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The vibrato can not be used, naturally, on the open strings, but otherwise it represents the true means for securing warmth of expression. Of course, some decry the vibrato but the reason is often because the vibrato is too slow. One need only listen to Ysaye, Elman, Kreisler: artists such as these employ the quick, intense vibrato with ideal effect.
"Yes, I use a wire E string. Before I found out about them I had no end of trouble. In New Orleans I snapped seven gut strings at a single concert. Some say that you can tell the difference, when listening, between a gut and a wire E. I cannot, and I know a good many others who cannot. After my last New York recital I had tea with Ysaye, who had done me the honor of attending it. 'What strings do you use? he asked me,
Vieuxtemps is said to have expressed the desire, while in Algiers during his latter years, to have Ysaye stay with him to play his compositions, but Ysaye was at that time in St. Petersburg. When Vieuxtemps died and his remains were brought to Verviers, his birthplace, Ysaye carried in the procession the violin and bow of the virtuoso on a black velvet cushion fringed with silver.
That thing was neither Beethoven nor Ysaye, it was made out of their meeting; it was music, not abstract, but embodied in sound; and just that miracle could never occur again, though others like it might be repeated for ever.
"Still, all said and done, it was after I had finished with all my teachers that I really began to learn to play violin: above all from Ysaye, whom I went to hear play wherever and whenever I could. I think that the most valuable lessons I have ever had are those unconsciously given me by four of the greatest violinists I know: Ysaye, Kreisler, Elman and Thibaud.
It is to be regretted that he has not played in public in the United States as often as in Europe, where his extensive tournées in Holland Leon Sametini is a Hollander by birth Belgium, England and Austria have established his reputation as a virtuoso, and the quality of his playing led Ysaye to include him in a quartet of artists "in order of lyric expression" with himself and Thibaud.
Of course such false prophets of the virtuose have nothing in common with such high-priests of public utterance as Ysaye, Kreisler and others, whose virtuosity is a true means for the higher development of the musical. The encouragement of musicianship in general suffers for the stress laid on what is obviously technical impedimenta.
For Ysaye is the greatest exponent of that wonderful Belgian school of violin playing which is rooted in his teachers Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski, and which as Ysaye himself says, "during a period covering seventy years reigned supreme at the Conservatoire in Paris in the persons of Massart, Remi, Marsick, and others of its great interpreters."
In fact, Ysaye's standpoint toward music had a good deal in common with Rubinstein's and he often said he wished he could play the violin as Rubinstein did the piano. Ysaye is an artist who has transcended his own medium he has become a poet of sound. And unless the one studying with him could understand and appreciate this fact he made a poor teacher.
In 1876 Vieuxtemps heard him at Antwerp, and through his influence the Belgian government was induced to grant Ysaye a stipend in order to allow him to pursue his studies at Paris. There he was the pupil of Massart, who had also been the teacher of Wieniawski, Ysaye's master at Brussels.
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