one of the things that make them individuals. Quite often, in fact, during interviews, I have been asked to tell about my own idiosyncrasies. I do not like to disappoint my questioners. I know they would like to hear something startling and unusual. I know they will not be satisfied if I tell them I have a passion for playing dominoes and an addiction to pipe smoking-or that my eyes are very sensitive to lighnt and I carry an umbrella to protect them from the sun. But what else can I tell them? The truth is that I regard myself as a rather plain person with simple likes and dislikes. In music too I seek simplicity-perhaps today that might be considered my chief idiosyncrasy!
It is commonly believed, I know, that eccentricity is part of the artistic temperament, but I do not happen to share this veiwpoint. I am sure one can find very erratic individuals among plumbers and bankers; and, at the same time, if it were possible for us to meet Bach or Shakespeare, I think we'd be struck by their lack of eccentricity. Some great composers, of course, have been extremely eccectric. I think of Richard Wagner, for example, and some of the things his friend, the conductor Hans Richter, used to tell me about him-his fiery temper, his arbitrary ways, his egocentricity. However, I do not regard such qualities as essential to his creative genius but as weaknesses toward which one should be tolerant and which have small importance. It is his works, not his idiosyncrasies, that are memorable. Sometimes, indeed, the idiosyncrasies of an artist can seriously hamper his work. An example would be my friend, the Hungarian-born composer Emanuel Moor.
Moor was in my opinion a true genius, one of the really outstanding composers of this century. He was also a magnificent pianist and a remarkable inventor-among his inventions were the double-keyboard piano and a mechanical stringed instrument that included all registers from the double bass to the violin. But his eccentricities were such that they interfered greatly with the acceptance of his music.
I became acquainted with Moor's music under dramatic circumstances. I met him at one of my concerts in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he was living at the time. A Russian cellist named Brandukoff introduced him to me as an "amateur composer," but I sensed something remarkable about him-you could see the man's intensity in his face. I told him I would like to hear some of his work, and Invited him to visit me in Paris. He came shortly afterwards to see me at the Villa Molitor. He brought with him a veritable mountain of scores. Almost the moment he sat down at the piano and began to play, I realized he was an artist of immense talent. His music was overwhelming. He played several of his works, one after the other; and the more he played, the more convinced I became that he was a composer of the highest order. When he stopped, I said simply, "You are a genius." He looked at me for a moment in silence, his features working terribly, and suddenly he burst into tears. Then his story poured form him.
He had started his musical career, he told me, as a pianist and had met with considerable success on the concert stage. From the time of his youth, however, he had a consuming passsion to compose. But as the years wnet by he had found it almost impossible to secure an audience for his works-he was constantly told his music was without merit. Finally, after repeated rebuffs, he gave up in despair and stopped composing. He had then been in his mid-thirties. For the last ten years,he said, he had written no music. "But that is impossible!" I told him. "What you've just played for me is superb music. You must start composing again." He seized my hands and said, "I will, I will!"
And he did. He began visiting me reqularly each month in Paris, and every time he brought some new work. His output was prodigious-he composed at incredible speed. Sometimes he brought a symphony, sometimes an opera, sometimes a group of songs or a piece of chamber music.But always something that bore the mark of his special genius. I undertook to introduce his music to the public. I played works of his at my concerts and persuaded friends of mine-Ysaye, Cortot, Bauer, Kreisler and others-to do the same. I also arranged concerts at which I conducted his works, and prevailed upon other conductors to include his compositions in their programs. But I met with constant resistance. And why? One of the chief reasons was Moor's eccentricity.
I never knew a man with a greater capacity for offending people and making enemies. He was peremptory, short-tempered, violently opinionated. If someone disagreed with his opinions, he would savagely turn on them and call them names. I remember one occasion when a well-known pianist came to my house while Moor was there. It was toward evening, and Moor had spent the entire day playing his new compositons to me. But when the other pianist began to play, Moor could scarcely control his exasperation. He listened in glowering silence while the pianist played several of his own transcriptions of Bach, for which he was noted. When the pianist had finished, he turned to Moor and said, "What do you think of those, M. Moor?" Moor burst out, "I think you're an utter idiot!"
