Bobby Derie has a new excellent blog post giving an account, with plenty of letter extracts, of Helen V. Sully’s 1933 visit to Lovecraft and the New York Circle.
What did she play, though? A quick tickle of Archive.org puts some detail on her talents as a musician, at least in terms of what she played (and thus was likely teaching by 1933). It shows her playing publicly in a string quartet in both 1923 and 1928. 1921 also saw her playing the piano in public. In her music review for the Auburn Journal for 1st August 1935 she reveals her own instruments, calling herself “a violinist and pianist”. This was in the context of the success of the first annual Carmel Music Festival, in which she had participated and played in public.
Lovecraft had also been a child violinist, arduously practising for two years (1897-1899, aged 7-9) under close professional tuition… until it “became such a nightmare” and a complete nervous rejection of classical music set in. He would thus have had a certain appreciation of the training needed in youth to later become a public performer on the violin. Interestingly Lovecraft had kept his boyhood violin…
Three or four years ago I picked up my little neglected violin, tuned it after purchasing new strings, & thought I would amuse myself with its sound, even though I did no better than a rustic village fiddler.
One then wonders if he still had it when Sully arrived? And if she stringed and tuned it up and played it for him? Although he tells Sully in a letter, discussing another musician she had seen, that…
my unmusical ear would be deaf to much of the subtle & unique charm of the rendition.
In a letter of about the same date to Galpin he similarly remarks…
I wish to Hades I had facilities for hearing music well-rendered
The Music of Erich Zann