memoirs, 1933–77 ❧ 29
During the Spanish Civil War, I found it diffi cult to take sides, but on the
afternoon of that fi rst walk in Madrid my decision was made. I do not neces-
sarily commend it to other people, but I have never been willing to tolerate
anything that had to do with the Franco government. Since I am well aware
that this is a personal matter, I will not attempt to expose my reasons here. But
seldom have I ever seen so quickly or so clearly, even if belatedly, on what side
of the barricades I belonged. I confi ned all my undertakings of 1947 and 1948
to the gathering of whatever material might concern Scarlatti. About the politi-
cal background of the many persons with whom I had to deal, I preferred to
know nothing. My only deviations in these years from the strictest of Scarlatti-
oriented paths took the form of excursions to Toledo and to Segovia. Except
for a brief stay in Barcelona and Mejores in 1952 and a return to the Prado^13
in 1961, I have explored none of the rest of Spain, to my great loss. That I have
played in many countries of whose governments I do not approve and never
in Spain is a personal matter, and when invited to play there, I have never said
more than that I was not free.
I have no patience with performers who ostentatiously display their alleged,
and all-too-frequently changing, political beliefs. As private individuals they
have every right to do and say as they please, but the association of their pro-
tests with their own public performances places their art squarely in the service
of politics and renders them totally defenseless against its manipulation or sup-
pression by a totalitarian regime.
I marvel that I accomplished as much in Spain as I did in a very short space
of time and under the unfavorable conditions of blistering hot weather, of
speaking Spanish for the fi rst time in my life (most of the time I thought in
Italian and made such adaptations as I could), and of being under the constant
necessity of marshalling every resource of diplomacy and tact in order to gain
access to anything, whether public or private. After the now-famous telephone
call to the Scarlatti family (none of whom spoke anything other than Spanish),
I managed somehow to gain their confi dence and cooperation. For dealing
with archives and libraries, I rented a taxi by the day, and while waiting for the
requested material to be produced in any given library or archives, I was off
to another library to work on what had already been ordered. This permitted
me not only to make the most of the unbelievably short working hours of the
day but also to avoid going on foot in the consciousness- and concentration-
shattering sun.
The latter half of the summer of 1947 was spent in Positano, where, together
with a friend, I had rented a villa into which my harpsichord was brought and
where I began putting into practice and on paper some of what I had learned
in Spain. From my balcony, which overlooked Homer’s islands of the Sirens
- Museo del Prado, national art museum in Madrid.
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