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The Uncommon Friendship of Yaltah Menuhin & Willa Cather

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Los Angeles author Lionel Rolfe has written in The Uncommon Friendship of Yaltah Menuhin & Willa Cather a moving biography of his mother Yaltah Menuhin, sister of famed violinist Yehudi Menuhin, and her relationship with novelist Willa Cather. Yaltah like Mendelssohn's sister Fanny and Mozart's sister Nannerl showed brilliance as a musician early but was discouraged by family members and always overshadowed by her famous brother. Rolfe looks closely at what it takes for a woman to overcome the obstacles put in front of her having a career as a touring concert pianist.

Rolfe's mother Yaltah was actively discouraged by her parents Moshe and Marutha who were Russian Jewish emigres to San Francisco where Moshe was superintendant of city's Hebrew schools. All three children of their-- Yehudi, the oldest; Hephzibah, the middle girl; and Yaltah, the youngest-were musical prodigies. At first the mother had decided the daughters wouldn't have musical careers, but then mother relented, seeing that Hephzibah could perform well in the secondary role as accompanist on the piano when her brother played his violin. The parents then that Yaltah was too "fragile" to be a touring musician.

If you compare the three Menuhin prodigies with Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny Mendelssohn, the parallels are striking. The Mendelssohns of Hamburg, Germany, like the Menuhins of San Francisco, California, were an extremely intellectual Jewish family and both mothers were music teachers. Fanny Mendelssohn in the 1830s and Yaltah Menuhin in the 1930s had family members telling them to give up before they started.

In fact, the Menuhins were on the 20th century version of a tradition of producing prodigies going back the shtetls of Eastern Europe. Rolfe's descriptions of how the elder Menuhins educated their three children are almost a manual on how to produce prodigies. So in many ways this is a western Jewish story-how Eastern European traditions were carried on in San Francisco. Moshe was a descendant of the Lubavitch Schneersohn dynasty, one of the great Hasidic religious dynasties of Eastern Europe. Rolfe's descriptions of the Menuhins in Los Gatos, California, in the later 1930s having intrigues over who their three teenager children would be allowed to court and then marry almost sound like the intrigues of a Hassidic or European court, but music was at the center rather than religion or politics. The parents had decided that their youngest Yaltah should be married off young to a rich husband.

What's critical in his mother's life, Rolfe argues, is her relationship with this independent older woman novelist Willa Cather. Rolfe retells the fascinated story how his grandparents educated all three children at home, convincing Willa Cather to be the Shakespeare tutor for the three Menuhin children. Though the Yaltah and Willa were together only in the last decade of Cather's life, Rolfe shows this short but intense relationship was important for both. The Menuhins weren't in the Russian shtetl (village) but in the 1930s America, and Cather was no ordinary shtetl tutor.

Rolfe argues that Yaltah was the inspiration for the heroine of the novella Lucy Gayheart, which Willa Cather was writing at the same time she regularly saw the Menuhins. Further, Rolfe argues that Yaltah thought Aunt Willa was the mother that her own mother had never been. Yaltah got from Aunt Willa the image of an independent woman artist, not controlled by her parents or a husband. Indeed, Yaltah alternated between obeying her dominating parents and rebelling against them. Rolfe captures that moment when immigrant's daughters were insisting on more freedoms in America.

It does seem likely that Aunt Willa in part inspired Yaltah's rebellion. Though Yaltah at sixteen allowed her parents to pick her first husband just as Nannerl Mozart, Mozart's sister, allowed her father to pick her husband, Yaltah's first marriage only lasted six months. At twenty-one Yaltah rebelled and chose her second husband, a young Jewish soldier/lawyer.

Concerning husbands, there is another difference between Yaltah Menuhin and Fanny Mendelssohn. Fanny Mendelssohn did get the support her husband William Hensel to publish her composition and performed in the weekly family musical salons. In contrast, Yaltah Menuhin, despite lack of support from all her husbands, performed in public concerts. Though Yaltah Menuhin never had the stellar musical career of her older brother Yehudi, she did perform piano in concerts from aged 30 to 80 in North America, Europe, and England.

In Los Angeles during the 1950s where Yaltah lived with her second husband and two sons she regularly took part in the "Evenings on the Roof" series performing the work of many new composers. Again, she was a woman who stood on her own two feet like her Aunt Willa. Rolfe's book is a moving story of a fascinating woman who in order to become a musician overcomes numerous obstacles.

This book is a look inside a very famous musical family, the Menuhins, and a long-term friendship between two very different women.

The Menuhin family contained three world-class musical prodigies, when most families would be happy with just one prodigy. Yehudi, the famous one, was considered the greatest musical talent of the 20th Century. Hephzibah, his sister, usually accompanied him on the piano. Then there was sister Yaltah, also a pianist. According to people who know about such things, she was the most talented of them all.

The family was run by Marutha, their mother, a cold, domineering woman. Yaltah was told, more than once, that the only reason she was alive was because of a broken diaphragm. Yaltah and Hephzibah were allowed piano lessons for the sole purpose of attracting a husband. When it came to marriage, all that mattered, according to Marutha, was whether or not he came from a well-to-do family; love was irrelevant. Yaltah's first "arranged" marriage lasted about 6 months. The family lived in Paris, because that is where the great musicians were. The rise of Hitler in the 1930s forced a move to Manhattan, where they met Willa Cather.

She was a novelist and newspaper writer from the American Midwest, who became good friends with the family and became the children's teacher (there was no regular school for the Menuhin's). Marutha kept the children out of the public eye as much as possible (their educational walks with Cather began at 6:00 AM). As the years went on, the friendship between Yaltah and Willa grew. Willa helped Yaltah deal with her mother's unfeeling personality, and Yaltah ended up inspiring several of Willa's later novels.

For Yaltah's second marriage, in the early 1940s, she eloped with an Army lawyer named Ben Rolfe. Her parents never accepted him as part of the family. The marriage ended after a number of years, partly because of his jealousy over her musical career. It was only after 2 more not-very-pleasant marriages, and her moving to London, that in the last few years of her life, she regained something like the musical career she had when she was younger.

Here is a very personal look inside a famous musical family, written by an "insider." (the author is Yaltah's son). It is very much worth reading, not just for classical music fans, or fans of 20th Century female novelists, but for everyone.