Joseph Szigeti on Adolf Busch

A short time ago a woman violinist visited me, to play me the Bach G major Sonata from Adolf Busch's edition which was published in 1929 by Friedrich Blume. This afternoon would have been a complete waste of time, had it not brought home to me once more how present-day violin-playing is straying further and further away from the ideal which inspired Adolf Busch. The young lady did actually use a copy bearing Adolf Busch's indications, but had dismissed all the subtle phrasing and the fingering and bowing which were so characteristic of his style, and had set a pastoral tone to the piece! And gone was the profound expression, that deeply satisfying eloquence for which Busch gave the performer exact indications. In order to make this clear to readers who are non-violinists, I should like to emphasise just one characteristic of his style, namely the so-called reprise de l’archet – an almost inaudible lifting of the bow between two consecutive up- or down-bows, rather like the inaudible breath of a singer. For instance, if Bach wrote

then Adolf Busch's reprise de l’archet would imbue this fragment with the meaningful expression which is quite lost if it is disposed of as a smooth phrase, as is so common today, i.e.,

This and other aspects of his technique were, of course, not apparent to the listener who was not a string player. He would simply listen spellbound by the abandon, the unaffectedness and the sincerity with which this great musician played – and this was what I too experienced every time I heard Adolf Busch play.

Anne, Countess of Northumberland, to Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon,

7 January 1570

TNA, SP 12/66/09

Body text and signature in the hand of Hunsdon's clerk using a secretary-style script. Endorsement in the hand of William Cecil, Lord ¬2 Letter bearer: unknown. Letter status: sent copy of original sent letter received by recipient.

Address leaf: [

[endorsement in the hand of Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley:]

The coppy of hyr anserr Hunsdons clerk

Letter text in hand of Hunsdon's clerk:]

My verie good Lordshippe I haue receued your Comyfortable lynes /. ∼ .

towchinge miself; which cumme All to gether in as evill case.

as you Judge of hit; not for the miserie of my owne Boddy

But that I can not be as I had thought neuer to haue bynne

in the persutes of my husband; which I had thought neuer to haue

bynne Seperated from till deathe / yt was not for my

Offenses that I fled; or feare of the Queen Majesties mercye

for I neuer hard nor vnderstand, But her Majesties ^mercy^ hath bynne

as great as euer was anye princes. And Suer led in my

Judgement, that is one of the spetiall causes, that vpholdes

all estates. for your frendshippe, and good will towardes me /.

I shall earnestlye praye your Lordshippe of your Continuannce therin

And if I leve it shall not be forgotten, And if I dye ∼

I trust god will reward you; praing your Lordshippe earnestlye ∼

once Agayne, that the pittie and faveor that you shewe vnto

me, that you wilbestowe hit vpponn my poore childerne /. And

servanntes to be A meanes to the Queen Majestie for them, if hit maye

please you without offence to geue me leave you shall

heere from me within vi or vii daies, And so I bid

your Lordshippe hartelye farewell from hewme Castell the

viith of January 1569

[signature in the hand of Hunsdon's clerk:]

Your Lordshippes poore Freinnd / A. northumberland /

The reading and performing of chamber music is a necessary part of every musician's education. It is especially vital to players of stringed instruments. Pianists, also, would do well to give a certain amount of time and attention to chamber music, even though their own library is comparatively rich in its own right. But the library for solo violin is none too extensive, and some of the greatest works for the violin are not solo pieces at all. In the case of the violoncello, the situation is even worse. These instrumentalists would be denied access to some of the most sublime music in the world, if they did not seek an opportunity of exploring the rich library of ensemble or chamber works.

Furthermore, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to gain genuine musicianship as a soloist exclusively. Virtuosity, no doubt, may be achieved by applying one's self to his own instrument and nothing more. But well-rounded, wellgrounded musicianship requires more than that. It requires musical building.

An Ideal Plan of Work

In my own student days, two hours a week of ensemble work were set down as part of the regular Conservatory training. It was as much part of the curriculum as theory and harmony. And after those ‘required’ hours were done, my fellow students and I made music together, purely for the enjoyment of it. We would meet at my home, where my father was always ready to listen to us, and would read through quartets, trios, octets, everything. After supper, then, we went at it again, reading, playing, discussing the music, and arguing about it.

