Stephen S. Stratton

“ The father of Nicolo Paganini was avaricious, and compelled his son to minister to his avarice, even robbing him of the first-fruits of his own earnings; Nicolo in turn became avaricious, but it was for the sake of his little son, whose life he desired might be better than his own. "He saves for his yet uneducated child," wrote Guhr, in 1829. Yes, this man, proud, scornful, despising the crowds whose money made him rich, in the recesses of his heart nourished a love, pure and unselfish. ”

“ He recognised plainly the limits of the influence which Paganini exercised over him, and saw how human was the mission of the artist—a consciousness was awakened that artistic culture is inseparable from human sympathies, that only a great man can become a great artist. This conviction drew from his lips the proud but noble words 'Génie oblige.' [42] With indescribable eagerness, and at the same time with exulting triumph, Liszt, after having heard Paganini, turned again to his instrument. He was seldom seen; in public, as a pianist, never. ”

“ It is not too much to say that the technique of the modern [147] orchestra, in regard to the string section, is due to Paganini. Compare the scores of the classical composers with those of the most modern writers, and see what an enormous difference there is in the work for the strings—from the violins to the double-basses. The orchestral player of to-day is a virtuoso. For good or evil, music has entered upon a phase that has raised executive skill to a pinnacle never attained before: and this it owes to Paganini: may it be the prelude to higher achievements in the spiritual domain of art! ”

“ The Hamburg Opera House was the scene of this concert, and the art-loving public had flocked there so early, and in such numbers, that I only just succeeded in obtaining a little place in the orchestra." Then he goes on to describe the audience and the entrance of Paganini. "Is that a man brought into the arena at the moment of death, like a dying gladiator, to delight the public with his convulsions? Or is it one risen from the dead, a vampire with a violin, who, if not the blood out of our hearts, at any rate sucks the gold out of our pockets? ”

“ Truly, Paganini's story is a romance, a drama, a tragedy. We may not look upon his like again, nor is it desirable that we should; for his life conveys a moral that few can fail to discern.
The artist is the child of his age. What kind of age was it that produced Paganini? A few years before he was born there came into the world one who was to set [5] Europe aflame. The age was the age of revolution. Thrones tottered; armies devastated the Continent, and Italy became a mere appanage of the French Empire. ”

“ One striking peculiarity of his playing is the extraordinary effect it produces on persons wholly devoid of musical cultivation. Most virtuosi play only for the learned; not so Paganini. His performance is alike appreciated by men of business and connoisseurs, by children and grown persons—it is felt and understood by all. This is the distinctive characteristic of all that is great in art. ”

“ The melodies are fresh, and move step-wise, very much like those in the Minuet of Beethoven's first Symphony. They are in scale formation, up and down, and there is only one skip of a third in the first sixteen bars. Again the violin takes all the themes. Larghetto con passione, F sharp minor, six-eight measure, a Lament, a fine expressive theme, opening nobly, but with the elevated style not maintained throughout. The viola and violoncello parts are in keeping with the pathetic feeling of the movement, but the rhythmic figure of the guitar part detracts from its dignity. ”

“ Unlike the great composer the instrumentalist leaves behind him no visible proof of the part he has played in the development of his art. And the world has easily forgotten that from the day of Paganini not only was the violin transformed into a new instrument, not only were its capabilities, previously undreamt of, newly revealed, but also in other branches of musical art, in orchestral music especially, a fresh field was opened up before the composer. ”

“ I never wearied of the intense expression, soft and melting like that of an Italian singer, which he could draw from his violin." Yet, later, Moscheles had to say: "I find both his style and manner of playing monotonous." Liszt, many years later said: "No one who has not heard him can form the least idea of his playing." Paganini indeed could soar to the Empyrean, but he had not the Peri's pure gift which would open the gate of Paradise! ”

“ We shall talk of Paganini very much till he comes. When he arrives nobody will speak or think of anything else for nine, perhaps eighteen, days: he will be everywhere: all other violinists will be utterly forgotten: it will be agreed that the instrument was never before heard; that his predecessors were all tyros; all other fiddles mere kits. There will be Paganini rondos and waltzes; variations, long, short, hard, easy, all à la Paganini. We shall have Paganini hats, caps, etc., and the hair of all the beaux patronised by beauty, will be after his curious pattern. ”

“ What the influence of Liszt has been, is beyond the present purpose to inquire. But, blot out Paganini and every note he has written, and he reappears in the art work of at least one great French composer, and in that of the greatest pianist the world has yet seen—one to whom the high compliment has been paid in the epithet—"The Paganini of the Pianoforte." ”

“ The public, made up of idlers—of beings isolated, cold, corrupt—must be amused, forsooth! and the artist exhausts his taste and his sentiment, and well nigh perspires blood and water, to comply with their exactions—to amuse them! and if he attain this end, the public clap their hands, the manager of the theatre counts out to him a heap of gold, and he goes away, with his ears deafened at the noise which has surrounded him, and which, for a moment, it may be, has made his heart beat high;—he goes away, with a loving grasp tightened over the coin he has so hardly won ”

“ How was it that the devil and the violin came into relationship? We have it on the authority of Martin Luther that the devil hates music. Luther not only believed in the devil, but he fancied he saw him: and in the room of the Castle of Wartburg may still be seen the mark on the wall, where he threw his inkpot at the fiend, who tried to thwart his work of translating the Bible. It is curious that the only instrument which, to the present writer's knowledge, Satan has been represented as playing upon, is one of the precursors of the violin. ”

