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BY ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

T

HIS is a story of what the blind may accomplish in music. Not only is Edwin Grasse the first blind man to become a violin virtuoso, but Eugene Ysaye places him among the greatest violinists of his time. César Thompson calls him the best of all piano accompanists, and Grieg considered him one of the most promising of American composers.

The two most important events in Edwin Grasse's life occurred within a month of his birth in New York, August 13, 1884. For his violin teacher was engaged two weeks before he saw this world, and four weeks later the child ceased to see it.

At six months he showed discrimination in his fondness for music, and at two and a half years he began to sing. It was found then that he possessed "absolute pitch," that strange gift of recognizing the exact pitch of every musical note, and being able to sing in perfect tune. At three he learned a song of Rubinstein, and because he could not reach the highest note he cried softly to himself. But in fifteen minntes he began to sing again, and when he reached the high part he transposed it an octave lower.

A few months later he formed the curious temporary habit of singing "Thine Eyes So Blue and Tender" by Lassen, and Wagner's Dreams," as accompaniments to his own dreams. His parents would go to his room, turn up the gas, and see the boy sound asleep in his crib, smiling and singing like a young cherub.

At three years his father first played a piano arrangement of the Beethoven violin concerto. "Mamma, isn't that lovely!" exclaimed the child. "That's by Beethoven." He had never heard it before, but recognized its similarity to some of the Beethoven sonatas and songs.

He stood in great awe of musical instruments, and was afraid to touch them; but at four his father set him on

the piano stool and guided his fingers through a melody. A year later, at his first orchestral concert, he heard Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. And the next day he played the most important parts of it, to the great astonishment of Reinhold Herrman, the conductor of the Germania Liederkranz; and improvised such Beethoven-like connections between these passages that the German musician swore they seemed to be part of the symphony itself. Herrman tested his memory that afternoon, playing either the first note or a random bar of dozens of compositions which the little boy had heard, and Edwin always told him the name and key correctly.

His sense of humor developed with his musicianship. An enormous woman took him up one day, but he slipped from her knees. matter?" he said;

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Mrs. X, what's the "haven't you any lap?" That same afternoon his piano teacher was explaining to him that a berceuse was a piece with which you put little people to sleep. Edwin played it through with a broadening smile. "Mr. X," he said, suddenly, "please go into the parlor and see whether your wife is already asleep."

In his sixth year he felt a violin for the first time when his teacher, Carl Hauser, put one into his lap, telling him it was a musical toy. When he found what it was, however, he jumped up in terror and let it fall. But his awe was overcome little by little, and he began to take regular lessons. It was a heroic task for the blind boy to learn correct positions, but his courage and patience were equal to the devotion of his teacher.

At seven Edwin began to compose little pieces for piano and organ, and Mr. Hauser started to teach him harmony. It was quite needless. For Edwin no sooner heard a rule than he went to the piano and played exceptions. to it taken from the whole range of the classics. The child of seven had been analyzing all that he had heard and

developing his own systems of harmony and counterpoint.

In spite of his precocity, Edwin had a happy, normal childhood. The boys of the neighborhood always visited him after school, and he joined their games on condition that they play "orchestra " with him afterward. When they were gone, he would still play his favorite game, doing all the piano part with his left hand, the cymbals with one foot, the drum with the other, conducting with his right hand, and imitating the oboe or French horn very realistically with his voice. Wrong notes would occur, as they do in the best-regulated orchestras. Then he would rap furiously with his baton and bring the offending musician up with a round turn, hurling at him such genuine German invective "swine-hound!" or "thunder-weather!" Sometimes, fluttering his right fingers on his upper lip, he would imitate the vibrato of a bad soprano, and then lead her from the stage amidst the plaudits of the throng.

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His knack of imitating wind instruments has lasted and is sometimes useful. I remember that when he was preparing the Brahms horn trio last winter for one of his recitals, Dutschke, the hornist, missed a rehearsal. But Grasse, while playing the violin, supplied the horn part so perfectly with his voice as to deceive people in the next

room.

At thirteen, when he made his New York début before going abroad, his chief thought was for his dog Sultan, one of his dearest friends. For Dr. Grasse had promised the boy that if he played well he might take the dog abroad with him. An orchestra gave the first performance of his "Symphonic Sketches," and he played, among other things, two movements from the Mendelssohn concerto. But while the enthusiastic audience was still applauding, Edwin raised himself on tiptoe toward his father's chin and asked eagerly, "Well, papa, can he go?" Sultan went, only to meet his fate beneath a Belgian trolley-car.

