I.

In the latter part of the last century an Italian woman of Genoa had a

dream which she thus related to her little son: "My son, you will be a

great musician. An angel radiant with beauty appeared to me during the

night and promised to accomplish any wish that I might make. I asked

that you should become the greatest of all violinists, and the angel

granted that my desire should be fulfilled." The child who was thus

addressed became that incomparable artist, Paganini, whose name now,

a glorious tradition, is used as a standard by which to estimate the

excellence of those who have succeeded him.

No artist ever lived who so piqued public curiosity, and invested

himself with a species of weird romance, which compassed him as with a

cloud. The personality of the individual so unique and extraordinary,

the genius of the artist so transcendant in its way, the mystery which

surrounded all the movements of the man, conspired to make him an

object of such interest that the announcement of a concert by him in

any European city made as much stir as some great public event. Crowds

followed his strange figure in the streets wherever he went, and, had

the time been the mediaeval ages, he himself a celebrated magician or

sorcerer, credited with power over the spirits of earth and air, his

appearance could not have aroused a thrill of attention more absorbing.

Over men of genius, as well as the commonplace herd, he cast the same

spell, stamping himself as a personage who could be compared with no

other.

The German poet Heine thus describes his first acquaintance with this

paragon of violinists:

"It was in the theatre at Hamburg that I first heard Paganini's violin.

Although it was fast-day, all the commercial magnates of the town were

present in the front boxes, the goddesses Juno of Wandrahm, and the

goddesses Aphrodite of Dreckwall. A religious hush pervaded the whole

assembly; every eye was directed toward the stage, every ear was

strained for hearing. At last a dark figure, which seemed to ascend from

the under world, appeared on the stage. It was Paganini in full evening

dress, black coat and waistcoat cut after a most villainous pattern,

such as is perhaps in accordance with the infernal etiquette of the

court of Proserpine, and black trousers fitting awkwardly to his thin

legs. His long arms appeared still longer as he advanced, holding in one

hand his violin, and in the other the bow, hanging down so as almost

to touch the ground--all the while making a series of extraordinary

reverences. In the angular contortions of his body there was something

so painfully wooden, and also something so like the movements of a droll

animal, that a strange disposition to laughter overcame the audience;

but his face, which the glaring footlights caused to assume an even

more corpse-like aspect than was natural to it, had in it something so

appealing, something so imbecile and meek, that a strange feeling

of compassion removed all tendency to laughter. Had he learned these

reverences from an automaton or a performing dog? Is this beseeching

look the look of one who is sick unto death, or does there lurk behind

it the mocking cunning of a miser? Is that a mortal who in the agony

of death stands before the public in the art arena, and, like a dying

gladiator, bids for their applause in his last convulsions? or is it

some phantom arisen from the grave, a vampire with a violin, who comes

to suck, if not the blood from our hearts, at least the money from our

pockets? Questions such as these kept chasing each other through the

brain while Paganini continued his apparently interminable series of

complimentary bows; but all such questionings instantly take flight the

moment the great master puts his violin to his chin and began to play.

"Then were heard melodies such as the nightingale pours forth in the

gloaming when the perfume of the rose intoxicates her heart with sweet

forebodings of spring! What melting, sensuously languishing notes of

bliss! Tones that kissed, then poutingly fled from another, and at last

embraced and became one, and died away in the ecstasy of union! Again,

there were heard sounds like the song of the fallen angels, who,

banished from the realms of bliss, sink with shame-red countenance to

the lower world. These were sounds out of whose bottomless depth gleamed

no ray of hope or comfort; when the blessed in heaven hear them, the

praises of God die away upon their pallid lips, and, sighing, they veil

their holy faces." Leigh Hunt, in one of his essays, thus describes the

playing of this greatest of all virtuosos: "Paganini, the first time

I saw and heard him, and the first moment he struck a note, seemed

literally to strike it, to _give_ it a blow. The house was so crammed

that, being among the squeezers in the standing room at the side of the

pit, I happened to catch the first glance of his face through the arms

akimbo of a man who was perched up before me, which made a kind of

frame for it; and there on the stage through that frame, as through a

perspective glass, were the face, the bust, and the raised hand of

the wonderful musician, with the instrument at his chin, just going to

begin, and looking exactly as I describe him in the following lines:

"His hand, Loading the air with dumb expectancy,

Suspended, ere it fell, a nation's breath.

He _smote_; and clinging to the serious chords

With Godlike ravishment drew forth a breath,

So deep, so strong, so fervid, thick with love--

Blissful, yet laden as with twenty prayers--

That Juno yearned with no diviner soul

To the first burthen of the lips of Jove.

The exceeding mystery of the loveliness

Sadden'd delight; and, with his mournful look,

Dreary and gaunt, hanging his pallid face

Twixt his dark flowing locks, he almost seemed

Too feeble, or to melancholy eyes

One that has parted from his soul for pride,

And in the sable secret lived forlorn.

"To show the depth and identicalness of the impression which he made

on everybody, foreign or native, an Italian who stood near me said to

himself, with a long sigh, 'O Dio!' and this had not been said long,

when another person in the same tone uttered 'Oh Christ!' Musicians

pressed forward from behind the scenes to get as close to him as

possible, and they could not sleep at night for thinking of him."

The impression made by Paganini was something more than that of a great,

even the greatest, violinist. It was as if some demoniac power lay

behind the human, prisoned and dumb except through the agencies of

music, but able to fill expression with faint, far-away cries of

passion, anguish, love, and aspiration--echoes from the supernatural

and invisible. His hearers forgot the admiration due to the wonderful

virtuoso, and seemed to listen to voices from another world. The strange

rumors that were current about him, Paganini seems to have been not

disinclined to encourage, for, mingled with his extraordinary genius,

there was an element of charlatanism. It was commonly reported that

his wonderful execution on the G-string was due to a long imprisonment,

inflicted on him for the assassination of a rival in love, during which

he had a violin with one string only. Paganini himself writes that, "At

Vienna one of the audience affirmed publicly that my performance was

not surprising, for he had distinctly seen, while I was playing my

variations, the devil at my elbow, directing my arm and guiding my bow.

My resemblance to the devil was a proof of my origin." Even sensible

people believed that Paganini had some uncanny and unlawful secret which

enabled him to do what was impossible for other players. At Prague he

actually printed a letter from his mother to prove that he was not the

son of the devil. It was not only the perfectly novel and astonishing

character of his playing, but to a large extent his ghostlike

appearance, which caused such absurd rumors. The tall, skeleton-like

figure, the pale, narrow, wax-colored face, the long, dark, disheveled

hair, the mysterious expression of the heavy eye, made a weirdly strange

_ensemble_. Heine tells us in "The Florentine Nights" that only one

artist had succeeded in delineating the real physiognomy of Paganini: "A

deaf and crazy painter, called Lyser, has in a sort of spiritual frenzy

so admirably portrayed by a few touches of his pencil the head of

Paganini that one is dismayed and moved to laughter at the faithfulness

of the sketch! 'The devil guided my hand,' said the deaf painter to me,

with mysterious gesticulations and a satirical yet good-natured wag of

the head, such as he was wont to indulge in when in the midst of his

genial tomfoolery."