Eugène Ysaÿe: Colossus of the Violin

Summary

Sharp Contradictions in Art and Personality of Belgian “Giant Oak”

Ysaÿe—the Gargantuan—the Sublime—Emperor of Extravaganza! Everything about him was on the “gigantesque,” and all the Hollywoodian hypersuper- terrifics would have fitted him with the naturalness of his own epidermis! In physical stature as in musicianship, mental power, greatness of heart, and, if it must be added, in uncontrollable anger and childishness and pettiness of moral fiber, he was always the Colossus. The French have a saying, well known to all gifted people, the good “Bohemiens,” “to be a great artist, one must be a ‘grand cochon,’” and this equally applies.

His playing was noble one moment and reeking with sensuality the next— beautiful, ideal, poetic, unmatched in grandeur and delicacy and tenderness, and, within the next few measures, unequaled for boisterous roughness, untrammeled vehemence, the most unbridled gypsified capriciousness of tempi, accents, and nuances, and of an extravagance that often made me put my hat before my face in my efforts to restrain open laughter! He was truly Rabelaisian and again as delicate as a brush stroke by Hokusai. It is neither unkind nor a lack of veneration for the dead and the living to make passing mention of the fact that his personal life was that of an extremist, and that some of his experiences and practical jokes (not always of the most refined nature) would, if recounted, bring roars of merriment and protests of incredulity. Truly, Ysaÿe was unique and should have lived to be at least one hundred years old, for this giant oak at sixty years had more vitality than four men of half his age.

Conflicting Elements in Ysaÿe's Nature

I heard him play more often than all the other great violinists put together, and though I never heard him play one work exactly as written, I still maintain that he was the greatest violinistic genius since Wieniawski! The apparent contradiction is explained—and justified—by the tremendous and conflicting elements of his nature and individuality. I have seen him conduct (and rehearse from memory) the “Eroica” and “La Cinquième” (as he and all French musicians call it), and, just then, it was my positive conviction that there was no greater conductor living.