Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians — Paganini, Part 2

* * * * * In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-four, Niccolo Paganini was born at Genoa.

His father was a street-porter who eked out the scanty exchequer by playing a violin at occasional dances or concerts.

That his playing was indifferent is evident from the fact that he was very poor--his services were not in demand.

The poverty of the family and the failure of the father fired the ambition of the boy to do something worthy.

When he was ten years old he could play as well as his father, and a year or so thereafter could play better.

The lad was tall, slender, delicate and dreamy-eyed.

But he had will plus, and his desire was to sound the possibilities of the violin.

And this reminds me that Hugh Pentecost says there is no such thing as will--it is all desire: when we desire a thing strongly enough, we have the will to secure it--but no matter!

Young Niccolo Paganini practised on his father's violin for six hours a day; and now when the customers who used to hire his father to play came, they would say, "We just as lief have Niccolo."

Soon after this they said, "We prefer to have Niccolo."

And a little later they said, "We must have Niccolo."

Some one has written a book to show that playing second fiddle is just as worthy an office as playing first.

This doubtless is true, but there are so many more men who can play second, that it behooves every player to relieve the stress by playing first if he can.

Niccolo played first and then was called upon to play solos.

He was making twice as much money as his father ever had, but the father took all the boy's earnings, as was his legal right.

The father's pride in the success of the son, the young man always said, was because he was proving a good financial investment.

It does not always pay to raise children--this time it did.

It was finally decided to take the boy to the celebrated musician, Rolla, for advice as to what was best to do about his education.

Rolla was sick abed at the time the boy called and could not see him; but while waiting in the entry the lad took up a violin and began to play.

The invalid raised himself on one elbow and pantingly inquired who the great master was that had thus favored him with a visit.

"It's the lad who wants you to give him lessons," answered the attendant.

"Impossible!

no lad could play like that--I can teach that player nothing!"

Next the musician Paer was visited, and he passed the boy along to Giretta, who gave him three lessons a week in harmony and counterpoint.

The boy had abrupt mannerisms and tricks of his own in bringing out expressions, and these were such a puzzle to the teacher that he soon refused to go on.

Niccolo possessed a sort of haughty self-confidence that aggravated the master; he believed in himself and was fond of showing that he could play in a way no one else could.

Adolescence had turned his desire to play into a fury of passion for his art: he practised on single passages for ten or twelve hours a day, and would often sink in a swoon from sheer exhaustion.

This deep, torpor-like sleep saved him from complete collapse, just as it saved Mendelssohn, and he would arise to go on with his work.

Paganini's wisdom was shown at this early age in that he limited his work to a few compositions, and these he made the most of, just as they say Bossuet secured his reputation as the greatest preacher of his time by a single sermon that he had polished to the point of perfection.

When fifteen years old Paganini contrived to escape from his father and went to a musical festival at Lucca.

He managed to get a hearing, was engaged at once as a soloist, and soon after gave a concert on his own account.

In a month he had accumulated a thousand pounds in cash.

Very naturally, such a success turned the head of this lad who never before had had the handling of money.

He began to gamble, and became the dupe of rogues--male and female--who plunged him into an abyss of wrong.

He even gambled away the "Stradivarius" that had been presented to him, and when his money, watch and jewels were gone, his new-found friends of course decamped, and this gave the young man time to ponder on the vanities of life.

When he played again it was on a borrowed "Guarnerius," and after the rich owner, himself a violinist, had heard him play, he said, "No fingers but yours shall ever play that violin again!"

Paganini accepted the gift, and this was the violin he played for full forty years, and which, on his death, was willed to his native city of Genoa.

There it can be seen in its sealed-up glass case.

Up to his thirtieth year Paganini continued his severe work of subduing the violin.

By that time he had sounded its possibilities, and thereafter no one heard him play except in concert.

It is told that one man, anxious to know the secrets of Paganini's power, followed him from city to city, watching him at his concerts, dogging him through the streets, spying upon him at hotels.

At one inn this man of curiosity had the felicity to secure a room next to the one occupied by Paganini; and one morning as he watched through the keyhole, he was rewarded by seeing the master open the case where reposed the precious "Guarnerius."

Paganini lifted the instrument, held it under his chin, took up the bow and made a few passes in the air--not a sound was heard.