Another time I had managed-not without some effort-to arrange for Moor's works to be played at a performance of the Classical Concert Society in London, and we traveled together to England. We went for a rehearsal to the home of the distinguished English pianist, Leonard Borwick-he was a splendid musician who had studied with the famous pianist and teacher, Clara Schumann. While Borwick and I were rehearsing a Beethoven sonata, which was one of the works on the concert progran, I could see that Moor was getting increasingly irritated. I motioned to him to calm down, but to no avail. We began playing the next work-a Bach sonata-when Moor suddenly strode to the piano, seized Borwick by the shoulders and thrust him violently off the bench, shouting, "Let me show you how to play Bach!" Borwick-who was very much of an English gentlemen-simply said to Moor, very quietly, "Thank you, sir, I shall play to the best of my ability."
Naturally, such conduct did not endear Moor to his confreres! His very deportment sometimes disturbed people. His table manners-or, rather, the complete lack of them-revolted others. I understood that he was a man consumed by music and that if he bolted his food like a ravenous animal, it was because music coursed through his brain at night and lack of sleep and nervousness kept him in a famished state. I made allowances for Moor's behavior-even if I was oftern embarrassed by it-because I knew how much the poor man suffered. But other musicians did not share my sympathy for him. They would say to me, "How can you have anything to do with him? He's unbearable. We can't stand the sight of him." I would try to explain, but I could not make them understand. Time and again their antipathy toward him interfered with the presentation of his music.
Unfortunately, Moor's works are today practically unknown. But I do not regard this as any reflection on their intrinsic merit. There have been periods when the music of some of the greatest composers has been ignored. Consider Bach himself-his works were really discovered almost a century after his death by Mendelssohn. And I can remember the time when Mozart's works were regarded merely as pleasing divertissements and included in programs just to fill them up. Genius, however, has a way of asserting itself. And I am convinced that one day Moor will come into his own.
At one of my concerts in Berlin in 1913, I met the well- known American lieder singer, Susan Metcalfe-she came backstage after the performance to congratulate me. When she indicated to me her interest in Spanish songs, I offered to help her develop a repertoire of them. We worked together during the following months, and the next spring we were married in New Rochelle, New York, where she was then living. Afterwards we gave a number of concerts together in Europe and the United States, at which I played as her accompanist. We were, however, ill-suited to one another, and our relationship was short-lived, though it was some years before we were divorced. Our life together was not a happy one. But these, of course, are things one does not discuss.
I think that perhaps the happiest memories of my Paris days are those associated with the small informal music sessions at which my friends and I would periodically get together and play for our own pleasure. Those sessions became a cherished custom with us, you might say a ritual-though there was nothing ritualistic about them in the ordinary sense. We usually gathered in the small parlor at Thibaud's house. Generally four or five of us were present. Our group included Ysaye, Thibaud, Kreisler, Pierre Monteux, Cortot, Bauer, Enesco, myself. George Enesco was the youngest-he had come to Paris form Romania in the early 1900's when he was about twenty. He was a very sensitive youth, handsome in a delicate poetic way; he played both the violin and the piano superbly, and he was already composing marvelous music. We soon became the closest of friends.
Those sessions at Thibaud's place would begin in the late spring or early summer, at the end of the concert season, when our tours were finished. Our group would come together, like homing pigeons, from all parts of the globe. Ysaye would have just returned from a tour of Russia, Kreisler from the United States, Bauer from the Orient, I perhaps from South America. How we all longed for that moment! Then we would play together for the sheer love of playing, without thought of concert programs or time schedules, of impresarios, box-office sales, audiences, music critics. Just ourselves and the music! We played duets, quartets-chamber music-everything and anything we felt like playing. We understood each other completely. We would constantly change around: Now one would play the first or second violin or viola, now another. Sometimes Enesco would be at the piano, sometimes Cortot. Usually we met after supper, and we would play and play. No one paid the slightest attention to time. The hours flew past-we stopped occasionally for something to eat or drink. Often when we finished, it was early morning as we left Thibaud's.
The time was to come when we would have to discontinue those wonderful sessions at Thibaud's-when our lives, like the lives of millions of others, would be suddenly shaken by the upheaval of 1914. That summer Kreisler was conscripted into the Austrian army. It was hard to imagine that gay and gentle genius in a soldier's uniform. And what a shock when he was one of the first wounded on the Russian front! Bauer would soon move to the United States. Ysaye went to live in London....
