The Violin Part 7

At Pavia, Paganini likewise gave two concerts, and was received with no less enthusiasm than at Milan. The bill which set forth the pieces to be performed was headed with the following autocratical annunciation:-

PAGANINI.

_Fara sentire il suo Violino!_

("_Paganini will cause his violin to be heard!_")

In the bills of a concert he gave at Naples, in 1825, his name was announced with the style and t.i.tle of _Filarmonico_; and various sage debates and conjectures were the consequence, among the idlers of the place.

But it is needless to go thrice over the map of Italy, and detail all the triumphs of our acoustic hero among his own countrymen. Let us shift the scene to Germany, and the time to the year 1828, when he was exhibiting before the people at Vienna, and exciting the admiration and astonishment of the most distinguished professors and connoisseurs of that critical city. His inducement to quit his native Italy had been furnished, it appears, by Prince Metternich, who had witnessed his performances in the preceding year at Rome, when the Pope (_soit dit en pa.s.sant_) had conferred on our Artist the order of the Golden Spur, an honor which had formerly been awarded to Gluck and Mozart.

All notion of rivalling the foreigner was at once banished from among the Germans; and it is said that Mayseder, their violinist of then highest fame, with an ingeniousness that did him honor, intimated, in a letter to a London friend, that he felt he might now lock up his violin as soon as he liked!

The successes of Paganini gave new currency to the tales of crime and _diablerie_ which inventive fame, "ficti pravique tenax," had so often circulated in connection with him. A captain of banditti-a Carbonaro-a dungeon-detenu-a deadly duellist-a four-mistress man-a friend of Beelzebub-a "bowl-and-dagger" administrator-_these_ are some of the characters that were freely a.s.signed to him. Over the mouth of his aged mother, _in articulo mortis_, he was a.s.serted to have placed a leathern tube, and to have caught her last breath at the S holes of his fiddle!-He was made out, in short, the very _beau ideal_ of a fellow that might do the "First Murderer" in a Melodrama. These romantic rumours, however they might a.s.sist his success with the public, could not be pa.s.sed by in silence. The injured, yet profited, object of them, made a public manifesto of his innocence in the leading Journals of Vienna, and appealed to the magistrates of the various States under whose protection he had lived, to say if he had ever offended against the laws. This was all very well; but, what was still better, enough of the pleasing delusion remained, in spite of all disavowals, to render Paganini the continued pet of the public. Indeed, a general intoxication with regard to him prevailed for some time with the Viennese public.

Verses were daily poured forth in honour of him-medals were struck-and Fashion made profuse appropriation of his name to her various objects.

Hats, gloves, gowns, stockings, were _a la Paganini_:-purveyors of refreshment fortified their dishes with his name; and if a brilliant stroke were achieved at billiards, it was likened unto a stroke of his bow! snuff-boxes and cigar-cases displayed his portrait-and his bust was carved upon the walking-stick of the man of mode.

Amid the glare of the enchanter's triumphs, it is pleasing to discover, in a record of a concert given for the benefit of the poor, that the cause of benevolence was not forgotten;-nor will it be uninteresting to bestow a moment's attention on the following little anecdote, which certainly reveals something not unlike a heart:-

One day, while walking in the streets of Vienna, Paganini saw a poor boy playing upon his violin, and, on entering into conversation with him, found that he maintained his mother, and an accompaniment of little brothers and sisters, by what he picked up as an itinerant musician.

Paganini immediately gave him all the money he had about him; and then, taking the boy's violin, commenced playing, and, when he had got together a crowd, pulled off his hat, and made a collection, which he gave to the poor boy, amid the acclamations of the mult.i.tude.

The following fact will give some idea of the hearty love of music, the real _dilettantism_, prevailing among the peasants of Germany. In the autumn of 1829, Paganini was summoned to perform before the Queen Dowager of Bavaria, at the Castle of Tegernsee, a magnificent residence of the Kings of Bavaria, situated on the banks of a lake. At the moment when the concert was about to begin, a great bustle was heard outside.

The Queen, having enquired the cause, was told that about sixty of the neighbouring peasants, informed of the arrival of the famous Italian violinist, were come, in the hope of hearing some of his notes, and requested that the windows should be opened, in order that _they_ also might enjoy his talent. The Queen went beyond their wishes, and, with truly royal good nature, gave orders that they should all be admitted into the saloon, where she had the pleasure of marking their discernment, evidenced by the judicious manner in which they applauded the most striking parts of the performance.

