This spring, in 2006, he would have been 90 years old. One often wonders what Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999) would make of today’s world developments and the current lives of peoples. Glenn Gould used to say he had taken the place occupied by Albert Schweitzer in the hearts of men and women: that of mankind’s advanced conscience. As a Mozart lover, the painter Balthus admired his famous colleague and neighbour in Gstaad: an artist in the heart of the world, a prophet of the music god. It is true indeed that in the incredibly moving tones of his violin, Menuhin reveals the romanticism of conscience, what the goodness of a creative mind can mean, the tenderness of genius, his intrinsic generosity. He travelled relentlessly round the world to bear witness to the nobleness of art, as a philosopher cum musician.

In the last few years of his long life on stage, he recorded as a conductor the Nine Beethoven Symphonies, then the complete Symphonies of Schubert, always with the Sinfonia Varsovia, where he played with the orchestra as with a bow. But beyond the musician famous since childhood, do people know about the architect of great educational projects, the committed humanist, the builder of new equilibriums between politic, economy and culture? By doing so, he gave back to artists their role of city scouts.  Lord Menuhin – who worked all his life within the highest international bodies – was keen to put the emphasis of his last major project on the organization of cultural diversity within the European framework, through the practical, visionary concept of an Assembly of Cultures, of which you will find the first intellectual and sensitive foundations as a complement to the conversations we have had together – an intention which remains fully up-to-date, in its spirit if not in its form, at a time when Europe is laboriously finding its way to unity.

The Prince of Asturias Prize for Peace, awarded in the last year of his life, made him "supremely happy", in his own words. It was very moving to meet him in person. He regarded death as the seed of new birth and did not hesitate to declare at the Royal Albert Hall for his eightieth birthday that throughout his incredible career and human journey, he had received enough blessings to last a thousand lives… For he was not only an English Lord but first and foremost a Chosen One, whose perfection never altered his boundless humanity. The miracle of his presence might lie in the fact that as soon as the name of Yehudi Menuhin is mentioned, we can feel – wherever we come from – the most intimate strings vibrate in our conscience, the echo of a hope and sweetness that can still be achieved. He will continue to live on through his eternal performances and also through his visions of the future of mankind, because he never stopped making us dream about the redemption of a world community. Some have recognized him as a prophet, but he was above all a Witness to an ideal of inner beauty open to others, to the world, which is one and the same with the Messianic promise.

In 1976, I attended the tribute ceremony at the Sorbonne University granting him a degree honoris causa. In the twenty-two years that followed, every single idea, request or project I sent him was favourably received. He was "The man who says yes". In a live coverage about the Yehudi Menuhin School in Stoke d’Abernon, he simply said to me: "The School is an honest and sincere reflection of my own life, I hope it will survive me". He accepted to associate his name with the birthday events of Amalia Rodrigues, Edwige Feuillère and Aldo Ciccolini, with whom he agreed to offer a Mozart concert in support of AIDS victims. But time ran out on him. One may say that in the kingdom of music, Menuhin was the father, the brother, the child of prodigies. His attitude of assent was a marking event for those who were on the receiving end. In the friendliness of our exchanges, there was also the project of a book gathering together his public reflections over the last decade of the twentieth century, which it would be fitting to call the Century of Menuhin – a man capable of dissolving all barriers with his musical genius and of smoothing away harshness from many hearts with his words. In the last message I received from him, he was planning to go on a trip to Corsica shortly, a land whose ancestral polyphonies I had introduced to him and for which he desired autonomy on the model of Catalonia…

He offered up his last breath to Berlin, a city which was the capital of the worst indignity in history, forever linked with the memory of countless innocent stolen lives, countless souls that became saint through martyrdom. Who deserved better than Yehudi Menuhin to be called Master? I remember the orphan look we exchanged in a silence charged with emotion with the Argentinian pianist Miguel Angel Estrella at Unesco, when evoking the man he called "the father of us all", since Yehudi Menuhin did not neglect anyone in his kindness and understanding. He went with the flow of life, submitted to its mysterious rhythms, the secret harmony he shared with his faithful violin – giving out a voice beyond words.

Enrique Barón Crespo, former President of the European Parliament, who joined the International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation at the Master’s request and who is its current President, recalled in his tribute message, "The violinist in the heavens", that together they managed to "create MUS-E, a programme implemented in over ten European Union countries, thanks to which many children from difficult, underprivileged, socially excluded areas can now develop their creativeness and their human dimension through music, singing, mime or bodily expression". (…) "Let us hope that just like the flying violinists in the sky painted by his fellow countryman Chagall, his spirit will continue to live on in the work he created".

On 12 March 1999 I was in Lausanne, in conversation with a follower of Indian philosophies, when I heard the news that our dear Menuhin had started a new cycle in his soul’s eternity… I could only shake off the grief and gratitude for having known him after taking up my pen and writing a few lines which I reproduce here on the occasion of his birthday on 22 April, symbol of Spring, as in the Beethoven sonata which he engraved everlastingly with his sister Hephzibah:

Yehudi, a heart, a conscience for the whole world, the eternal child-philosopher, the epitome of human nobleness, regal goodness and an eagle eye for defects, the power of utopia in action, the purpose of harmonies in the universe, the cult of love, a foremost sense of duty over instinct, a feeling for the words that strike home, the complicity of prophets of whom he may well be the last in a century fully given over to the fight between Good – singing under his fingers – and evil, and a felicitous intuition about all that reinforces justice, all that inspires generosity. He gave his life to his very last day to his ailing wife, to music that claimed him day after day, to his too many friends, to the Invisible which he was steeped in and which still keeps him alive in our hearts, a man who gave mankind the image of its impossible dignity, of its indomitable movement towards tenderness and kindness, of its fervent quest for a happier order, under the rainbow of a never-ending Chaconne…

12 March 1999
In memoriam

Preface to the book Yehudi Menuhin Le Regard du Musicien – entretiens, by Jean-Jacques Lafaye, published in 2006 by A.L.M.A.