The boy went to study with César Thompson, the great Belgian violinist, and a year later was admitted to the Brussels Conservatory. Thompson had

never had a blind pupil, and was skeptical at first, giving him all sorts of difficult problems in technic, in order to prove whether the eye were essential. But Edwin solved every one, and soon became the master's favorite. After a year he took part in the first public competition for honors. Besides a flawless violin performance, he played all the piano accompaniments for his competitors, cueing in their parts when they forgot them, improvising accompaniments when they, in their nervousness, jumped from one jumped from one étude to another, skipping with them when they omitted whole passages, and sticking to them in every extremity. The jury were following the score, and they were so astonished that they stood up and craned their necks to see who the little fellow was, sitting there beneath the lid of the great piano. One of them, Edgar Tinell, the first musician in Belgium, declared it the most magnificent exhibition of musicianship that he had ever known. The boy won the first prize "with distinction."

He intended to study the classical répertoire with some German violinist after graduation, and requested Joachim to hear him play. The old master refused, saying that no blind person could ever master the violin. But he relented, and Grasse, in a vacation, went over to Berlin. Joachim sat in a corner reading the paper and looking very bored as Grasse tuned his wonderful Stradivarius. But after a few measures of a Bruch concerto the paper was lowered, at the end of the phrase it fell to the floor, and when the movement was over the old man congratulated the blind boy with all the warmth of his German heart, advising him not to study with any master after Thompson, as his technic was quite sufficient, and in further study he would only lose his own vivid individuality.

"My dear young man," exclaimed the master, "you are by nature gifted far more than most musicians, and need no further school but the school of public performance !"

Then Grasse played Joachim's own Variations. The master applauded, and said: "It is the first time I hear that

played with any other conception than my own. This is quite new. But go on, I beg, and always play it in your own way. That is very beautiful, also." For his final examination at Brussels, Grasse prepared a répertoire of sixtyfour larger violin works as well as the first violin parts of a number of string quartets. The jury chose four of these for performance, and awarded him the Diplôme de Capacité, an honor won by no one besides Grasse during the last ten years.

On the advice of Joachim he made his début in Berlin at the age of eighteen, and scored a charming success in that cynical city. Such musical centers as Leipsic, Munich, Vienna, and London gave the young virtuoso a hearty welcome, and he returned to Berlin to duplicate his former success in another field, appearing as a chamber musician with the pianist Otto Hegner.

At nineteen he returned to New York and made a brilliant début with the Wetzler Orchestra. It was the first time that three large violin works with orchestra had ever been successfully given on the same programme in America, and the critics were as enthusiastic as the audience.

Since that evening, however, Grasse has been heard strangely little except in chamber music. This, I think, is due to the same American indifference to American musicians that resulted so sadly in the case of Edward Macdowell; to the suspicious fact that no blind person has ever before become a violin virtuoso; to Grasse's lack of any considerable financial backing; and to his unworldly ignorance of the jungle of deceit, bribery, and blackmail in the musical underworld.

But though his lack of an American hearing as a virtuoso was a disappointment to Grasse, it never shook his buoyant optimism nor marred his happiness. And his friends feel that it was providential. For while increasing his technic by tremendous practice, he has gained time for composition, and his four years at home have been productive ones.

His works include a quintet for piano and strings which has twice been warmly received at his New York re

citals, an orchestral suite, a violin concerto, a suite for piano and violin, and smaller pieces. But his latest work, a trio in C for piano and strings, shows an amazing growth; and I know nothing in the literature of American chamber music that can compare with this trio in organic unity, in melodic and harmonic beauty, in instrumentation, in originality, and in the sheer joy of life. The lad of twentythree has already ripened into a mature creative musician.

Just as he invented his own system of harmony, he has created his own method of composition. At first his ideas came to him while improvising at the piano, and he made notes of the principal themes of a composition on his point print slate in a notation of his own. Then, with an occasional reference to these, he would dictate the work to his old teacher, Carl Hauser, or to Mrs. Hauser, while sitting at the piano and playing what he was dictating. If it were a trio, he would do the left hand of the piano for a page or two, then the right hand, then the 'cello and the violin parts.

But of late he has cast aside all aids to his marvelous memory. He composes now away from the piano, and last winter he dictated his trio without having made a single note on his slate. He is now composing simultaneously, and in the same independent way, two trios, a concerto, a suite for violin solo, and a symphony.

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His method of learning music is almost as remarkable. After hearing an ordinary orchestral work once he remembers the melody, harmony, and instrumentation all his life, and never has to hear any piece more than three times. learning a trio he has his father play the violin part through first on the piano, then the 'cello and piano parts together. And at a single sitting he can master every note and every shade of expression in a work that requires half an hour for performance-master it so that he can play the piano part with all its nuances and advise with the 'cellist on questions of fingering and bowing.

