76 ❧ chapter four
in relation to a theory. Often he reminded me of a dog smelling his way into a
situation. His memory was likely to be short and volatile, and although he had
pursued the course of his life with considerable consistency, it had been by a
series of zigzags rather than in a straight line. I think that he was always at his
best when adapting to a situation or to other people, better than if left entirely
on his own. Hindemith once said of him that he was the perfect second violin-
ist but that he doubted his ability to lead a quartet on his own. This seems to
me to have been an exaggeration, because Sascha is a superb stimulating ele-
ment in any combination in which he participates, and his successes of recent
years with chamber orchestras bear further witness to his ability to galvanize a
group of musicians. However, he does need a few stabilizing infl uences, and
he always instinctively sought them out. In some measure, I was one of them.
But what a struggle and what good it did me! I can lay no claim to simplicity of
character, nor can Sascha, however diverse our respective defects may be, but I
can say of him what can be said of very few adults, that during the time I have
known him he has improved his character in every way and that today he is a
far better man than the one I met thirty odd years ago. I doubt, alas, that the
same can be said of me.
The Harvard concerts had considerable success. We repeated one of them
at Jonathan Edwards College at Yale in January 1943, and these fi rst fruits of
our collaboration brought an appetite for more. However, the commitments of
the Budapest Quartet were very heavy, and I no longer recall whether or not
we resumed systematic rehearsals until after Sascha had decided to leave the
quartet. In any case, we rehearsed in concentrated fashion in the autumn of
1943 when I took the harpsichord to Washington and stayed with Sascha for
at least a fortnight. Later there was rehearsing in New York, most particularly
in the spring of 1944, as we prepared our fi rst transcontinental tour, which was
largely sponsored by the Coolidge Foundation.
It would be easy to think that Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge was the one single
person who between the two world wars did the most to further chamber music
in the United States. In her youth she had played the piano, but increasing
deafness obliged her to give up all active participation in music. Instead, she
surrounded herself with musicians and gave them opportunities to rehearse
and perform. At South Mountain in Pittsfi eld, Massachusetts, she built a con-
cert hall for resident and visiting quartets and other combinations. She and
her mother were responsible for the building of Sprague Hall at Yale, and
in 1924 she donated the Coolidge Auditorium to the Library of Congress in
Washington, where she generally spent her winters. Without her, many a string
quartet could not have remained in existence. In later years, she subsidized
chamber music concerts all over this country and even abroad through a foun-
dation she established in the Library of Congress, following usually the wise
policy of letting the local sponsor take over part of the cost of a concert. She
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