strumental performers. With singers, this
quivering is often the result of a fatigued voice, in which case it is
involuntary and is only to be deplored; but that is not the case with
violin and violoncello players. It is a fashion with them born of a
desire to make an effect at any cost, and is due to the depraved taste
of the public for a passionate execution of music; but art does not live
on passion alone. In our time, when art, through an admirable evolution,
has conquered all domains, music should express all, from the most
perfect calm to the most violent emotions. When one is strongly moved
the voice is altered, and in moving situations the singer should make
his voice vibrate. Formerly the German female singers sang with all
their voice, without any vibration in the sound and without any
reference to the situation; one would say they were clarinets. Now, one
must vibrate all the time. I heard the Meistersingers' quintette sung in
Paris. It was dreadful and the composition incomprehensible. Not all
singers, fortunately, have this defect, but it has taken possession of
violinists and 'cello players. That was not the way Franchomme, the
'cello player and collaborator of Chopin, played, nor was it the way
Sarasate, Sivori or Joachim played.

I have written a concerto, the first and last movements of which are
very passionate. They are separated by a movement of the greatest
calm,--a lake between two mountains. Those great violin players who do
me the honor to play this piece, do not understand the contrast and they
vibrate on the lake just as they do on the mountains. Sarasate, for whom
this concerto was written, was as calm on the lake as he was agitated on
the mountains; nor did he fail on this account to produce always a great
effect--for there is nothing like giving to music its veritable
character.

Anciently music was not written as scrupulously as it is to-day, and a
certain liberty was permitted to interpretation. This liberty went
farther than one would think, resembling much what the great Italian
singers furnished examples of in the days of Rubini and Malibran. They
did not hesitate to embroider the compositions, and the _reprises_ were
widespread. _Reprises_ meant that when the same piece was sung a second
time, the executants gave free bridle to their own inspiration. I have
heard in my youth the last echoes of this style of performance. Nowadays
_reprises_ are suppressed, and that is more prudent. How