JOYS AND SORROWS: REFLECTIONS

BY PABLO CASALS. As told to AlbertE. Kahn '34. New York: Simon andSchuster, 1970. 314 pp. $7.95.

Albert E. Kahn has made it possible for us to get to know Pablo Casals through a series of reflections or what might be called responses by the oldest living musical genius. Even if one is not interested in music, Casals is a cultured man whose firm grasp of intellectual history gives a continuity to the last hundred years that only an "eyewitness" account can convey.

Casals' description of nineteenth-century musical life will certainly be valuable to musicologists. One discovers several important performers and composers of the past who have already been forgotten; for example, composer Emanuel Moor, of whom Casals says "in my opinion a true genius, one of the really outstanding composers of this century. ... But his eccentricities were such that they interfered greatly with the acceptance of his music." There are amusing anecdotes concerning Claude Debussy, Gertrude Stein, Enrique Granados, and Colonel Georges Picquart (of the Dreyfus affair), all of whom Casals knew well.

I was impressed by one contradiction in Casals' personality; he expresses a great affection for nearly every monarch he has encountered without giving reasons. At the same time he abhors the monarchal form of government. It is as if he could not overcome the profound recognition bestowed on him, a child prodigy of peasant origin, by the kings and queens of nineteenth-century Europe.

Mr. Appleton is Assistant Professor ofMusic at Dartmouth and Director of theElectronic Music Studio.