invisible touch seemed to pass over it; the heavy mouth and chin remained firm, pressed down on the violin; but the eyelids and the eyebrows began to move, as if the eyes saw the sound, and were drawing it in luxuriously, with a kind of sleepy ecstasy, as one draws in perfume out of a flower.  Then, in that instant, a beauty which had never been in the world came into the world; a new thing was created, lived, died, having revealed itself to all those who were capable of receiving it.  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.  When the sound stopped, the face returned to its blind and deaf waiting; the interval, like all the rest of life probably, not counting in the existence of that particular soul, which came and went with the music.

And Ysaye seems to me the type of the artist, not because he is faultless in technique, but because he begins to create his art at the point where faultless technique leaves off.  With him, every faculty is in harmony; he has not even too much of any good thing.  There are times when Busoni astonishes one; Ysaye never astonishes one, it seems natural that he should do everything that he does, just as he does it.  Art, as Aristotle has said finally, should always have “a continual slight novelty”; it should never astonish, for we are astonished only by some excess or default, never by a thing being what it ought to be.  It is a fashion of the moment to prize extravagance and to be timid of perfection.  That is why we give the name of artist to those who can startle us most.  We have come to value technique for the violence which it gives into the hands of those who possess it, in their assault upon our nerves.  We have come to look upon technique as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end.  We have but one word of praise, and we use that one word lavishly.  An Ysaye and a Busoni are the same to us, and it is to our credit if we are even aware that Ysaye is the equal of Busoni.

PACHMANN AND THE PIANO

I

It seems to me that Pachmann is the only pianist who plays the piano as it ought to be played.  I admit his limitations, I admit that he can play only certain things, but I contend that he is the greatest living pianist because he can play those things better than any other pianist can play anything.  Pachmann is the Verlaine of pianists, and when I hear him I think of Verlaine reading his own verse, in a faint, reluctant voice, which you overheard.  Other players have mastered the piano, Pachmann absorbs its soul, and it is only when he touches it that it really speaks its own voice.