Prague, Dresden, Berlin and Warsaw were successively visited by the triumphant ear-charmer. Great was the excitement he produced at Berlin-but somewhat contradictory the opinions about him. "Most a.s.suredly," said one journalist, "Paganini is a prodigy; and all that the most celebrated violinists have executed heretofore is mere child's play, compared with the inconceivable difficulties which he has created, in order to be the first to surmount them." The same writer declared that Paganini executed an air, quite _sostenuto_, on one string, while, at the same time, a _tremolo_ accompaniment upon the next was perfectly perceptible, as well as a very lively _pizzicato_ upon the fourth string: that he executed runs of octaves on the single string of G with as much prompt.i.tude, precision and firmness, as other violinists on _two_. Nay, his celebrator went so far as to say that, in order to produce this latter effect, he employed one finger only; and further declared him able to render the four strings of the instrument available to such a degree, as to form concatenations of chords that could be heard together, and that produced as full and complete harmony as that of six fingers of a pianoforte-player on the key-board; adding, moreover, that, in moments of the most _daring vivacity_, every one of his notes had all the roundness and sonorousness of a bell! Another journalist averred that he was incapable of producing a _grand_ tone, but that he executed the _adagio_, and impa.s.sioned _cantilenas_, with profound sensibility and great perfection of style. It was the remark of another critic, that "whoever had not heard Paganini, might consider that there existed a _lacuna_ in the chain of his musical sensations."

Lipinski, a Pole, had ventured to seek, at Placentia, in 1818, a contest with Paganini, such as Lafont had previously sought. Whilst at Berlin, he met with a _third_ challenge to a trial of skill. Sigismund Von Praun, an ambitious youth, a.s.serting claims to universal genius-a counterfeit Crichton-attempted to dispute the palm with him, and paraded a public defiance in the papers: but, this time, Apollo would not compete with Marsyas Praun, who had made some impression, a few years before, at Malta and other places, appears to have had talents far from contemptible, although immature, but his presumption exposed him to merited ridicule:-

Low sinks, where he would madly rise, This most pretentious imp!

See! while with Paganin' he vies, _Praun_ looketh _less_ than _shrimp_!

After returning from Warsaw, Paganini visited Frankfort. It is related that, while he was in this latter city, an actor from the Breslau Theatre, taking advantage of his marked peculiarities of look, manner and gesture, made successful public mimicry of him; and that he had the good sense, himself, to attend one of these performances, and join in the general laugh with the best grace imaginable. He remained for a year at Frankfort; and it seemed as if he had renounced the previously well-circulated notion of his visiting Paris and London, when he suddenly made his appearance at Strasbourg, and soon afterwards arrived upon the banks of the Seine, to delight and astonish those idolators of novelty, the inhabitants of the French metropolis.

Of the impression produced by Paganini among the Parisians, as well as of his personal and musical characteristics, I find so graphic and picturesque an account in a French journal (_Le Globe_), that I am induced to translate, for my purpose, the chief portion of it, under the conviction that the length of pa.s.sages leading to what is so far the _reverse_ of "nothing" will be easily pardoned. Whether the writer's moral estimate of the spectacle-hunting branch of the Parisian public be not a little overcharged with severity, is a point which I have no pretensions to determine. That there is some eloquence in the thoughts of the French writer, whoever he might be (and, alas! for common sense, he is, or was, a St. Simonian), will be, I think, admitted, even by those who would not so far admire his composition as to "mark it for a rapture n.o.bly writ." Here follows his sketch, however; and Paganini himself (in pictorial effigy) shall attend, and give it a sort of personal confirmation.

"_The Artist_ is about to make his appearance-silence begins to be restored-the overture is over, without having been listened to-somewhat less of coldness and unconcern is expressed on the faces around-and the hands of the white-gloved are all armed with the double opera-gla.s.s.