This talk, one of a series on ‘Men and Music’ given at the University of Cape Town summer school in 1964 by the Scottish composer, pianist and musical administrator Erik Chisholm and illustrated with slides and recordings, came to light too late to be included in the first edition of this book, but its closing image of the departing Busch brothers can now provide an apposite, and touching, envoi. Chisholm met Adolf, Herman and Serkin when he asked Adolf to present a programme of his own works to the Active Society for the Propagation of Contemporary Music1 in Glasgow. This concert by the Busch Trio, on 14 December 1934, included the world premiere of the Trio in C minor, Op. 48. It is good to be able to note that Chisholm's pessimism over the future of Busch's music has not been borne out.

One of the most talented German families of musicians born in the last decade of the nineteenth century was the Busches of Westphalia: Fritz Busch, founder conductor of the Glyndebourne Opera; Adolf Busch, noted violinist, leader of the famous string quartet which bore his name, and composer of concertos, symphonies and much chamber music; and Herman Busch, a very fine cellist. All three of them were friends of Sir Donald Tovey who, in 1934, nominated Fritz and Adolf for honorary D.Mus. degrees at Edinburgh University. As soon as I heard of this plan, I wrote to Adolf Busch in Switzerland, asking him if there was a possibility of him giving us a concert. He replied by telegram; I have it here – it reads:

Busch's 21st birthday was spent en route to Switzerland for a walking and climbing holiday with the Grüters family. He was already friends with two Swiss artists, Max Schulthess and A. H. Pellegrini (who had painted a portrait of Frieda for him), and had long wanted to see their country. He and Frieda were equally captivated by the landscape and the people and, perhaps because they were in love, that first visit inspired a devotion to Switzerland which would never flag. When the weather was good, they spent every possible moment outdoors; when it was bad, they made music in the hotel – fellow guests in their first base, at Les Plans, gave Adolf and Hugo two pictures of the locality in gratitude for renderings of Beethoven and Mozart sonatas. From Les Plans, at the southern end of the Bernese Alps, the party trekked to Trachsellauenen near the Jungfrau peak. They had a musical opus with them which matched the grandeur of their surroundings, as Hugo was studying the new Universal Edition full score of Mahler's Eighth Symphony. When he drew Adolf's attention to a particularly harsh dissonance, the younger man's only comment was that at least it would quickly be passed over in performance. Within little more than a year, this first all-choral symphony would be mounted by Hugo (in Bonn), Fritz (in Aachen) and Steinbach (in Cologne).

While on holiday, Busch was offered the post of first concertmaster of the Vienna Konzertverein Orchestra in succession to Max Grohmann. Both Grümmer and Karl Doktor (who had heard praise of Busch from Reger) had been urging the conductor Ferdinand Löwe to approach Busch as soon as the leader's chair fell vacant; and although Löwe had expressed grave reservations – which it would take him a year to overcome – on account of the candidate's youth, he had finally given in. Only in June, Busch had turned down a similar approach from Stuttgart, but Vienna presented an additional attraction: the orchestral board wanted the string principals to function as a quartet, which would be allowed to tour.

Holzdorf was again the scene of the Quartet's September rehearsals, as Dr Krebs did not take it amiss that the Busches had forsaken the house designed for them in Darmstadt. The sessions were evidently congenial: the four were photographed in various mock-acrobatic poses, including one where they pretended to stand on one another's shoulders – they found it hilarious that on their travels they were occasionally mistaken for employees of the famed Zirkus Busch. The more serious side of their work was interrupted by a trip to Dresden, to hear Fritz conduct Otello and give a morning run-through with the Staatskapelle of Adolf's new Symphony in E minor, which Fritz found ‘magnificent’. This rehearsal afforded the composer the opportunity to hear his music in conditions akin to a performance and make adjustments to the orchestration. Hans Gál, who was present, noted that Fritz had his own suggestions to make and was able to bring his practical experience to bear on Adolf's work, modifying the written dynamics in certain passages so as to clarify the texture and reveal the structure.

