'The Violin': Tribute to Menuhin

The Violin By Yehudi Menuhin Flammarion, Paris, 1996 301 pages

JAKARTA (JP): To classical music lovers around the world, the name Yehudi Menuhin is perhaps synonymous with the violin. Menuhin, arguably the greatest violinist of this century, has received various decorations and honors in recognition of his life's work, and is also known for his illustrious humanitarian work.

It is thus fitting that a man of his legend has chosen to celebrate his 80th birthday with the launching of his own book appropriately titled The Violin (translated from its original French title La Legende du Violon) -- a magisterial book on the craft that he has honed, perfected and represented for over 70 years.

In this panoramic and strikingly beautiful book, Menuhin paints a compelling portrait of this enigmatic instrument, detailing its origins, evolution, and meaning to the larger world, and paying tribute to its creators, composers, teachers, and artists. He introduces us to the abounding richness of the violin's voice, whose appearance in ethnic music from the East and the West, popular and folk music, classical and jazz, has established its repertoire upon the interdependence of many musical genres.

Supporting this magnificent journey across centuries, cultures, and languages are lavish images of the violin in fine art and precious documentary photography, much of which is autobiographical. In the chapter on The Violin Player, several paintings of Marc Chagall (1887-1985) adorn the pages, attesting to the violin's central role in the open-air festivities of village communities around Europe. Whether in Russia, Romania, Norway, France, or Scotland, the violin was depicted very much as an instrument of the people, with violinists shown roaming the byways of the hamlet, and getting the guests to dance, drink and socialize in a spirit of collective joy.

Menuhin's personal affinity with the populist origin of the violin is displayed by his discussion of three cultivated violinists who are " ... close to my heart because they ... always remain half folk musicians, true to the nature of their instrument and preserving their vital links that united them to their people - to their land and to their dance." They are the Basque composer and virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1904), the self-taught Norwegian violinist of genius Ole Bull (1810-1880) and Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), who has re-defined Hungarian music.

It was not until the end of the 17th century that the violin started to enter the serious classical repertoire, with composers such as Vivaldi writing concerti especially for the violin. Indeed, it has taken the solo standing violinist a long time to gain social status, emerging from pure "entertainer" into a fully-fledged literate musician who interprets great virtuoso works for large seated audiences.

Menuhin also speaks reverentially of his most influential teacher, Georges Enesco, the Romanian nobleman who was "the incarnation of music itself". Having "lost his heart and soul" to this man when he first heard him play, Menuhin describes him almost as if he were God. While I am certainly no apologist for artists, whose passion and admiration are often untranslatable to the layman, inspiration is an integral part to the internalization process.

Sentimentalism

Menuhin writes in a highly personalized style, and though his prose is lucid and generally accessible to a wide audience, he does have a propensity towards sentimentalism. What's more, the book has an almost Zen-like quality in its general outlook and delivery. However, this isn't necessarily bad.

After all, passion is somewhat expected from those writing about a form of art which they "... cannot feel but that they hold a means to expression which transcends matter and measure." The famous ballerina Merle Park once wrote in the same subjective, yet profoundly poetic vein in her part- autobiographical guidebook to modern ballet.

In fact, it is the very personalized nature of this book that renders it all the more meaningful.

When Menuhin speaks of giant composers such as Stravinsky, Bartok, Elgar, and Shostakovitch, he talks about their passions, obsessions and visions. When he speaks of his contemporaries such as Fritz Kreisler, Ginette Neveu and David Oistrakh, he concedes whole-heartedly to the sheer magnificence of their God-given talents. When he speaks of his partners and accompanists, he is full of love and adoration, and fully acknowledges their indispensability. When he speaks of great conductors such as Herbert von Karajan, Sir Thomas Beecham and Bruno Walter, he tells stories of what makes them tick.

That Menuhin doesn't come off sounding as if he is floating in a picture-perfect, imaginary world of his own is an achievement in its own right. He doesn't gloss over issues and he can be discerningly critical when he needs to be. Yet there is no mockery, pontification, or self-complacency. His authority over the subject is a natural product of a lifetime of bringing out the best - and much more - of what an instrument can offer. It is the kind of 'given' that makes one look at his photographs - whether as a small prodigy in 1929, or as an old and seasoned virtuoso practising in a Gypsy caravan in 1983 - as symbolic of that authority, a presence without which the book would have been devoid of soul.

Indeed, the increasing use of illustrations in many books on the performing arts today is reflective of several widely accepted phenomena, the most important being that a musical work of art, like a multifaceted gem, always casts a multitude of reflections of other art works of its time. The creation and evolution of an instrument, also borne out of the artist's reaction to the intellectual currents of his age, strongly mirrors the visual images of its creator's times. Thus, particularly illuminating in The Violin is Menuhin's ability to trace the violin's origin back to the time the bow was invented.

On the walls of The Grotto of the Trois Freres in Ariege, a primitive image of a half-man, half-beast character holds before his face a convex object resembling a small bow. According to Menuhin, the 15,000-year-old image suggests that what is absorbing his attention is "the vibration of the string -- the sound that it is producing, the oscillations it is making in the silence".

Menuhin believes that the refined Guarnerius or Stradivarius we know today has evolved from the vibration produced by a pizzicato, or a plucked note, of this very first stringed instrument. This form of bow, known today as the "musical" bow, is apparently still found and widely used among many African tribes.

Menuhin's fascination with the world at large -- exemplified by his frequent travels and immortalized in a chapter called Violins of the World -- is perhaps his strongest contribution to his art. Whether he speaks of the Indian sarangi, the Chinese four-stringed violin, the Berber rebab, or the Bulgarian gadulka, his belief in the eternal interchange between cultures and civilizations is evident throughout.

This approach effectively negates the prevalent myth that the violin is the exclusive preserve of the western classical music tradition.

In his later years, his cross-cultural projects with the legendary classical Indian musician Ravi Shankar and the jazz pianist Stephane Grappelli serve only to underline his long-held view that music is only worth something if the two great musical traditions -- improvisation and interpretation -- can intertwine and borrow from each other.

In addition to being an authoritative guidebook to the instrument, The Violin is as much a work of art as is the subject it represents.

-- Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan