Kitabı oku: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 490, May 21, 1831», sayfa 4

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PAGANINI, THE VIOLINIST

By aid of the Foreign Quarterly Review, we are enabled to submit to our readers the following very interesting Memoirs of this eccentric genius.

By the way, we are happy to find that the above work is enabled to maintain the high character with which it started. It argues well for the literary taste of this country, by cherishing acquaintance with continental literature, and thus strengthening our resources at home.

Nicolo Paganini was born at Genoa, in February, 1784. We are not informed as to his father's profession, if indeed he had any: all that we are told is, that his chief pursuit was to improve his circumstances, which were not the best in the world, by speculating in the lottery, so that when his little son, Nicolo, began at an unusually early age to give strong indications of musical talent, it seemed to him as if the wheel of fortune had at last been propitious, and he accordingly lost no time in setting to work to make the most of his prize. Having some skill on the violin himself, he resolved to teach him that instrument; and as soon as he could hold it, put one into his hands, and made him sit beside him from, morning to night, and practise it. The incessant drudgery which he compelled him to undergo, and the occasional starvation to which he subjected him, seriously impaired his health, and, as Paganini himself asserts, laid the foundation of that valetudinarian state which has ever since been his portion, and which his pale, sickly countenance, and his sunk and exhausted frame so strongly attest. As his enthusiasm was such as to require no artificial stimulus, this severe system could only have been a piece of cool and wanton barbarity. He already began to show much promise of excellence, when a circumstance occurred which not only served to confirm these early prognostications, but to rouse him to exert all his energies. This was no other than a dream of his mother, Theresa. An angel appeared to her; she besought him to make her Nicolo a great violin player; he gave her a token of consent;—and the effect which this dream had upon all concerned, we sober-minded people can have no idea of. Young Paganini redoubled his perseverance. In his eighth year, under the superintendence of his father, he had written a sonata, which, however, along with many other juvenile productions, he lately destroyed; and as he played about three times a week in the churches and at private musical parties, upon a fiddle nearly as large as himself, he soon began to make himself known among his townsmen. At this time he received much benefit from one Francesco Gnecco, who died in 1811, and whom he always speaks highly of.

In his ninth year, being applied to by a travelling singer to join him in a concert, he made his first public appearance in the great theatre at Genoa, and played the French air "La Carmagnole," with his own variations, with great applause.

His father now resolved to place him under the tuition of the well-known composer, Rolla, and for that purpose took him along with him to Parma. The particulars of their interview afford a striking proof of the proficiency which he had by this time acquired. As Rolla happened to be ill and lying in bed, the party were shown into the ante-chamber, when, observing upon the table one of the composer's newest concertos, the father beckoned to his son to take up his violin and play it, which he did at sight, in such a way that the sick man immediately started up, demanded who it was, and could scarcely be prevailed upon to believe that the sounds had proceeded from a little boy, and his intended pupil; but as soon as he had satisfied himself that that was really the case, he declined to receive him. "For God's sake," said he, "go to Paer, your time would be lost with me, I can do nothing for you."

To Paer accordingly they went, who received him kindly, and referred him to his own teacher, the old and experienced "Maestro di Capella" Giretti, from Naples, who gave him instructions for six months, three times a-week in counterpoint. During this period he wrote twenty-four Fugues for four hands, with pen, ink, and paper alone, and without any instrument, which his master did not allow him, and, assisted by his own inclination, made rapid progress. The great Paer also took much interest in him, giving him compositions to work out, which he himself revised: an interest for which Paganini ever afterwards showed himself deeply grateful.

The time was now come when Nicolo was destined, like other youthful prodigies, to be hawked about the country, to fill the pockets of his mercenary father, who managed to speculate upon him with considerable success in Milan, Bologna, Florence, Pisa, Leghorn, and most of the upper and central towns of Italy, where his concerts were always well attended. Young Paganini liked these excursions well enough, but being now about fifteen years of age, he began to be of opinion that they would be still more agreeable if he could only contrive to get rid of the old gentleman, whose spare diet and severe discipline had now become more irksome to him than ever. To accomplish this desirable object, an opportunity soon offered. It was the custom of Lucca, at the feast of St. Martin, to hold a great musical festival, to which strangers were invited from all quarters, and numerous travellers resorted of their own accord; and as the occasion drew near, Nicolo begged hard to be allowed to go there in company with his elder brother, and after much entreaty, succeeded in obtaining permission. He made his appearance as a solo player, and succeeded so well, that he resolved now to commence vagabondizing on his own account—a sort of life to which he soon became so partial, that, notwithstanding many handsome offers which he occasionally received to establish himself in several places, as a concerto player or director of the orchestra, he never could be persuaded to settle any where. At a later period, however, he lived for some time at the court of Lucca, but soon found it more pleasant and profitable to resume his itinerant habits. He visited all parts of Italy, but usually made Genoa his head-quarters, where, however, he preferred to play the part of the dilletante to that of the virtuoso, and performed in private circles without giving public concerts.

