1. In his manner of tuning the instrument.
2. In a management of the bow, entirely peculiar to himself.
3. In his mode of using the left hand in the passages chantans, or passages of a singing character.
4. In the frequent employment of harmonic sounds.
5. In the art of putting the violin into double employ, so as to make it combine with its own usual office the simultaneous effects of a mandolin, harp, or other instrument of the kind, whereby you seem to hear two different performers.
As to the first of these points, “his manner of tuning the instrument,” observed M. Guhr, “is wholly original, and to me appears incomprehensible in many respects. Sometimes he tunes the first three strings half a tone higher, while that of G is a third lower, than ordinary. Sometimes he changes this with a single turn of the peg, and he invariably meets the due intonation, which remains sure and firm. Whoever is aware how much the higher strings stretch with the least relaxation of the G, and how much all the strings generally lose, by a sudden change in tuning, the faculty of remaining with certainty at one point, will join me in the lively desire that Paganini may decide on communicating his secret in this respect. It was surprising to find, especially on one occasion, when he played for nearly an hour and a half in the most opposite keys—without its being perceptible that he had changed his tuning—that none of the strings became disturbed. In an evening concert, between the Andante and the Polacca, his G string snapped, and that which he substituted, though afterwards tuned to B, remained firm as a rock. His manner of tuning his instrument contains the secret of many of his effects, of his succession of chords, and striking vibrations, which ordinarily appear impossible to the violinist.”
According to this statement, “curious, if true,” Paganini improved his effects by playing on an instrument out of tune, and, with something like a miracle of creative power, produced harmony out of discord. Paganini must of a surety have “pegged hard,” and with a screwing that was inscrutable, to have attained such a management of his pegs! Was M. Guhr a misty demonstrator, or was Paganini inexplicable? As to the G, that can bear to be pulled about in this fashion without resenting it, we must suppose it to possess a passive virtue, a habit of accommodation, quite beyond the custom of the stringy tribe.[38]
In expatiating on the second point, M. Guhr seems content to describe effects, rather than to labour (in vain) for the indication of a cause—but his description is not infelicitous:—
“Paganini’s management of the bow is chiefly remarkable by the tripping movement which he imparts to it in certain passages. His staccato is no way similar to that ordinarily produced. He dashes his bow on the strings, and runs over a succession of scales with incredible rapidity, while the tones proceed from beneath his fingers, round as pearls. The variety of his strokes with the bow is wonderful. I had never before heard marked with so much precision, and without the slightest disturbance of the measure, the shortest unaccented notes, in the most hurried movements. And again, what force he imparts in prolonged sounds! With what depth, in the adagio, he exhales, as it were, the sighs of a lacerated heart!”
However he might sometimes err in his doctrine, M. Guhr was at least right in his faith. The supremacy, which he assigned to the great Genoese genius, was expressed in the language of a handsome enthusiasm:—