When d'Albert plays Chopin's Berceuse, beautifully, it is a
lullaby for healthy male children growing too big for the cradle.
Pachmann's is a lullaby for fairy changelings who have never had a soul,
but in whose veins music vibrates; and in this intimate alien thing he
finds a kind of humour.
In the attempt to humanise music, that attempt which almost every
executant makes, knowing that he will be judged by his success or
failure in it, what is most fatally lost is that sense of mystery which,
to music, is atmosphere. In this atmosphere alone music breathes
tranquilly. So remote is it from us that it can only be reached through
some not quite healthy nervous tension, and Pachmann's physical
disquietude when he plays is but a sign of what it has cost him to
venture outside humanity, into music. Yet in music this mystery is a
simple thing, its native air; and the art of the musician has less
difficulty in its evocation than the art of the poet or the painter.
With what an effort do we persuade words or colours back from their
vulgar articulateness into at least some recollection of that mystery
which is deeper than sight or speech.
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