_Enter Paganini and his Violin!_

"A universal clapping of hands attends his first advent on the scene. He advances, with sundry awkward and heavy steps; he makes obeisance, and the applause is renewed: he moves forward, with increased oddity of gait, and the noise of hands is prolonged on all sides.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"He makes several further salutations-he endeavours to animate his countenance with a smile of acknowledgment, which is instantly succeeded by a look of icy coldness.... He makes a halt, and, with still greater eccentricity of manner, it may be, than in his reverences and his walk, he seizes his fiddle, hugs it betwixt chin and chest, and fixes on it a look at once of pride, penetration and gentleness. Thus resteth he several seconds, leaving the public at leisure to examine and make him out in his strange originality-to note with curiosity his gaunt body, his lengthy arms and fingers, his dark hair descending to his shoulders, the sickness and suffering denoted in his whole frame, his sunken mouth, his long eagle nose, his wan and hollow cheeks, his large, fine, manifest forehead, such as Gall would have delighted to contemplate,-and, beneath the shelter and shadow of that front, eyes that dilate, sparkle and flash at every instant!

"Such doth Paganini show himself, formed, at every point of his person, to catch the greatest possible quantum of applause from a public whom it is his office to _amuse_. Behold him, a compound of chill irony and electric enthusiasm,-of haughtiness, with seeming humility,-of sickly languor, and fitful, nervous, fatal exultings,-of wild oddity, chastened by some hidden and unconscious grace-of frank abandonment, of charming attractiveness, of a superiority of talent that might fix the most indifferent,-but, above all this, a very _man-fiddle_-a being of extraordinary nature, created as if expressly for the gratification of a public delighting, before all things, in the extraordinary!

"'Sufficient for the eyes!' seems he now to say within himself, as he notes in their operation the incoherent reveries and speculations of his beholders. Promptly his looks descend from his violin to the orchestra-he gives the signal-he raises his right hand briskly into the air, and dashes his bow down upon the instrument!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"You antic.i.p.ate the rupture of all its strings! On the contrary, the lightest, the finest, the most delicate of sounds comes forth to win your surprise. He continues for some moments to sport with your pre-conceptions, to look askance at you, to irritate you; and every whim that occurs to him, is employed to draw you out from your supposed indifference. He teases you, he pleases you: he springs, he runs, he wanders from tone to tone, from octave to octave; achieves, with incredible lightness and precision, the widest intervals; ascends and descends the chromatic and diatonic scales; touches harmonic accompaniments in his way; extracts unknown sounds; searches, with easy success, for difficulties and tricks of skill; exhausts, within the s.p.a.ce of a few bars, the whole range of chords and sounds possible upon the instrument-discourses, sings, bewails, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es, describes! 'Tis suddenly a murmur of waves, a whistling in the air, a warbling of birds; a something undefinably musical, in the most acute as well as the lowest tones-an unrestricted impulse of caprices, and contrasts, without guide or measure! 'Tis, in a word, a perfect union of incoherence and nameless clatter, beyond which, the world-worn and vitiated beings around, the worshippers of singularity, can see nothing, imagine nothing, desire nothing!

"The great Artist has, nevertheless, resources other than those of phantasy, by which to captivate the public-and presently there succeeds to this musical phantasmagoria a broad, stately, harmonious (albeit somewhat too bare) simplicity. The fatigue of the public and of the Artist now gives place to a species of joy, that visibly blooms on every countenance. Chords that are pure sweet, melodious, brilliant, stream from beneath the bow; and then come accents of nature that seem to flow from the heart itself, and affect you with a perspiring thrill of delight; and then (prodigy of harmony!) the vague moans and unfinished plainings of a melancholy abandonment! You sympathize, in gentle pain, with the touching and melodious artist; you dispose yourself to follow, at his direction, the course of (as it should seem) some mournful, fleeting, intangible vision-when instantly a fit of violent distress, a sort of shuddering fury, seizes him, and we are startled, chilled, tormented, by cries which pierce the inmost recesses of our frame, and make us tremble for the hapless being whom we behold and hear! We dare not breathe-we are half suffocated;-fearfully the head burns, and the heart aches.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"And yet-and yet, despite this too positive pain which the unfortunate artist has forced both upon us and himself, he bethinketh him mindfully that 'tis his vocation to serve for _sport_ to the public that does him the _honor_ to come and listen to him. He s.n.a.t.c.hes away, therefore, your ladies with delicate nerves, and your men of effeminacy, from the suffocation and syncope that threaten them. Truce to the cries of agony!

truce to despair! A fantastic chaunt, a wild laugh, springs up-and then succeeds a sort of buffoon dance, to complete the relief of these people, and restore them to _life_. _Encore_ he sings, he laughs, he dances: each face is completely rea.s.sured, and its owner, to prove to the rest, and to his own satisfaction, that he has not so far forgotten himself as to quit the precincts of _bon ton_ and eternal frigidity, smiles listlessly upon his neighbour, strokes his cravat adjustingly, and throws a careless glance from side to side! Amidst this returning indifference, let there come a new pa.s.sage of arduous brilliancy, some more or less astonishing sleight of hand-and a reiterated clapping of palms convinces the unhappy purveyor of diversion that he has but too well served the public according to their taste!