“ It is, perhaps, fortunate that no man can be consistent throughout his life; the morose must smile at times, and the misanthrope mitigate his hatred of mankind. Paganini was but human, and his life was not all shadow. ”

“ Every would-be violinist, whose means permitted him to indulge in the luxury, endeavoured to secure an instrument by the great Guarnerius. The demand thus raised brought forth those gems of the violin maker's art now in the possession of wealthy amateurs and a few professors. When the various works of the gifted Guarnerius were brought to light, much surprise was felt that such treasures should have been known only to a handful of obscure players, chiefly in the churches of Italy. ”

“ A number of those amateurs actually paid for admission to the concert, on purpose to hiss the independent artist. This they did as soon as he entered the concert-room. Despising such petty spite, Paganini entrusted his revenge to his art, and the rapturous plaudits of the audience proper soon reduced to a pitiable silence those who had offered so gross an insult. As a writer said at the time: "The amateurs of Boulogne have earned for themselves a niche in the history of the art—they have hissed Paganini." ”

“ But there must have been something beyond technique. I have heard many persons, professional and amateur, speak of his playing as something beyond conception, not only in regard to execution, but in the power of swaying an audience, playing upon their emotions; the whole man was an instrument. No other artist was so widely quoted by his contemporaries. Mendelssohn, Chopin, and others make reference to Paganini whenever anything wonderful is spoken of. Chopin was a great admirer of Slavik, and considered him only second to Paganini. ”

“ But in his compositions and his execution, I found a strange mixture of the highly genial and childishly tasteless, by which one felt alternately charmed and disappointed, so that the impression left as a whole was, after frequent hearing, by no means satisfactory to me." Paganini was playing to his "great public," and in that respect lost Spohr's esteem; but can a great violinist, of strong personality, be perfectly just to a contemporary of a different temperament? Schumann, as a composer, could look upon Paganini from a different point of view. ”

“ From Prague, Paganini went to Berlin, where he remained four months. He was received with the utmost enthusiasm, and on the evening of his first concert he exclaimed: "I have found my Vienna public again." Wherever Paganini stayed for any length of time it suddenly became the fashion to learn to play the violin; and the fair members of the aristocratic families were among the most eager to become pupils of the famous man. Paganini made a great deal of money in Berlin. ”

“ There is truth here, and cause for sadness; but can the hand of time be turned back, and music regain the artless joy of the seventeenth century, when technique was unknown? Paganini, after all, was only one of the forces that effected the revolution that produced the music of the last half of the nineteenth century. ”

“ There are pretty stories of his playing with the boy, but there is nothing about teaching the boy to play—the violin. The memory of his own childhood was quite sufficient to deter him from any attempt to force instruction on his boy, and cloud the sunshine of his young life.
The world gave Paganini its plaudits and its money; but there never seemed to be any bond of sympathy between the artist and the public. Yet Paganini could appreciate kindness. Moscheles relates that the father of his wife rendered Paganini some important service before the visit to England. ”

“ The slow movement, Adagio, C minor, four-four, was inspired, as already mentioned, by the Italian tragedian, Demarini. Paganini witnessed his performance in a prison scene, where, after recapitulating his misfortunes, he supplicated Providence to relieve him of the burden of his life. Paganini retired to rest still under the influence of the emotions excited by the actor. He could not sleep: he rose and sought through his violin a means of expression by which he could pour out the feelings that consumed his soul. Thus, genius tortures and produces. ”

“ The orchestra consisted of some half-dozen shabbily dressed players, the singers were mechanics, members of the chorus of the Teatro Argentina, and the audience scarcely numbered fifty. Rome, professedly the first musical city of Italy, and of Europe, was ignorant of Paganini, the greatest violin virtuoso of Italy and the world. But his extraordinary genius kindled coldness into enthusiasm. At his second concert the attendance increased tenfold ”

“ In Paris, I have heard how the talented violinists, mentioned in Mr. Lafont's letter, speak of Paganini. The Coriosi gladiators of the Neronian age spoke with the same freedom of Hercules. Had this demigod suddenly appeared on the arena with his club, all of them would instantly have shrunk into pigmies."
In a footnote Cianchettini added that whatever excellence the Parisian Violin School might lay claim to, was derived from Italians; from Viotti, through Pugnani and Tartini, to Corelli, "the father of the violin." ”

“ There is a very graphic, and at the same time, appalling, account of the impression produced by Paganini among the Parisians, which is translated at length in Dubourg's "The Violin." Berlioz wrote of the weird genius making his appearance in France during the uproar of the collapse of a dynasty, and arriving in Paris—with the cholera. The terrors of the scourge were powerless to check the tide of curiosity: the people were mad for the time being. This is the conclusion of the notice just mentioned: "Of such a public, and such an artist, how saddening is the sight!... ”

“ He further stated that Paganini often assured him that his talent was the result of a secret discovered by himself, a secret he intended to reveal, before his death, in a method for the violin, which should have but few pages, but which should throw all violinists into confusion. Fétis questions the existence of the secret, and thinks the great artist was labouring under a delusion. Yet he has to acknowledge that there was something extraordinary and mysterious in the power that Paganini possessed in the execution of unheard of difficulties in an infallible manner. ”

“ Did Paganini influence the art of violin playing, and in what direction? Let a very recent writer contribute an answer. "We would not miss this greatest of fiddlers in the annals of violin playing—no, not for a Spohr or any other great modern violin master; but his influence can hardly be called beneficial. It forced violin playing into a Procrustean bed unsuited to its true nature and mission. Paganini had temporarily transformed the angel into a devil, and the angel did not escape unscathed—Lucifer burned his wings. Violin-playing will never be quite what it was before Paganini. ”