On 20 September, Wilhelm Schmitz-Scholl died in the Munich hospital; and around the time of the funeral, the Busches spent several days with his widow in Düsseldorf. The best of sponsors, who never made undue demands on his chosen beneficiary but was always inordinately proud of Adolf's achievements, Schmitz-Scholl had lived to see his judgment vindicated and his kindness bear abundant fruit.

The new concert season brought a novelty, Serkin's String Quartet in One Movement, a skilful construction packing a variety of moods into about a quarter of an hour. On holiday that summer, Busch had encouraged his protégé to write a work for the Quartet; and it received its premiere at the Berlin Singakademie on 14 October. A few more performances were given, including one in Darmstadt, and the piece stayed in the Quartet's repertoire for private occasions – it became quite a joke to say ‘Now we’re going to play Rudi's Op. 1’, the point being that there was never an Op. 2. But the lone opus had an excellent reception whenever it was aired and Serkin took the sallies about his compositional prowess in good heart.

The pig was everywhere in medieval Europe. It was commonplace. It was in the countryside, in the city, on the plate, and in the mind. One would not have to look far to see a pig. They might be eating under an oak tree or out on a grassy knoll. They might be walking in the street with the swineherd close behind at their heels. They might be dismembered, for sale in the butcher shop, a potentially delicious meal for dinner. They might be on the signs hanging from the house or under the choir stalls in the cathedral, dancing, playing the bagpipes, or suckling young pigs or people. Pigs were in all these places. But what was the pig's place? What role did pigs really have in medieval society?

Perhaps the comparison of pigs with prostitutes made by the York civic ordinances is the place to start. Like medieval prostitutes, the pig was both shunned and accepted; understood as necessary while not necessarily being understood. The pig's biological qualities – its eating habits, growth rate, and fecundity – were what made it desirable. But these same qualities also transgressed social norms, making the pig a target of moral condemnation. A paradox pervaded every place the pig went.

Pigs were visible in medieval society, much more so than in our own. Highly concentrated intensive confinement systems for swine are the norm in modern industrial production. Their bodies are disciplined and controlled far from sight of the average consumer. Rather than being tucked away out of sight in mass piggeries, medieval pigs were co-inhabitants of rural and urban settlements. Pigs and people lived side by side. Medieval pigs’ bodies were also disciplined and controlled, but this happened largely within view of the people who would later consume their meat. Large numbers of people had a pig living in a sty on their property. Owners fed their pigs, cleaned up dung, and drove them to the market. Swineherds led them to pasture, knocked down acorns, and kept a watchful eye over them. Butchers bled them, cut them up, and emptied their intestines. Cooks prepared the meat in pasties and stews and fried the bacon and lard. The medieval human–pig relationship was physical and visceral.

The relationship was also mental and emotional.

Pigs lived in the medieval countryside and city, but they also inhabited the medieval mind. Paradoxically, while the pig was a blessing, providing meat for the winter, it was also an animal representing sin and debauchery. Camille observed that images of pigs show ‘no distinction between sacred and profane’. This chapter explores the place of the symbolic pig in medieval society, focusing on these contradictions.

Medieval European Christian notions of the pig were founded on biblical gospel stories and the medieval theological interpretation of these. There are two well-known gospel stories about pigs. The first is that of Jesus driving a legion of demons from a possessed man into a herd of swine, who then leap off a cliff and drown (Matthew 8:28–32; Mark 5:1–13; Luke 8:26–33). In this story, often called the Miracle of the Gadarene Swine, the pigs were innocent bystanders feeding nearby on a hillside while being guarded by swineherds. St Augustine interpreted this as indicating that Christ did not equate humans with animals, since he allowed the pigs to be inhabited by the demons and die. In a later interpretation of the Gadarene Swine, the thirteenth-century philosopher Albertus Magnus noted that pigs were permitted as the demon host because the pig ‘is a filthy animal, by nature, by law, by custom’. He explained that the pig's nature (by which he meant its body) breaks the rules of animals: it has a divided hoof like cattle, but does not chew cud; has nipples along the length of the body, instead of under the hind legs like cows; gives birth to many babies, unlike sheep and cows; and has soft flesh covered with bristles, rather than soft hair. He then noted that by law under Leviticus 11:7 the pig is unclean. Finally, he explained that custom deems the pig unclean because it rolls in the mud, nourishing itself on the unclean.