"And now, should the rondo come, in its light and laughing gaiety-should the hymn of love and delight succeed, 'twill be the same case as with the cry of grief or despair. Each burst of simple gaiety must be followed by an air in the coquettish style, an impulse from the head, to give it stimulus. Amid the pa.s.sionate harmonies of love, you shall hear interspersed the accents of coldness, of disdain, of raillery. After a voluptuous transport, you shall have mincings and caprices:-

[Ill.u.s.tration]

for there is no gaiety, whether for _him_, or for the listening public, of a natural, fresh and youthful character; there is no frank and confiding attachment; there is no serene and grateful pleasure; there is no sadness that pours itself out for the sake of consolation; no joys but such as are like scentless flowers, that one picks to pieces in sport; no pa.s.sion save what is akin to delirium, debauchery, or deadly poison! What the public must have, and the artist, are your _pizzicati_, your contrasts, your satanic schooleries, your touches of the extravagant;-'tis a dose of madness or despair,-'tis an agony-the sensation of a man suspended over a bottomless abyss;-'tis a violin, which is at once a flute, a ba.s.s, a guitar, and a whole orchestra, intermixed, confounded, and getting into harmony only by fits;-'tis a professional visage, revealing a wounded and withered heart; 'tis a human skeleton-death, in grotesque attire; 'tis the "talented exhibition" of a rebellious angel, who gnashes his teeth, and howls, and jeers! And so the public, seeing their artist hold forth to them, under convenient forms, all possible monstrosities, seem to applaud themselves inwardly, and to exclaim instinctively, 'Here is our interpreter, our plaything, and our own handywork!'

"Of such a public, and such an artist, how saddening the sight!... The public, made up of idlers-of beings isolated, selfish, 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; and inwardly exclaims, with a smile of pity, 'The blockheads-the barbarians! Who is there among them that can comprehend me-that can _feel_ my intentions?'-and then the home-returning public, selfish to the very soul, indemnify themselves for their fingers'-end applause, by sottish contempt, by remarks that are empty, or worse-that are scornful, bitter, shocking, disgusting even-such as those which may have been buzzed into one's ears in Italy or in Paris, but varied in a hundred ways, and aggravated at will, just as _he_ varies and enlarges, twists and turns, beneath his magic bow, a subject of apparently the most simple and insignificant kind. And now the voices most distinguishable among the ebbing crowd murmur out the words, 'Gambler! Libertine!' or worse.... And the privileged public resort again to the theatre, to admire the talent of him whom they comprehend not; and the artist returns in like manner, to _amuse_ those who provoke his pity, and whom he beholds so far below him! Thus, we have contempt on one side, compa.s.sion on the other-applause from hands chilled with the touch of gold, on the one part,-on the other, sounds that borrow their animation from no social sympathy! Such are the relations between the public and the professor-such the bonds that connect them!"

So much for the pungently descriptive, as regards this singular being.

It is less difficult, however, to exhibit effects and appearances, than to a.n.a.lyze the causes or means which produce them-and it is in this latter endeavour, accordingly, that there has been least success attained by those who have made Paganini their theme, in Paris, as elsewhere. That which was already obscure in relation to him, has been forced into denser obscurity by the attempted demonstrations of certain pompous literary showmen, who have succeeded only in ill.u.s.trating the proverb of "ignotum per ignotius." Mystification and generalization, the resources of ambitious ignorance, have been copiously employed in these endeavours. Of a less unsatisfactory character, however, are the pretensions of M. Guhr, the able violinist, of Frankfort, who has attempted an a.n.a.lysis of the means employed, and the effects produced, by Paganini. Like most professors of a secret, the arch Italian was always studious of maintaining the mystery so provocative of curiosity and admiration. He a.s.sumed the air cabalistic, and, with a severe front and sullen eye, would stimulate and foster the impression of his being "profited in strange concealments." M. Guhr, though he had the seeming advantage of personal and friendly access to him, found he could make nothing of him by the interrogatory system, and therefore adopted the alternative of becoming a silent student of his peculiarities, till he made certain discoveries of more or less importance, which he shaped into five heads, to show that Paganini's chief points of difference from other violinists were-

1. In his manner of tuning the instrument.

2. In a management of the _bow_, entirely peculiar to himself.

3. In his mode of using the left hand in the _pa.s.sages chantans_, or pa.s.sages of a singing character.

4. In the frequent employment of harmonic sounds.

5. In the art of putting the violin into double employ, so as to make it combine with its own usual office the simultaneous effects of a mandolin, harp, or other instrument of the kind, whereby you seem to hear two different performers.

