By
Elise the Piece
Dead Rebel Of The Week
~ Jacqueline du Pré ~
"Great spirits have always been met with
violent opposition from mediocre minds."
- Albert Einstein
Anyone who has ever picked up a classical instrument, especially the cello, knows the name Jacqueline du Pré. As a brilliant cellist, she found international fame in half the time most classical players could ever dream of garnering.
Though not as well known in America, Jacqueline du Pré was, and still is, a musical icon in England. She has inspired millions of musicians around the world, including Yo-Yo Ma, whom she gave her Stradivarius Davidoff (1712) cello to before she died. And for those who don't know, a "Strad" is like the Porsche of cellos'. Her drive, aptitude, and sheer genius won her the admiration of thousands, while her childish antics nearly drove her family apart. In the end, it all became secondary to the malady that would take her ability to play, and eventually her life.
Born in oxford in 1945, Jackie, as she was known, was brought up in a house filled with music. Her mother was a pianist and her older sister Hilary was a flautist. It was when Jackie was four that she first heard the denotative sounds of the cello resonating from the family radio, and begged her mom to let her play. A few months later, just before Jackie turned five, she received her first cello and by the next year she began taking lessons. Her natural aptitude for the instrument was so remarkable that it was to no one's surprise that she was winning international competitions by the time she was ten.
15 years old, she became famous when she recorded Elgar's intimate and melancholy "Cello Concerto", one of the greatest classical recordings of all time, with the London symphony orchestra. This incredibly difficult piece became her trademark, even though her favorite to play was actually the Schumann.
In her mid teens', Jackie left home to study in France under the instruction of the country's best and most formidable classical instructors. She was a bit egocentric and on numerous occasions, while filling in as a second chair, she would go ahead and play the solo parts as if they were her own, wondering why the first chair was playing along with her. Her sheer genius on the cello was profound in that she had the perfect balance of technical skill ensconced with emotion and such physical vigor that many times audience members were offended. She attacked her instrument with exuberance and abandon, adding sensuality never seen before or since. She was described as "flamboyant", and was careless and crude with her words. She was also incredibly negligent with the very expensive Stradivarius cello that was given to her by an anonymous donor. When she began to tour internationally, reviews thought her playing to be "too aggressive and wayward, with wrong notes and thin tone." These reviews never bothered her, or those who marveled at her talent, and thus she continued to march to her own beat, canceling concerts on a last minute whim if she found something else she would rather do.
Around this time, while studying in France, Jackie began to notice numbness in her third and fourth fingers. She immediately dismissed this as her teacher forcing her to use different hand positions and never mentioned it again. She also began having problems with her vision and her mother remarked that cognitive changes in her daughter were steadily increasing during that time. She married pianist conductor Daniel Barenboim in 1967 and Time magazine said of their union, "thus began one of the most remarkable relationships, personal as well as professional, that music has known since the days of Clara and Robert Schumann." Although he was a prolific pianist and composer in his right, his name would forever be synonymously tied to that of his prodigious wife. Daniel would often complain that his wife was difficult to direct in concert. Not to say that she was defiant, but she felt the music so deeply in her, that she would leave the orchestra struggling to keep up with her.
Despite the fact that she adored the spotlight, she was an incredible collaborator and worked studiously with "the Jewish Musical Mafia" quartet, composted of Itzak Perlman, Zubin Metha, and Pinchas Zukerman, and her own husband Daniel Barenboim. Though she was considered to be one of the most ingenious cellists of her time, a lucrative future was beginning to curtail due to escalating absent-mindedness and physical difficulties. In the beginning of 1970, her performances faltered tremendously due to the constant heaviness and numbness in her arms and fingers. When she finally realized she really needed to seek help, the doctors thought her to be merely suffering from fatigue, and she was advised to rest. She did not return to the stage for the entire year of 1972.
During this time, distraught and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Jackie visited her sister Hilary and Hilary's husband Cristopher Finzi. Jackie's stay was a mixture of extended manic periods, followed by bouts of severe depression, in which she grew increasingly hysterical and physically exhausted. Her emotional outbursts finally culminated in the affair between Jackie and Cristopher, which was highly publicized in the biographical book, "A Genius in the family." Hilary claimed that Jackie, during an emotional breakdown, persuaded Hilary to allow a consensual affair between her sister and her husband. Although the affair was supposedly conducted with Hillary’s consent, her children would later dispute this, saying their father, a chronic adulterer, took complete advantage of their emotionally distraught aunt.
Jackie’s physical condition worsened as she began to feel numb patches throughout her arms and legs, her vision began to blur in one eye, and she could barely lift her bow. At 27, she could no longer participate in recordings because she became so easily drained. Her temperament soured further and she often referred to herself as a cripple. A year later, a visit to a doctor was prompted when at a performance at Carnegie Hall, she couldn't even lift her cello out of its case, let alone create a fingering pattern of any kind. It was then that the entire course of her life was changed when she finally learned she was suffering from multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disorder that slowly paralyzes the muscles due to lack of neural messages to the brain. For the average person, a diagnosis of this magnitude is bad enough, but to a musician it is utterly devastating.
Looking back, the family realized she had been exhibiting symptoms early on, but what is more amazing is that they never assumed it affected her playing, because Jackie never really had to practice much to begin with.
As MS continued to ravage her body, Jackie became increasingly belligerent to her family, to her caretakers, and to her husband Daniel. Her husband was at this time leading a double life, caring for his wife on the weekends, and for his mistress, the pianist Elena Bashkiroca, the rest of the time.
Jackie was confined to a wheelchair for the last 14 years of her life. Her cello silenced forever when she was only 28 years old. She would teach lessons for a few years, but stopped in 1975 when the disease took the use of her limbs entirely. Regardless of her poor disposition to her family, students and mentors would claim that she was nothing but kind and unperturbed in their presence. Though she could no longer play, her talent was still celebrated by those who were moved by her previous work. As her disease rapidly progressed, devastation came with her mother's passing when Jackie turned 40. Jackie's health, which was already precarious, went rapidly downhill after learning this, and she died two short years later of pneumonia, only 42 years old. At the time of her death, she was reduced to an invalid, unable to speak, see, eat, or drink.
Today, a white garden rose bears her name, and she is immortalized in the song “Romanzo”, written by Alexander Goehr.
Despite the antics of a troubled mind in an enfeebled body, Jacqueline du Pré remains the quintessential cellist of the century, admired by many who played, and even more by those who didn't. Her expressive genius will forever live on through her music, and through the music of those she inspired. This writer humbly included.
