Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe (French: [øʒɛn iza.i]; 16 July 1858 – 12 May 1931) was a Belgian virtuoso violinist, composer, and conductor. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as his former student Nathan Milstein put it, the "tsar".
Born in Liège, Ysaÿe began violin lessons at age five with his father. He would later recognise his father's teaching as the foundation of everything he knew on his instrument, even though he went on to study with highly reputed masters. In 1867, Ysaÿe entered the Royal Conservatory of Liège to study with Désiré Heynberg, and in the process won a shared second prize with the Viotti 22nd Violin Concerto. He then went on to study with Henryk Wieniawski for two years in Brussels and Henri Vieuxtemps in Paris.
Studying with these teachers meant that he was part of the
Franco-Belgian school of violin playing, which dates back to the development of the modern violin bow by François Tourte. Qualities of this "École" included elegance, a full tone with a sense of drawing a "long" bow with no jerks, precise left hand techniques, and bowing using the whole forearm while keeping both the wrist and upper arm quiet (as opposed to Joseph Joachim's German school of wrist bowing and Leopold Auer's Russian concept of using the whole arm).
After his graduation from the Royal Conservatory of Liège, Ysaÿe was the principal violin of the Benjamin Bilse beer-hall orchestra, which later developed into the Berlin Philharmonic. Many musicians of note and influence came regularly to hear this orchestra and Ysaÿe in particular, among them Joseph Joachim, Franz Liszt, Clara Schumann, and Anton Rubinstein, who asked that Ysaÿe be released from his contract to accompany him on tour.
When Ysaÿe was 27 years old, he was recommended as a soloist for one of the Concerts Colonne in Paris, which was the start of his great success as a concert artist. The next year, Ysaÿe received a professorship at the Brussels Conservatoire. His teaching career continued for the rest of his life, even after he left the Conservatory in 1898. Among his notable pupils were Josef Gingold, the viola virtuoso William Primrose, the violin virtuoso Nathan Milstein (who primarily studied with Pyotr Stolyarsky), Oskar Back, Ernest Bloch, Jascha Brodsky, Mathieu Crickboom, George Enescu, Aldo Ferraresi, Jonny Heykens, Nellie A. Hope, Charles Houdret, Julia Klumpke, Louis Persinger, Oscar Shumsky, and Jacques Thibaud. (See: List of music students by teacher: T to Z#Eugène Ysaÿe.)
During his tenure as professor at the Conservatoire, Ysaÿe continued to tour ever more widely, visiting all of Europe, Russia, and the United States. Despite health concerns, particularly regarding the condition of his hands, Ysaÿe was at his best when performing, and many prominent composers dedicated major works to him, including Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Saëns, César Franck, and Ernest Chausson. He arranged for violin and orchestra Saint-Saëns's Étude en forme de valse, which had originally been written for solo piano.
Franck's Violin Sonata in A was written as a wedding present for Ysaÿe and his wife in 1886. Ysaÿe played it often for the rest of his life. Chausson's Poème was his response to Ysaÿe's request for a concerto. Joseph Szigeti thought those two dedications demonstrated the enormous respect in which Ysaÿe was held.
In 1886, he established the Ysaÿe Quartet, which premiered Debussy's String Quartet.
As his physical ailments grew more prohibitive, Ysaÿe turned more to teaching, conducting and an early love, composition. Among his most famous works are the six Sonatas for Solo Violin op. 27, the unaccompanied Sonata for Cello, op. 28, one Sonata for Two Violins, eight Poèmes for various instruments (one or two violins, violin and cello, string quartet) and orchestra (Poème élégiaque, Poème de l'Extase, Chant d'hiver, Poème nocturne, among others), pieces for string orchestra without basses (including Exil), several violin concertos, various shorter pieces for violin and piano, two string trios, an early string quintet, and an opera, Peter the Miner, written near the end of his life in the Walloon language.
Ysaÿe had been offered the post of music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1898, but declined it due to his busy solo performance schedule. In 1918, he accepted the music director's position with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where he remained until 1922 and with which he made several recordings.
Finally, in 1931, suffering from the extreme ravages of diabetes that had necessitated the amputation of his left foot, Eugène Ysaÿe died in his house in Forest, Belgium, 48 Avenue Brugmann, and was interred in the Ixelles Cemetery in Brussels.
As a performer, Ysaÿe was compelling and highly original. Pablo Casals claimed never to have heard a violinist play in tune before Ysaÿe, and Carl Flesch called him "the most outstanding and individual violinist I have ever heard in my life."
Ysaÿe possessed a large and flexible tone, influenced by a considerable variety of vibrato — from no vibrato at all to very intense. He said, "Don't always vibrate, but always be vibrating". His modus operandi was, in his own words: "Nothing which wouldn't have for goal emotion, poetry, heart." The conductor Sir Henry Wood said, "The quality of tone was ravishingly beautiful.... He seemed to get more colour out of a violin than any of his contemporaries."
Possibly the most distinctive feature of Ysaÿe's interpretations was his masterful rubato (in English: "stolen"). Sir Henry Wood said, "Whenever he stole time from one note, he faithfully paid it back within four bars", allowing his accompanist to maintain strict tempo under his free cantilena. Incidentally, this kind of rubato fits the description of Frédéric Chopin's rubato.
Although Ysaÿe was a celebrated interpreter of late Romantic and early modern composers such as Max Bruch, Camille Saint-Saëns, and César Franck, who composed his Violin Sonata as a wedding present for Ysaÿe. He was also highly admired for his interpretations of Bach and Beethoven.
An international violin competition in Brussels was created in his memory: in 1951, this became the violin section of the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition.
Ysaÿe was married twice. His first marriage, on 28 September 1886 in Arlon, was to Louise Bourdau (from Dendermonde), with whom he had three sons and two daughters: Gabriel (1887–1961), Carry (1889–1930), Thérèse called Thésy (1890–1956), Antoine (1894–1979) and Théodore (1898–1934). César Franck presented his Violin Sonata in A to them as a gift on the morning of the wedding, and after a hurried rehearsal Ysaÿe performed the piece at the marriage celebration. The sonata had its formal concert premiere in Brussels on 15 December 1886 with Franck in the audience.