Stephen Storace had a remarkably good head for figures. When a boy, his
passion for calculation was beyond all belief. Michael Kelly says, he has
been known to multiply four figures by four figures, by memory, in three
minutes. When young, Kelly tells us, Storace was so astonished that fifty
guineas should be paid for _singing a song_, that he counted the notes in
it, and calculated the amount of each at 4s. 10d.
This passion for calculating the value of notes (musical ones) has seized a
Parisian dilettante, who, according to the _Furet de Londres_, has been
fixing the price of every note and rest in certain pieces played by
Paganini recently, at a concert given at the Opera at Paris, which produced
him 16,500 francs. The following is the result:--He performed, during the
evening, three pieces, each occupying five pages of music, of about 91 bars
to the page. The fifteen pages thus contained 1,365 bars, by which the
16,500 francs are to be divided. The quotient will be 12 francs for each
bar, or the proportions will be as follows:--For a semibreve, 12f.; a minim
6f.; a crotchet, 3f.; a quaver, 1f. 50c.; a semiquaver, 15 sous; a
demisemiquaver, 7-1/2 sous. And, on the other hand, for a minim rest, 6f.;
a crotchet rest, 3f.; &c. There would still remain out of the 16,500
francs, 420, which is exactly the price of such a violin as the
Conservatory awards as a prize to its most distinguished pupils.
All this may be play to Paganini, but destruction to less fortunate
musicians, for he swallows up all that would otherwise be distributed among
many. An English violinist must work many long laborious days and nights
before he can _scrape_ together six hundred and eighty-seven pounds
sterling--the sum, it seems, which the lucky Italian gets by a single
concert!--_Ibid._
* * * * *