Obituary: Eugene Ysaye

Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 72, No. 1060 (Jun. 1, 1931), p. 559
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
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THE MUSICAL TIMES-JUNE 1 1931

559

considerably influenced by dance-tunes, and Weelkes,

who reacted more to foreign harmonic experiments,
strayed much further from the modal fold. It may be
that English composers felt more strongly than the
Italians the sway of instrumental music. Be this as it

being Haydn Inwards, Alfred Gibson, and Paul Ludwig.

In the following year he brought over his own quartet
from Brussels. The art of the quartet, however, did
not thrive under his leadership, which was too forceful
in its personality for a true ensemble.

bltuailaV

conducted ' Fidelio' at Covent Garden. From 1918

to 1922 he was in America as conductor of the Cincinnati
Orchestra. His career as a violinist was then at an end.

may, what seems clear is that as regular rhythmic

During the present century he won a certain
pulsations became more and more prominent, modal distinction as a conductor, the Ysaye Orchestral
feeling steadily waned. Herein lies the germ of the Concerts in Brussels being for some years an important
classical system; it owes its existence to the gradual institution. At one of these concerts he conducted
growth of the' bar-line' out of the melodic meanderings Elgar's first Symphony. (He also played Elgar's
derived from Plainsong, and little or nothing to Concerto in Brussels.) He conducted his first concert
deliberate harmonic experiment.
in England in November, 1900. In January, 1907, he

WVe regret to report the following deaths:

EUGENE YSAYE, the famous violinist, at Brussels, on

May 14. Born at Liege on July 16, 1858, he gave early

evidence of his talent, although he appears never to
have come before the public as a prodigy. At the age
of fifteen he had the good fortune to be placed under
Wieniawski. Three years later he came under the
notice of Vieuxtemps, by whose influence a government

grant was made to enable him to study for a further

three years, often under the personal tuition of

Vieuxtemps. A public appearance at Aix-la-Chapelle

in 1879 brought him to the notice of Ferdinand Hiller,

who took him to play to Joachim.
The oft-quoted remark made by Joachim at the end
of the performance-' I never heard the violin played
like that before '-was, in spite of its grudging sound,
a true reflection on Ysaye's playing, and represents the
feeling of all judges and schools on making their first

acquaintance with Ysaye's style. His playing was

probably the most vivid and personal that had been
heard at the time. It may be said to have placed the

principle of self-expression on a level with that of truth

to the composer, or even to have placed it higher, and

thus to have boldly vaunted an attitude that has always
received more censure than approval. Ysaye expressed
his personal attitude with an intensity, amounting to
genius, that bowed to no artistic code, and he backed it

with a power of technique that was unsurpassed as

sheer fiddling, and was, moreover, highly original in

itself. Armed with these powers he began to conquer

the world of his time-not, however, immediately and

universally. The standard-bearer of the romantics, he

was long looked upon as a master in romantic music
but something of an intruder in the classics. Before
the beauty and the spirit of his Bach and the glamour
of his Beethoven could win their victory over tradition,
he had to wait for a gradually changing world, a world
that in the end honoured the classics more highly for
yielding to human expression than a previous generation

In the years that followed, his health was not good, but

he was able to withstand the amputation of a leg in

1929, and in last November he was still conducting in
Brussels. In March of this year his opera ' Peter the
Miner' was produced at Liege ; he was confined to his
bed at the time, but at the request of the Queen of the
Belgians he was enabled to hear the performance by
wireless. In April he attended a performance of the
opera in Brussels.
One of the works with which his name was associated
was Cesar Franck's Sonata. It was written for him and

his brother Theophile. Another was the well-known

Sonata by Guillaume Lekeu. Both works owed their
first popularity to Ysaye's playing. (In d'Indy's book
on Franck there is a photograph of Franck and Ysaye
among a group of their friends.) Among the many
decorations held by Ysaye was that of the Legion
d'Honneur.

J. ALLANSON BENSON, at Bromley, Kent, on April 17.

He was born at Ripley, Yorkshire, in 1848. For some

time after leaving school he was active as an amateur
musician, holding a church appointment for a few years

and conducting the local Philharmonic Society. On

taking up music as a profession, in 1876, he became
organist at the Methodist Free Church, Bilton, and

music-master at Ashville College, and a busy conductor,

performer, composer, and teacher. His first wife, Miss

Eliza Place, was a well-known singer and organist of

Harrogate Congregational Church for over twenty-five

years. Owing to ill-health he retired to Bromley in

1897, and limited his public work. He conducted

various performances of his choral works at the Crystal

Palace and elsewhere; at the age of seventy he deputised at Hither Green Methodist Church during the
war; and he was an active member of the Bromley
District Organists' and Choirmasters' Association and
of the I.S.M. The greater part of his later life, however,

was spent in composition, editing, and research. His

compositions include songs, hymn-tunes, anthems,

services, and over twenty short cantatas and operettas.

He was an expert hymnologist; an authority on

had honoured them for denying it. Ysaye's triumph Handel, he wrote a brochure on the performance of
came when the world agreed, as perforce it had to, that 'The Messiah.' His knowledge was wide, his interest
Beethoven's concerto could be electrified and remain
Beethoven. Or, as a more particular example, his

triumph was signalized by the Ysaye-Pugno Beethoven

recitals. In this memorable series it was considered

that the playing of Beethoven's Violin and Pianoforte

Sonatas reached its perfection. In those days, and

throughout all the later part of his career, Ysaye was

held to be one of the great violinists of all time, the
compeer, to the 19th century, of Sarasate and Joachim.

The details of his career are too manifold to be set

forth here. From his centre at Brussels, where he was

chief Professor of the Violin at the Conservatoire from

1886 to 1898, he made many tours and became a

familiar figure on the concert platforms of Europe and

America. His first appearance in England occurred

in 1889, when he played the Beethoven Concerto at a

Philharmonic concert. That was the first of many

keen. ' There was hardly a musical event of importance

during the last sixty years,' says a correspondent,

' about which he was not able to talk with interest. As

composer, singer, organist, choirmaster, teacher, and

lecturer he influenced a great number of people. All
that he did had sound scholarship and -accurate detail
behind it, and he always gave it with a singular grace
and absence of ostentation.'

BERTHA LEWIS (Mrs. Herbert Heyner), the popular

Gilbert and Sullivan contralto, at Cambridge, on May 8.

She was born in London in May, 1887, and studied at

the Royal Academy of Music. For some years her chief
public appearances were on the concert-platform, and
in the operatic parts of Amneris, Delilah, and Carmen.
It was not until 1919 that a connection with the D'Oyly

Carte Company suddenly enabled her to win fame.

By her gifts and her personality she was exceptionally

well-fitted for the contralto parts in the Savoy operas,
the ' Pops' for the first time. In 1900 he played at and throughout the post-war productions she has been
these concerts as a quartet-leader, his fellow-artists their unrivalled exponent.

visits. Several times during the 'nineties he gave

concerts of his own in England. In 1891 he played at

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