The common pictural composition for the Gadarene Swine miracle includes Jesus exorcising the demons from the man and the pigs in the water, perhaps based on Ottonian representations from around the year 1000, which were probably, in turn, based on now lost Carolingian models. Such images appear, for example, in the Codex Egberti of the late 900s, the Aachen Gospels of Otto III from around the year 1000, and the Getty's Anglo-Saxon leaves of around 1000.

In Basel, that autumn of 1937, the Busch Chamber Players brought a Bach cantata and works by their leader's other professed favourite, Mozart, into their repertoire. Now that Mozart's music has become so accessible, it is surprising to discover how little of it was performed before the 1941 sesquicentenary of his death stimulated his rise in popularity. In the interwar years, even the Salzburg, Würzburg and Munich festivals did not probe far beyond the handful of familiar Köchel numbers. In 1917 Busoni complained to Volkmar Andreae: ‘Mozart is altogether terra incognita; for how much is known and played of all his 650 works? While not a single bar of Dr Johannes, for example, is overlooked, whether for clarinet or – contrabassoon!’ When Schnabel performed three of the piano concertos in Vienna in 1934, k503 in C major had not been heard in the city since the composer's time. When Serkin made his United States orchestral debut in 1936, the critic Lawrence Gilman described k595 in B flat as ‘a forgotten piano concerto’. And in 1935 Fritz Busch wrote to Adolf: ‘Do you know a Mozart quartet for flute, violin, viola and cello in D major? It is something especially beautiful’. He had clearly come across k285 for the first time. Even the land of Mozart's birth was slow to appreciate him: in the mid-1980s the Viennese essayist Hans Weigel, born in 1908, wrote:

In Austria everything happens belatedly, at second instance. Thirty years ago Franz Schubert barely existed, Mozart was only taking on his true dimensions when I was already in control of my conscious mind.

No wonder there was so little understanding of Mozart's style, let alone the difference between his and Haydn’s. Yet through the 1930s a quiet Mozartian revolution was going on, in which the Busch brothers played their parts. At Glyndebourne Fritz brought Così fan tutte to the fore, as he later did with Idomeneo; and although he was rightly criticised for omitting appoggiature from both recitatives and arias, he did offer an alternative to Furtwängler, who romanticised Mozart's scores, Beecham, who prettified them, or Walter, who treated them too lovingly. ‘Walter was inclined to over-sweeten Mozart and Busch reacted against that’, said Berthold Goldschmidt.

A butcher str addles the pig on the building floor, holding its front leg safely out of the way. With his knife, he slits the pig's throat with precision so that the precious blood gushes into a waiting pan held by a woman. The blood will be transformed into culinary treats and hearty meals. Next to the couple is another pair of butchers carving up a pig carcass. The slaughter, portrayed in a manuscript calendar for the month of December (Figure 14), takes place late in the year as a way of stocking the food stores and reducing the number of mouths to feed over the lean months. This is an image of medieval pig butchery to keep in mind in this chapter. It was a visceral, physical process with close contact between human and pig.

The late fourteenth-century French poet Eustache Deschamps wrote a ballad about pigs extolling their place in medieval society. Its refrain, ‘A pig does no good in its life’ (Pourcel ne fist bien en sa vie), sums up the medieval relationship with pigs. As demonstrated in the previous two chapters, pigs required much attention because they tended to behave badly if not controlled. Deschamps lists the many useful things from pigs, including pork back, neck, hams, sausages, lard, and pork fillets – all of which come from the dead pig. The pig may not have done good in its life, but it did come to do good in its death.

