The Detroit times., 1916-05-31
When Geo. Barrere Played
the Flute.
~ On. FRANK CRANE
Copyright. 1915. by Frank Crane)

~ VIC AAio NC hueSSC' Ills COuSiSI0o Va
three musicians. One played the harp.
another played the cello
And George Barrere played the flute.
Do you know who George Barrere Il?
Well, he is one of those persons who can
do something better than anybody else
in the world can do it. When you hear
of that sort Of a man he is worth going
miles to see, whether the thing he does
be laying brick painting picture, MAX
ing speech, acting upon the stage, or
|aught else.
There is something about mastery that
stirs one to the depths. Just to witness
thing, anything, done with consum-
mate perfection, somehow arouses all the
hero feeling in you. 1t makes you feel
great and divine yourself, for moment.
The master is the thousandth man,
maybe the tenthousandth man.
The master man is the greatest of
earth's spectacles, more imposing than
Niagara Falls or the Woolworth building.
The flute is not considered dominant
place in orchestration. And individually
the fiddle is more of vehicle for virtu-
osity. The horn has been more interpre-
tative of our rampant passions on the
hunting field, whether hunting foxes or
| fellowmen.
The flute is the violet in the nosegay
of music-making instruments. 1t is mod
est, delicate, unobstrusive as sweet
young girl
And when George Barrere plays the
| flute it is more than that. 1t is fairy
piping in the moonlight. 1t is an elf call
ing in the woodland 1t is the voice Of
some little otherworld creature, bodi-
less plant, bit of heart-break embroid-
cred with fanciful ecstasy.
When he plays you hear no whistling
and wind amming, none of the little
mannerisms that ordinarily make flute
playing trifle unpleasant. The soul Of
ethereal melody steals out, pure, round
ed, velvet, exquisite. 1t is as if timid
star of the sky had become vocal and
was telling you all the things you had
wondered it meant.
| You get curious impression. The
man looks like a professor of Greek in
some Wesleyan university. He is no
curly musician type. He might be a
Baptist preacher from Indiana. He has
no preenings nor professional tricks.
He just takes up his silver flute and
straightway his spirit enters into it, and
you understand how the Deity breath
ed into mans nostrils the breath of life
and man became living soul"
1t is all smooth and equal. The high
notes do not shrek nor the low ones
sound windy, one is as mellow as an
other. and the lower tones have almost
that peculiar human timbre of the cello
| sat there with my girl, and when
he had gone a little way in some elfin
Debussy thing, | found myself catching
my breath-you know the sobbing clutch
in your throat when suddenly you real
ize that you are face to face with some-
thing utterly beautiful-and / was fear
full I should be childish and weep.
glanced at my girl and was relieved, for
two big tears were rolling down her
cheeks and she looked as girls do when
they fall in love.
An hour or so we sat in the theater,
right off the busy street, and we heard
wondrous things, pixies dancing in the
moonbeams on the midnight greensward,
vanished souls calling back in tenuous
fragments of mystery, little angels prac-
ticing sonatinas for some heaven concert,
vague thoughts becoming embodied in
melody, the intimate loneliness Of life's
J hidden hopes, the imperial beauty Of
death and after, all transmitted into lace
When George Barrere played the flute.
work and filmy thread.