Occasionally in the war years some members of our group did meet and play together at the home of Muriel Draper, the American socialite who was then living in London. We played in a cellar room which we used to call "the cave." It was a really charming place-there were comfortable chairs, and large cushions scattered all about. But it was never really the same as it had been in Paris. In the back of our minds, there was always the terrible specter of the war.
During the early part of this century most Europeans had seen little of war. The time had not yet come when tens of millions would be familiar with the horrors of trench warfare, the ghastly casualty lists, the flight of women and children from flaming towns. Nor was war, as it is today, a topic of daily conversation, a nightly spectacle on television programs, a bottomless pit for the wealth of great nations.
Though Spain in the early 1900's was no longer one of the great powers, her people were perhaps more closely acquainted with war than other Europeans. My own memory of war dated back to before the turn of the century-to what was called the Disaster of 1898. It was then I witnessed in Barcelona a nightmarish scene that has never left me. That was the year of the Spanish-American Was and the final crumbling of the Spanish empire: the loss of its colonies of Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. Like the rest of the people of Spain, we Catalans of course knew about the military campaigns that had been dragging on in Cuba for several years to suppress the rebellion against Spanish rule-there were, after all, almost a quarter of a million Spanish troops in Cuba at the time. But few Spaniards realized what losses their army was suffering, from the guerrilla warfare in the swamps and jungles and especially from malaria, yellow fever and other tropical diseases. These facts were kept from the people, and while the casualties grew, the newspapers reported sweeping successes. Final victory was constantly predicted. Then suddenly, in the summer of 1898, with the entry of the United States into the war, came the catastrophic denouement. Overnight the whole campaign collapsed. Instead of the promised victory, an utter debacle! I was in Barcelona at the time. Shortly after news of the defeat, transport ships arrived in the port carrying remnants of the Spanish army. For days, thousands of soldiers-the sick, the maimed, and those revaged by hunger and disease-wandered through the streets of the city. The horror of it! It was like scene from Goya's "Disasters of War." And for what, I asked myself, for what?
The impact on the Spanish people was immeasurable. From one end of the country to the other, the events in Barcelona were repeated. They were even portrayed in one of the zarzuelas produced that year, a work entitle Gigantes y Cabezudos, "Giants and Big-Headed Dwarfs." In it there was a scene depicting a ragged band of returning Spanish soldiers, clustered beside the River Ebro, singing a sorrowful song of love for their native land and of their suffering on the foreign battlefield....
A decade or so later war again affected the lives of many families in Spain, and ours was one of them. This time Spain became embroiled in a war in Morocco. It turned into a long and savage conflict-tens of thousands of troops were sent to fight the Riffs-and there was widespread opposition to the war. It was very strong in Catalonia, especially among the intellectuals and the workers. When I would come home to visit my mother and my brothers, I saw all around me the people's bittle resentment. When the government ordered national mobilization, the workers of Barcelona called a general strike in protest. A fierce struggle took place-it came to be known as "Tragic Week"-and martial law was declared. Many were sentenced to imprisonment by military courts, and some were even executed. It was a terrible time! In 1912 the government decreed obligatory military service. Up until then it had been possible to purchase military exemption, and I had managed to do this for the older of my two brothers, Luis. But now it could not be done for Enrique, who had recently returned from studying the violin in Prague. He had just turned eighteen and was faced with conscription. I was with my mother in Vendrell at the time. It was then she told Enrique that he was not born to kill or to be killed, and that he should flee the country. He decided to go to Argentina-he would continue his musical career there. I bought hime a ticket on a boat bound for South America, and he fled....
Of course, the Spanish-American and Moroccan wars paled beside the war that burst on the world in the summer of 1914. Then it was as if the whole of the mankind had suddenly gone mad.
I was in Paris when the war broke out. The city went berserk. One would have thought there might be some awareness of the terrible calamity that had overtaken the country, but no, on the contrary, there was a wildly festive mood. Bands playing martial music, flags flying from every window, bombastic speeches about glory and patriotism! What a macabre masquerade! Who knows how many of those young men who paraded smiling through the streets of Paris died in muddy trenches, or came home crippled for life? And in how many other cities and countries were similar parades taking place?