It was not long before he had amassed about 20,000 francs, part of which he proposed to devote to the maintenance of his parents. His father, however, was not to be put off with a few thousands, but insisted upon the whole.—Paganini then offered him the interest of the capital, but Signor Antonio very coolly threatened him with instant death unless he agreed to consign the whole of the principal in his behalf; and in order to avert serious consequences, and to procure peace, he gave up the greater part of it.

It was early in 1828 when Paganini arrived at Vienna, where he gave a great many concerts with a success equal, if not superior, to any which had hitherto attended his exertions. His performance excited the admiration and astonishment of all the most distinguished professors and connoisseurs of this critical city. With any of the former all idea of competition was hopeless; and their greatest violinist, Mayseder, as soon as he had heard him, with an ingenuousness which did him honour, as we ourselves have reason to know, wrote to a friend in London, that he might now lock up his violin whenever he liked.

In estimating the labour which it must have cost a performer like Paganini to have arrived at such transcendent excellence, people are often apt to err in their calculations as to the actual extent of time and practice which has been devoted to its acquisition. That the perfect knowledge of the mechanique of the instrument which his performance exhibits, and his almost incredible skill and dexterity in its management must necessarily have been the result of severe discipline, is beyond all question; but more, much more, in every case of this kind, is to be ascribed to the system upon which that discipline has proceeded, and to the genius and enthusiasm of the artist. The miraculous powers of Paganini in the opinion of his auditors were not to be accounted for in the ordinary way. To them, it was plain that they must have sprung from a life of a much more settled and secluded cast than that of an itinerant Italian musical professor. It was equally clear, from his wild, haggard, and mysterious looks, that he was no ordinary personage, and had seen no common vicissitudes. The vaults of a dungeon accordingly were the local habitation which public rumour, in its love of the marvellous, seemed unanimously to assign to him, as the only place where "the mighty magic" of his bow could possibly have been acquired. Then, as to the delinquency which led to his incarceration, there were various accounts: some imputed it to his having been a captain of banditti; others, only a carbonaro; some to his having killed a man in a duel; but the more current and generally received story was, that he had stabbed or poisoned his wife, or, as some said, his mistress; although, as fame had ascribed to him no fewer than four mistresses, it was never very clearly made out which of his seraglio it was who had fallen the victim of his vengeance. The story not improbably might have arisen from his having been confounded with a contemporary violin-player of the name of Duranowski, a Pole, to whom in person he bore some resemblance, and who, for some offence or other having been imprisoned at Milan, during the leisure which his captivity afforded, had contrived greatly to improve himself in his art; and when once it was embodied into shape, the fiction naturally enough might have obtained the more credence, from the fact that two of his most distinguished predecessors, Tartini and Lolly, had attained to the great mastery which they possessed over their instrument during a period of solitude—the one within the walls of a cloister, the other in the privacy and retirement of a remote country village. At all events, the rumours were universally circulated and believed, and the innocent and much injured Paganini had for many years unconsciously stood forth in the eyes of the world as a violator of the laws, and even a convicted murderer—not improbably, to a certain extent, reaping the golden fruits of that "bad eminence;" for public performers, as we too often see, who have once lost their "good name," so far from finding themselves, in the words of Iago, "poor indeed," generally discover that they have only become objects of greater interest and attraction. How long he had lived in the enjoyment of this supposed infamy, and all the benefits accruing from it, we really cannot pretend to say; but he seems never to have been made fully aware of the formidable position in which he stood until he had reached Vienna, when the Theatrical Gazette, in reviewing his first concert, dropped some pretty broad hints as to the rumoured misdeeds of his early life. Whereupon he resolved at once publicly to proclaim his innocence, and to put down the calumny; for which purpose, on the 10th of April, 1828, there was inserted in the leading Vienna journals a manifesto, in Italian as well as German, subscribed by him, declaring that all these widely-circulated rumours were false; that at no time, and under no government whatever, had he ever offended against the laws, or been put under coercion; and that he had always demeaned himself as became a peaceable and inoffensive member of society; for the truth of which he referred to the magistracies of the different states under whose protection he had till then lived in the public exercise of his profession.

The truth of this appeal (which it is obvious no delinquent would have dared to make) was never called in question, no one ever ventured to take up the gauntlet which Paganini had thrown down, and his character as a man thenceforward stood free from suspicion.

His whimsicalities, his love of fun, and many other points of his character, are sometimes curiously exemplified in his fantasias. He imitates in perfection the whistling and chirrupping of birds, the tinkling and tolling of bells, and almost every variety of tone which admits of being produced; and in his performance of Le Streghe (The Witches) a favourite interlude of his, where the tremulous voices of the old women are given with a truly singular and laughable effect, his vis comica finds peculiar scope.

His command of the back-string of the instrument has always been an especial theme of wonder and admiration, and, in the opinion of some, could only be accounted for by resorting to the theory of the dungeon, and the supposition that his other strings being worn out, and not having it in his power to supply their places, he had been forced from necessity to take refuge in the string in question; a notion very like that of a person who would assert, that for an opera dancer to learn to stand on one leg, the true way would be—to have only one leg to stand upon. We shall give Paganini's explanation of this mystery in his own words: