After the music was over, someone said to me, "I feel as if I had
been in hell," so profound was the emotion she had experienced from the
playing. I would have said heaven rather than hell, for there seemed to
be nothing but pure beauty, beauty half asleep and dreaming of itself,
in the marvellous playing. A spell, certainly, was over everyone, and
then the exorciser became human, and jested deliciously till the early
morning, when, as I went home through the still garrulous and peopled
streets, I saw the last flutter of flags and streamers between night and
dawn. All the world had been rioting for pleasure in the gross way of
popular demonstrations; and in the very heart of this up-roar there had
been, for a few people, this divine escape.
No less magical, soothing, enchanting was the apparition, in Queen's
Hall, ten years later, of this unchanged creature with the tortured
Burne-Jones face, level and bewildering eyes, the web of gold hair still
poised like a halo. Beauty grew up around him like a sudden, exuberant
growth, more vigorous and from a deeper root than before. I realised,
more than ever, how the musician had always been the foundation of the
virtuoso.
Pages:
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213