In the days and months that followed, as one nation after another was drawn into the frightful slaughter, one felt that civilization itself had turned backwards. Every human value was perverted. Violence was enshrined, and savagery replaced rationality. The man who killed the largest number of his fellow men was the greatest hero! All of man's creative genius-all knowledge, science, invention-was concentrated on producing death and destruction. And for what purpose were millions massacred and other millions left homeless and starving? People were told it was a war to make the world safe for democracy. Within a few short years after its end, a dozen of the nations that had fought in it would be gripped by dictatorships, and preparations would be under way for another and even more terrible world war!
During that hideous time of the First World War, I was haunted by the question that had tormented me as a youth in Barcelona when I first became conscious of human misery and man's inhumanity to man-"Was this what man was created for?" Sometimes I felt overwhelmed by horror and hopelessness. For me the life of a single child is worth more than all my music; but, in the midst of the war's madness, it was perhaps mainly through music that I maintained my sanity. Music remained for me an affirmation of the beauty man was capable of producing-yes, man who was now causing such havoc and agony. I recalled how when Europe was ravaged a century before by the Napoleonic wars, Beethoven-tormented as he was by the savage conflict-continued to create his great masterpieces. Perhaps at such a time, when evil and ugliness are rampant, it is more improtant than ever to cherish what is noble in man. During the war, when some were so blinded by hatred they sought to ban German music, I felt it all the more necessary to play the works of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, which so exemplify the human spirit and the brotherhood of man....
At the outbreak of the war, I gave up my house in Paris and I began living part of the time in New York City. Each year I made a concert tour of the United States. My American friends urged me to stay there permanently. "You can continue your musical work here in peace," they told me. "And you will be safe. You will not have to face the danger of submarines at sea." But I could not remain away from my family and friends in Europe. Each season, as soon as I had completed my concert tour, I would return to Europe and visit my mother at San Salvador.
When I was in New York in 1916, there occurred a tragic event which symbolized for me the waste and madness of the war. Early that year, my dear friend Enrique Granados arrived from Barcelona to attend the world premiere of his opera, Goyescas. Granados had an almost morbid fear of traveling-especially by sea-and for years he had adamantly refused to cross the Atlantic. But in this instance he had finally been prevailed upon for the first time to make the voyage, because of the importance of the occasion. He came with his wife Amparo. When we met in New York he was very nervous about the approaching performance. Granados was like a child about his music. He really attached no importance to it-it was just something that poured out of him-and he always questioned its value. As with his first opera twenty years before when we were both youths in Barcelona, he asked me if I would assist hime with the rehearsals. he was so tense during the rehearsals at the Metropolitan Opera House that he never said a work except when someone addressed a question to him. He didn't speak English, and so when one of the musicians would ask him what interpretation he would prefer in some portion of the work, I would translate the question. Granados would answer, "Just tell them to play whatever way they think best." It was typical of him. He felt that musicians playing his works should decide for themselves what would be the best rendition. The music was of course marvelous, and I tried to relieve my friend's anxiety by tellintg him what an immense success the opera would be. On the opening night he saw for himself! The opera received a tumultuous ovation, one of the most amazing I have ever witnessed. People in the audience stood and shouted and wept.
Granados was due to sail home shortly afterwards, but he postponed his trip when he received an invitation from President Wilson to play at the White House. He and his wife set sail for Europe early in March. Two weeks later I heard the terrible news. The ship on which they were crossing the English Channel had been torpedoed. My gentle Granados perished with his wife. He was just forty-nine years old, and at the peak of his creative powers....
Paderewski and Kreisler were in New York at the time, and the three of us decided to give a memorial concert together for the benefit of the Granados children. There were six children-one of them was my godchild-and we knew our friend had left little money. The concert took place at the Metropolitan Opea House, where Granados had triumphed so short a time before. How many people came to attend I could not say. It was raining that night, but when I arrived at the opera house, thousands who could not get seats were standing in the streets.
Walter Damrosch conducted, and Paderewski, Kreisler and I played the Beethoven Trio in B Flat. The famous singers Maria Barrientos, Julia Culp and John McCormack also took part in the concert.
Toward the end of the concert all the lights were turned out. A candle was placed on the piano. Then-with that solitary flame flickering on the stage in the great hall-Paderewski played Chopin's Funeral March.