Then he kissed the back of the violin, muttered a prayer, and locked the instrument in its case.

At concert rehearsals he always played a mute instrument; and Harris, his manager, records that for the many years he was with Paganini he never heard him play a single note except before an audience.

I have a full-length daguerreotype of Paganini taken when he was forty years of age.

No one ever asked this man, "Kind sir, are you anybody in particular?"

Paganini was tall and wofully slim.

His hands and feet were large and bony, his arms long, his form bowed and lacking in all that we call symmetry.

But the long face with its look of abject melancholy, the curved nose, the thin lips and the sharp, protruding chin, made a combination that Fate has never duplicated.

You could easily believe that this man knew all the secrets of the Nether World, and had tasted the joys of Paradise as well.

Women pitied and loved him, men feared him, and none understood him.

He lived in the midst of throngs and multitudes--the loneliest man known in the history of art.

Paganini, when he had reached his height, played only his own music; he played divinely and incomprehensibly; next to his passion for music was his greed for gold.

These three facts sum up all we really know about the master--the rest fades off into mist--mystery, fable and legend.

We do know, however, that he composed several pieces of music so difficult that he could not play them himself, and of course no one else can.

Imagination can always outrun performance.

Paganini had no close friends; no confidants: he never mingled in society, and he never married.

At times he would disappear from the public gaze for several months, and not even his business associates knew where he was.

On one such occasion a traveler discovered him in a monastic retreat in the Swiss Mountains, wearing a horsehair robe and a rope girdle; others saw him disguised as a mendicant; and still another tells of finding him working as a day-laborer with obscure and ignorant peasants.

Then there are tales told of how he was taken captive by a titled lady of great wealth and beauty, who carried him away to her bower, where he eschewed the violin and tinkled only the guitar the livelong day.

Everywhere the report was current that Paganini had killed a man, and been sentenced to prison for life.

The story ran that in prison he found an old violin, three strings of which were broken, and so he played on one string, producing such ravishing music that the keepers feared he was "possessed."

They decided they must get rid of him, and so contrived to have him thrown overboard from a galley; but he swam ashore, and although he was everywhere known, no man dared place a hand on him.

A late writer in a London magazine, however, has given evidence of being a psychologist and man of sense; he says, and produces proof, that after the concert season was over Paganini withdrew to a monastery in the mountains of Switzerland, and there the monks who loved him well, guarded his retreat.

There he found the rest for which his soul craved, and there he practised on his violin hour after hour, day after day.

All this is better understood when we remember that after each retreat, Paganini appeared with brand-new effects which electrified his hearers--"effects taught him by the devil."

Constant appearing before vast multitudes and ceaseless travel create a depletion that demands rest.

Paganini held the balance true by fleeing to the mountains; there he worked and prayed.

That Paganini had a soft heart, in spite of the silent, cold and melancholy mood that usually possessed him, is shown in his treatment of his father and mother, who lived to know the greatness of their son.

He wrote his mother kind and affectionate letters, some of which we have, and provided lavishly for every want of both his parents.

At times he gave concerts for charity, and on these occasions vast sums were realized.

Paganini died in Eighteen Hundred Forty, aged fifty-six years.

His will provided for legacies to various men and women who had befriended him, and he also gave to others with whom he had quarreled, thus proving he was not all clay.

The bulk of his fortune, equal to half a million dollars, was bequeathed to his son, Baron Achille Paganini.

And as if mystery should still enshroud his memory and this, true to his nature, should be carried out in his last will, there are those who maintain that Achille Paganini was not his son at all--only a waif he had adopted.

Yet Achille always stoutly maintained the distinction--but what boots it, since he could not play his father's violin?

Yet this we know--Paganini, the man of mystery and moods, once lived and produced music that, Orpheus-like, transfixed the world.

We are better for his having been and this world is a nobler place in that he lived and played, for listen closely and you can hear, even now, the sweet, sad echoes of those vibrant strings, touched by the hand of him who loved them well.

And when we remember the prodigious amount of practise that Paganini schooled himself to in youth; and join this to the recently discovered record of his long monastic retreats, when for months he worked and played and prayed, we can guess the secret of his power.

If you wish me to present you a recipe for doing a deathless performance, I would give you this: Work, travel, solitude, prayer, and yet again--work.

[Illustration: FREDERIC CHOPIN]