As to the first of these points, "his manner of tuning the instrument,"

observed M. Guhr, "is wholly original, and to me appears incomprehensible in many respects. Sometimes he tunes the first three strings half a tone _higher_, while that of G is a third _lower_, than ordinary. Sometimes he changes this with a single turn of the peg, and he invariably meets the due intonation, which remains sure and firm.

Whoever is aware how much the higher strings stretch with the least relaxation of the G, and how much all the strings generally lose, by a sudden change in tuning, the faculty of remaining with certainty at one point, will join me in the lively desire that Paganini may decide on communicating his secret in this respect. It was surprising to find, especially on one occasion, when he played for nearly an hour and a half in the most opposite keys-without its being perceptible that he had changed his tuning-that none of the strings became disturbed. In an evening concert, between the _Andante_ and the _Polacca_, his G string snapped, and that which he subst.i.tuted, though afterwards tuned to B, remained firm as a rock. His manner of tuning his instrument contains the secret of many of his effects, of his succession of chords, and striking vibrations, which ordinarily appear impossible to the violinist."

According to this statement, "curious, if true," Paganini improved his effects by playing on an instrument _out of tune_, and, with something like a miracle of creative power, produced harmony out of discord.

Paganini must of a surety have "pegged hard," and with a s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g that was inscrutable, to have attained such a management of his pegs! Was M.

Guhr a misty demonstrator, or was Paganini inexplicable? As to the G, that can bear to be pulled about in this fashion without resenting it, we must suppose it to possess a pa.s.sive virtue, a habit of accommodation, quite beyond the custom of the stringy tribe.[38]

In expatiating on the _second_ point, M. Guhr seems content to describe effects, rather than to labour (in vain) for the indication of a cause-but his description is not infelicitous:-

"Paganini's management of the bow is chiefly remarkable by the _tripping_ movement which he imparts to it in certain pa.s.sages. His _staccato_ is no way similar to that ordinarily produced. He dashes his bow on the strings, and runs over a succession of scales with incredible rapidity, while the tones proceed from beneath his fingers, round as pearls. The _variety_ of his strokes with the bow is wonderful. I had never before heard marked with so much precision, and without the slightest disturbance of the measure, the shortest unaccented notes, in the most hurried movements. And again, what force he imparts in prolonged sounds! With what depth, in the adagio, he exhales, as it were, the sighs of a lacerated heart!"

However he might sometimes err in his doctrine, M. Guhr was at least right in his faith. The supremacy, which he a.s.signed to the great Genoese genius, was expressed in the language of a handsome enthusiasm:-

"Rode, Kreutzer, Baillot, Spohr-those giants among violinists-seemed to have exhausted all the resources of the instrument. They had extended its mechanism, introduced the greatest imaginable variety in the use of the bow, which was made subservient to all the shades of expression and execution: they had succeeded, by the magic of their sounds, which rivalled the human voice, in painting all pa.s.sions and all the movements of sentiment. In short, advancing rapidly in the path marked out by Corelli, Tartini, and Viotti, they had raised the violin to that rank which ensures to it the dominion of the human soul. In _their_ style, they are, and remain, great and unsurpa.s.sed. But, when we hear Paganini, and compare him with the other masters, it must be confessed that he has pa.s.sed all the barriers which custom had hitherto raised, and that he has opened a way peculiar to himself, and which essentially separates him from those great Artists; so much so, that whoever hears him for the first time, is astonished and transported at hearing what is so completely new and unexpected;-astonished by the fiend-like power with which he rules over his instrument;-transported that, with a mechanical facility which no difficulty resists, he at the same time opens to the fancy a boundless s.p.a.ce, gives to the violin the divinest breathings of the human voice, and deeply moves the inmost feelings of the soul."