Grasse's great ambition is to be such a musician that people will lose sight of his blindness. He will not allow him

self to be advertised as "The Blind Violinist;" for he desires no handicap in the race, and it is his greatest joy and pride that the critics have almost ceased to mention his eyes.

"First of all," he said to me, "comes my violin, and I would never sacrifice my technic for composition like d'Albert; because it's a greater pleasure to play the beautiful things of others than to make music of my own. I compose because I have to. The ideas are in here [tapping his forehead], and must come out."

I asked him about the order in which his ideas came.

"No, I don't get my melody first, for as soon as I am aware of the melody, the harmony and the development are there all at once."

Edwin Grasse is the happiest person I know. I firmly believe him when he says that he has never in his life known what it is to be annoyed. And although And although he is so highly strung that he can distinguish ten varieties of vibrato to my two, and a hundred subtleties of tonecolor to my ten, his nerves seem per

fectly normal and indifferent to the ordinary irritants of genius.

"How is it that you take such a zest in life?" I once asked him.

"Why, the mere pleasure of breathing would be enough," he returned. "But then, too, I revel in music, the German language, mountain air, and good meals(I enjoy every mouthful!). I love swimming and rowing too, and horsebackriding, the smell of the forest and the voices of birds. I think that one of the very best things of all is for a fellow to wake up in the morning and just feel that he's here. I want to live to be a hundred !"

I know no better specific for a blue Monday than a visit to Grasse. It seems as though there were enough uproarious spirits and humor and healthy optimism in that blind boy to brighten up a whole city-full of jaundiced eyes. And I am thankful that he has overcome so many difficulties and has written his music. For he has put into it the joy, the beauty, and the sparkling sanity of his own life. It is music that will live.

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Vagabond Glimpses of
Two Old Provinces

By Harold and Madeline Howland

First Laper

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LEUT-IL toujours the Loire, among the châteaux of Old en Touraine?" in Touraine. quired M'dame 1 half-ironically as the high-wheeled cart jogged meditatively under the April sky (albeit the month was June) toward Chambord. " 'Ah, oui, M'dame," was the frank reply of Jean, the garçon who "con- . ducted" the sturdy little horse, with that indescribable inflection that is so encouraging and so complimentary to your intelligence when the reply is in the affirmative, so depressing when "Ah, non seems to convict you of stupidity or presumption. "It rains all the days in Touraine. We have perhaps thirty clear days in the year, we others."

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So our first impression received confirmation from a source of high authority. The impression had been born, as a suspicion, when we awoke in Orléans to a morning gray and tearful. little canoe, after a journey of three thousand miles from his native State of Maine, lay in his traveling suit of burlap lined with hay, and wooden crate, at the office of la Grande Vitesse. His orders were to report himself at ten o'clock, ready to be launched upon the river, and to bear us on our little journey down

From our first hour in the provinces the universal salutation," Bon jour, M'sieur et M'dame," greeted us at inns, shops, on the road, or as we passed in our canoe close to a fisherman, a peasant loading gravel into his cart, or a sturdy washerwoman kneeling at the river's edge. The salutation was so common that we almost forgot our own names and became for the moment plain M'sieur and M'dame.

The steady drizzle gave promise of persistence. The problem of protecting the occupants of both ends of a canoe with a single umbrella, to say nothing of permitting them to paddle, seemed insoluble. But the ready wit of M'dame, who does not like to be balked by the weather, found a way. Our bird's-eye view of the street revealed it peopled by " brigands large and brigands small," comfortably enrobed in ample black capes of a striking uniformity of style and a no less evident efficiency. A flying raid on a neighboring shop produced two capes, recommended by the shopkeeper, with an eye on the falling rain without, as "very, very solid," and of a dashing cut, which M'sieur and M'dame each hailed as exceedingly becomingto the other.

More or less promptly at the suggested hour, we proceeded through the main street of the town toward the Loire, affording, I am sure, a refreshingly novel experience for the Orléanaises. On a broad, low truck drawn by a horse of giant proportions and amiable mien rode the canoe, revealing even through his wrappings something of his fineness of line. Amidships perched M'sieur and M'dame, not even the capes "of the country" availing to conceal their character of strangers to the land. But their very strangeness seemed to save them from too pressing curiosity. The mad Anglo-Saxon is expected to do queer things in the Latin world. At their feet clustered the baggage-paddles, camera,

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