The demand for pork

The reason pigs were kept as livestock was to produce meat. Dietary records of medieval times indicate widespread consumption of pork. Archaeological data from medieval England indicates that pigs were consumed equally in both rural areas and towns. Pig bones occur less frequently than either cattle or sheep, but they are still significant, making up 10–20 per cent of the bones recovered. In Basque areas, pig bones are about 10 per cent of the total recovered bones. Norwegian excavations have similarly shown 5 to 15 per cent of the bones to be swine. Similar numbers are found in the Anglo-Saxon period: in Dorchester, England, from the sixth until the eleventh century 13 to 16 per cent of all animal bones in refuse were pig bones; at Cheddar, pig provided 30 per cent of the meat consumed from 980 to the eleventh century.

The earliest known public performance by Adolf Busch took place on 17 November 1895, in Siegen: before an audience of two hundred teachers, the four-year-old played a solo to Fritz's piano accompaniment well enough to earn a round of applause; a brief mention in the local paper; and, more to his taste, a fee of two frankfurters and a glass of milk. The boys’ first paid engagement was less formal, more in line with Fritz's comment that they ‘lived like real street arabs’. Adolf was having violin lessons from a tubercular young man on the other side of town and Fritz would walk with him to the teacher's lodgings, playing a six-keyed piccolo borrowed from their father's shop. Adolf required little encouragement to strike up on his fiddle and the two of them would give impromptu concerts in the market place, opposite the town hall. One day they got carried away, stayed longer than usual and provoked a kindly onlooker into taking a collection for them from their motley audience. When the boys proudly took home 2 Marks 17 Pfennigs, their parents were horrified and firmly forbade any further public displays of their artistry. Yet their fame was spreading in the locality and at an evening concert of the town choral society Adolf and Fritz both played solos, finishing with a joint rendering of variations on The Carnival of Venice. Bored by his simple accompaniment, Fritz began to improvise at the keyboard and Adolf was first amused, then enraged, as he lost his place in the music. He laid into Fritz with his bow, Fritz retaliated – and the curtain was hastily lowered on a furious fist fight. ‘Nowadays’, Fritz remarked later, ‘we settle our differences in a more intellectual fashion.’

Adolf showed other signs of temperament. When he was scolded for doing anything wrong, he was liable to bang his head against the wall in fury and frustration. He was the introspective half of the Busch ‘musical twins’, lacking Fritz's sang-froid: his self-confidence was harder won. When he started at the local school at Easter 1898, he was always in trouble with the staff, incurring regular thrashings until his class teacher discovered he was a violinist and asked what he could play. ‘The Concerto by Bériot.’ – ‘Then play it for us.

The pig was a commonplace animal in the Middle Ages and, like many commonplace animals, the medieval pig embodies paradoxes. The pig was a major food source in winter, yet pork was a food that carried the connotation of religious uncleanliness. The omnivorous pig was useful as a garbage recycler, but was also a dangerous eater who could steal food and even root up buried corpses. Some pigs were domesticated, while others ran freely through the woodlands. The pig larder was a blessing, but pigs were also believed to do the Devil's bidding. As art historian Michael Camille observed, ‘pigs were both celebrated and reviled in medieval culture’. This book will explore these paradoxes of the pig in medieval culture and practice as we journey together to the places the pig inhabited.

Human lives are, and have been, deeply entangled with animal lives. Humans have sought wild animals for meat, skins, and a myriad of other products – from beaver castoreum to whale ambergris – as long as humans have existed. Wild animals, from lions to kangaroos to bats, shape human culture through symbolism and social practices that incorporate them. Both livestock and pets are brought directly under human control, often living under the same roofs as people and dependent on them for food and care. Humans began domesticating livestock mammals such as goats, sheep, pigs, and cattle over 10,000 years ago; dogs were domesticated even earlier. In the domestication process, the genetic makeup of the animals was modified as humans bred them for economically advantageous traits (more milk production, better wool fibres, more strength, better stamina, etc.) and human cultural contexts were modified to accommodate the animals’ needs and wants. This closeness to animals is both physical and mental – as humans have interacted with animals, we have thought with and through them. In a book about animals, looking at animals involves looking at both them and ourselves.

This book looks at human–animal relations through one animal (the pig) in a particular time (the Middle Ages) in a particular geography (western Europe). Writing about pigs is nothing new. Scholars have written about Fascist Pigs, Capitalist Pigs, The Symbolic Pig, The English Pig, and Legions of Pigs. Even just The Pig.