In League With the Devil? Violin Virtuoso Niccolò Paganini
A. Ashley, “Paganini’s deal with the devil,” in J. Bingley, Bingley’s Select Vocalist, ca. 1842
Demon or genius? Violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini may have bewitched his nineteenth-century audiences, but to this day, fellow violinists continue to curse him for his fiendishly difficult compositions. Paganini was born in Genoa, Italy in 1782 and died in Nice, France, in 1840. Yes, he was a prodigy, but beware – being a prodigy never comes easy. Rumour has it that his father – his first violin teacher – locked him up in his room, starving him until he had practiced for up to fifteen hours a day. To comfort him, his mother Teresa would tell him that angels from heaven had revealed to her in a dream that he would become the best violinist in the world.
Paganini’s father was a day laborer who worked in the docks, supplementing his modest income by playing the mandolin. Paganini’s first instrument was the mandolin, but he switched to the violin when he was seven. The guitar would remain a favourite instrument though, and he would later compose sonatas for violin and guitar. His father was ambitious; recognizing his son’s extraordonary musical talent, he was soon fantasizing about exploiting his abilities financially. He was obsessed with making money, spending many hours trying to figure out lottery numbers. Paganini later wrote: “It would be hard to conceive of a stricter father. If he didn’t think I was industrious enough, he compelled me to redouble my efforts by making me go without food so I had to endure a great deal physically and my health began to give way.”
By age sixteen, Paganini had developed a serious drinking problem and continued to struggle with alcohol addiction for the rest of his life. He was also a gambler. At the height of his fame, he could demand exorbitant fees for each concert, but conceded: “I often lost in one evening the fruit of several concerts and not infrequently saw myself in difficulties from which only my art was again able to extricate me.” Once, he even gambled away his violin. Luckily, a French merchant lent the virtuoso a Guarneri for his upcoming concert, and then gave it to him as a present after hearing him play. The violin became known as “The Cannon of Guarneri” because of its strong, clear sound. It would remain his favourite instrument until his death.
As if all these issues weren’t enough, Paganini was also a notorious womanizer, with dire consequences. He had to quit performing during the last years of his life due to his deteriorating health –possibly suffering from a combination of the sexually transmitted disease syphillis, tuberculosis and rheumatism. Three years before his death, he invested in a casino, at the time not just a place for gambling but also for concerts, dancing and public meetings. Located in a fashionable part of Paris, the Casino Paganini turned out to be a disastrous failure.
In short, attempting to live like Paganini sounds like a very bad idea, but being able to play “like Paganini” continues to be an aspiration for any violinist struggling to master his pieces. His 24 Caprices for unaccompanied violin were dedicated to “the artists,” but pushed the boundaries of what was possible on the violin. They remain a showcase of the violin’s technical possiblities until today. At the time, few violinists could master the caprices, each of which is dedicated to a different aspect of violin technique. His revolutionary techniques included left-hand pizzicato, complex harmonics, complex double stops, rapid passages, non-standard tuning, playing entire pieces on a single string, extremely wide fingerings and special bowing effects where the bow bounces of the string multiple times.
Paganini was a charismatic performer who enjoyed to play with his audience’s sensibilities. A celebrity of the Romantic era, he fostered his image of a demonic genius who was rumoured to have sold his soul for his supernatural abilities. His unsual exterior played into this myth of “The Devil’s Violinist:” gaunt, with unusually long fingers, he might have suffered from a physical syndrome that made him extremely flexible, facilitating some of his technical feats that looked impossible to others.
Heinrich Heine, one of the great poets of the Romantic period, left a lasting portrait of the celebrity virtuoso in his novella Florentine Nights:
“At last there appeared on the stage a dark figure, which seemed to have risen from the under-world. It was Paganini, in his black dress suit, the black evening coat and black waistcoat, of an appaling cut, were probably such as as are prescribed by infernal etiquette at the court of Proserpine [the queen of the underworld in Roman mythology], while the loose trousers flapped vexatiously on the thin legs of the maestro. His long arms seemed to grow yet longer, as he held the violin in one hand, the bow down in the other, and almost bowed to the ground as he bestowed on the public his unheard-of reverence. In the angular bending of his body there was a fearful woodeness . . . ; but his face, which, in the strong orchestral illumination, seemed more corpse-like than ever, had in it something so bashfully modest that a shuddering pity surpressed our desire to laugh.” Was he a dying man, or “a dead man risen from the grave, a vampire with a violin, who, if he does not suck blood from our hearts, will, come what may, draw the money from our pockets? . . . but all such thoughts flitted afar when the wondrous master set his violin to his chin and began to play.”