IX


FRITZ KREISLER

PERSONALITY IN ART


The influence of the artist's personality in his art finds a most
striking exemplification in the case of Fritz Kreisler. Some time before
the writer called on the famous violinist to get at first hand some of
his opinions with regard to his art, he had already met him under
particularly interesting circumstances. The question had come up of
writing text-poems for two song-adaptations of Viennese folk-themes,
airs not unattractive in themselves; but which Kreisler's personal
touch, his individual gift of harmonization had lifted from a lower
plane to the level of the art song. Together with the mss. of his own
beautiful transcript, Mr. Kreisler in the one instance had given me the
printed original which suggested it--frankly a "popular" song, clumsily
harmonized in a "four-square" manner (though written in 3/4 time) with
nothing to indicate its latent possibilities. I compared it with his
mss. and, lo, it had been transformed! Gone was the clumsiness, the
vulgar and obvious harmonic treatment of the melody--Kreisler had kept
the melodic outline, but etherealized, spiritualized it, given it new
rhythmic _contours_, a deeper and more expressive meaning. And his rich
and subtle harmonization had lent it a quality of distinction that
justified a comparison between the grub and the butterfly. In a small
way it was an illuminating glimpse of how the personality of a true