WHEN I got back to Sierra Leone I was glad of a rest and stayed at the English hotel for a couple of weeks. At Freetown I heard a negro play the violin really well. He held the fiddle1 to his breast, instead of to his chin, and played Raff’s Cavatina and La Serenata, very expressively2. I complimented him on his playing, and discovered that a Hungarian violin-player had given him a course of lessons. He played African dances and melodies wonderfully well. We had a glorious time, that negro violinist and I.
In an old bungalow3 by a native village where soldiers and white men congregated5 we gave concerts night after night. The men came from far and near and joined in the sing-songs; our small, extemporised orchestra played homeland songs; the exiles shouted themselves hoarse6. We made up part songs and put our own words to them, and the natives came from the village and peeped into our bungalow with delighted eyes and ears as we scraped away. It was there that I wrote the melody that is now the trio of my military march, Sierra Leone. This is how it went in the original setting; a few years later I made a military march trio of the strain and sold it to a London publisher. I heard it performed by Sousa’s Band at several commemoration festivals in New York city.
I have heard many violinists, among them Joachim, whom I heard when I was a boy. While on a ship in the East India Docks I obtained leave from the skipper for a Saturday afternoon off, and full of excitement went to Sydenham and heard the great violinist perform at the Crystal Palace. To tell the truth, I was disappointed. He played a Viotti concerto7, stood like a statue, and his fingers and arms moved with the ease of machinery8. His bearded face was raised toward the ceiling the whole time, as though he saw some beautiful sight in the sky above the palace roof. It struck me as a very refined and intellectual-looking face. His playing revealed perfection in the trained artistic9 sense, but lacked the fire and emotion born of the singing stars.
I heard Sarasate play at his villa4 near Biarritz. His nostrils10 dilated11 and pinched in as he played, and he had all that Joachim lacked (when Joachim played in public), for he was a spiritual player; you could have thought that the angels were wailing12 and fingering his own heart-strings13. M. Ysaye played rather like Sarasate, but seemed more conscious of his own ability, which destroyed the atmosphere of the public performance which I happened to hear.
Kubelik I have heard twice, at Bournemouth and in New South Wales. He performed with Joachim’s machinery-like ease; his double-stopping revealed the perfection of the performer’s ear and the dexterity14 of the fingers that seemed to outdo the player’s own heart; but it struck me as cold playing, as if the player’s command over technique was greater than his musical temperament15.
I have often heard it said that the marvellous technique of Paganini is to-day the technical equipment of all violin virtuosos16. I doubt it. Certainly they are not mentally equipped with his way of playing. When you look at Paganini’s compositions you see something that is the outcome of one personality, the white heat of genius who first discovered the musical gold mines in the depths of the violin. What must the man have been whose genius was so intense that he invented that which all others imitate and call their equipment? Paganini could not leave his playing to posterity17, but a true critic can look at those individual compositions and dream of the tremendous passion that inspired the maestro to leave us those fugitive18 echoes of his playing, for that is all they are. Paganini played like an inspired, deep-feeling barbarian19; his style was not artifice20 and did not represent, by artistic bowing and phrasing, the niceties of polite emotion and the artistries of civilisation21. We have no compositions as he played them. He stood before his awestruck audience and extemporised melodies, chords, sparkling arpeggios and staccato and cadenzas, that were all half forgotten when the intense musical fury of his heart ceased and the magic fingers were silent; and so we have only hints of his style. His imitators scrape out phonographic records of his published compositions and say they are equipped with Paganini’s art.
I heard an English violinist, Henley, in London. I was off to Jamaica next morning and only heard him by accident. A friend of mine said: “Come in this hall.” We went in, and I was astonished. I thought at first that the violinist whom I saw playing, with Joachim’s ease and Sarasate’s passion, must be some foreigner; but he was an Englishman. His double-stopping was superb, with a passionate22 fire in it alien to Kubelik’s temperament, I should think. Altogether he was really the most artistic and passionate player I ever heard, Sarasate excepted. While he played I realised that note that tells of genius, which makes you feel that the performer’s violin and fingers are imperfect instruments, are not as great as the heart that is trying to express its depth of feeling upon strings.
I went abroad after that. I have not heard since of Henley the wonderful violinist. He was English, and I suppose London’s fashionable musical world positively23 refused to go mad about an Englishman when so many German and Austrian violinists were about.
I heard “King Billy,” the Australian Aboriginal24 King, play the violin by the kerb-side in Sydney. He was the world’s worst “great violinist,” made a squeaking25 row and thought more of the cash the Colonials dropped in his tin pot than of the melody which he performed.
River Scene, West Africa
An artistic public performance on the violin is widely divided from the poetry of violin-playing in solitude26, out of sheer love to express the performer’s feelings and relieve the tension of sorrow and joy that is oppressing him. When I was a boy, staying at Leichardt, in Sydney, I heard someone playing the violin and accompanying his playing with his own voice. The sound came from a little wooden house on a flat. I stood still and listened. It was dusk. On the window was a bit of scribbled27 paper: “Room to let, cheap.” That gave me a good excuse, for I was intensely curious to see the man who played and sang so beautifully. I knocked at the door and was asked in, and I got in conversation with the player. He was a Norwegian with a handsome face, but unshaved and worried-looking. His wife was about thirty years older than he was, and as he played to me she sat near and her old wrinkled face beamed with delight as I praised his playing. He played by ear and was self-taught. I could easily see that. But he was a great violinist. He expressed his very soul as he played, in a weird28, peculiar29 style, Norwegian melodies. I felt greatly drawn30 toward him as he played and sang to me, looking past me with steady, dreaming eyes as he extemporised sweet strains. He had hard, rough hands, through working on the roads. I saw him night after night. I thought at first that his wife was his mother, and I said, “Your son is a real musician.” When he smiled at me and said, “My wife, not mother,” I felt very uncomfortable. He took her old wrinkled hand and led her into the little kitchen and kissed her tenderly. I suppose Norwegian women age quickly, or they had fallen in love with each other when he was quite a lad; but it was beautiful to see their sincere, sweetheart-like affection for each other.
He secured a job on the Broken Hill Silver Mines, packed up and went off to Melbourne. I never saw him again. I often think of him and his clever, handsome face as he sat breathing heavily and playing and singing to me. He would have been better than Joachim and Kubelik if he had had their technical equipment and no road stones to break and ruin his hands. I cannot remember any special feelings when I heard the great violinists, Joachim, Kubelik and Kreisler, except curiosity and momentary31 admiration32, but the memory of the stone-breaking Norwegian’s playing is as vivid to-day as then; and when I think of it all the poetic33 atmosphere of his playing still haunts me. So if it’s true that Time is the great critic of poetry and music, then assuredly, as far as I am concerned, my Norwegian friend was the greatest violinist I ever heard.
It is difficult to define art. I suppose anything that appeals to the best emotions in men and women is art. A good deal of what is known as art to-day will soon be cast on the rubbish heap of the medi?val ages with the old ideals and idols34. People move in the realms of art as they do in frock-coats; it must be just so, and must have three buttons on the front only; if it has four buttons it’s not art. Art should be natural and oblivious35 of fashion, and, like true religion, beautiful in rags and tatters, pale-faced, walking the streets of humanity, singing with the birds and stars, and looked down upon by affluence36.
Do the thousands who hear Wagner understand the depth and meaning of the music as Wagner thought they would understand? Do they hear the barbarian note in his music that tells so well of the savagery37 of the German people, the barbarian shriek38, the exultation39 over the fallen and the tramp of bloodthirsty warriors40 driving the helpless victims of the fallen cities before them? I do not think so. It’s fashionable, and to have heard Wagner is to be in the fashion, and so off people go and hear and see “Wagner.” Most of them would more thoroughly41 understand and enjoy a phonographic record of a Solomon Islander’s cannibalistic dance, accompanied by living pictures of the scantily42 clad native men and women, beating their drums and whirling round the blushing bride, clad in half a coco-nut shell and her hair only. Their funerals are conducted with the same austere43 art that makes them all go and see Wagner.
I like Beethoven and Mendelssohn’s concertos44, also Schubert’s music, indeed all the really good classical compositions, but my memory of the old chantey, Blow the Man Down, as I heard it sung, and sang it myself, with crooked-nosed old sailors as we rounded Cape45 Horn, with seas crashing over the decks and the flying scud46 racing47 the moon, the old skipper on the poop shouting, muffled48 to the teeth in oilskins, his grey beard swinging sideways to the wind as the full-rigged ship dipped and rolled homeward bound, is something of music, singing and haunting my soul, that will only die when my memory dies. I can still see the crew climbing aloft and along the yards, their shadows falling softly through the moonlit grey sails and yards on to the decks. Melodies from the sails aloft, gliding49 under the stars, still sing beautifully to me as I watch the sleeping sailors, far out at sea, in their tossing bunks50. Then they stand by the galley51 door, with their mugs for the hot coffee, while the chief mate tramps away the night to and fro on the poop, humming Soon we’ll be in London Town. Then, as I dream, the sails crumble52 in the moonlight, the decks are awash, sink and disappear; sailors are struggling in the moonlit waters. Their white hands are tossed up as they sink, one by one; and now daybreak steals over the sky-lines that fence that vast grave of wandering waters.
Often memories play on the strings of my heart as I stand listening to the great orchestra of the winds fingering the giant forest boughs53, or to the noise of seas on the moonlit shores.
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收听单词发音
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1
fiddle
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| n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动 | |
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expressively
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| ad.表示(某事物)地；表达地 | |
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bungalow
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| n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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congregated
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| （使）集合，聚集( congregate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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concerto
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| n.协奏曲 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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dilated
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| adj.加宽的，扩大的v.（使某物）扩大，膨胀，张大( dilate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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dexterity
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| n.(手的)灵巧，灵活 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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virtuosos
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| n.艺术大师( virtuoso的名词复数 )；名家；艺术爱好者；古董收藏家 | |
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posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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barbarian
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| n.野蛮人；adj.野蛮(人)的；未开化的 | |
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artifice
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| n.妙计，高明的手段；狡诈，诡计 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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aboriginal
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| adj.（指动植物）土生的，原产地的，土著的 | |
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squeaking
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的现在分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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scribbled
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| v.潦草的书写( scribble的过去式和过去分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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idols
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| 偶像( idol的名词复数 )； 受崇拜的人或物； 受到热爱和崇拜的人或物； 神像 | |
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oblivious
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| adj.易忘的，遗忘的，忘却的，健忘的 | |
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affluence
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| n.充裕，富足 | |
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savagery
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| n.野性 | |
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shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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40
warriors
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| 武士，勇士，战士( warrior的名词复数 ) | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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scantily
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| adv.缺乏地；不充足地；吝啬地；狭窄地 | |
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43
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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44
concertos
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| n. [音]协奏曲 | |
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45
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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scud
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| n.疾行；v.疾行 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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48
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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49
gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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50
bunks
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| n.（车、船等倚壁而设的）铺位( bunk的名词复数 )；空话，废话v.（车、船等倚壁而设的）铺位( bunk的第三人称单数 )；空话，废话 | |
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51
galley
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| n.（飞机或船上的）厨房单层甲板大帆船；军舰舰长用的大划艇； | |
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52
crumble
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| vi.碎裂，崩溃；vt.弄碎，摧毁 | |
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53
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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