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 artist can metamorphose what at first glance might seem something quite negligible, and create beauty where its possibilities alone had existed before.

It is this personal, this individual, note in all that Fritz Kreisler does—­when he plays, when he composes, when he transcribes—­that gives his art-effort so great and unique a quality of appeal.

Talking to him in his comfortable sitting-room in the Hotel Wellington—­Homer and Juvenal (in the original) ranked on the piano-top beside De Vere Stackpole novels and other contemporary literature called to mind that though Brahms and Beethoven violin concertos are among his favorites, he does not disdain to play a Granados Spanish Dance—­it seemed natural to ask him how he came to make those adaptations and transcripts which have been so notable a feature of his programs, and which have given such pleasure to thousands.

         [Illustration:  FRITZ KREISLER, with hand-written note]

HOW KREISLER CAME TO COMPOSE AND ARRANGE

He said:  “I began to compose and arrange as a young man.  I wanted to create a repertory for myself, to be able to express through my medium, the violin, a great deal of beautiful music that had first to be adapted for the instrument.  What I composed and arranged was for my own use, reflected my own musical tastes and preferences.  In fact, it was not till years after that I even thought of publishing the pieces I had composed and arranged.  For I was very diffident as to the outcome of such a step.  I have never written anything with the commercial idea of making it ‘playable.’  And I have always felt that anything done in a cold-blooded way for purely mercenary considerations somehow cannot be good.  It cannot represent an artist’s best.”