After hearing some violin variations rattled through at a Vienna Concert by a six-year old performer, son of a M. Birnbach, a prognosticator was heard to say, with a gravity that scarcely seemed unreasonable: “Well! I foresee that, before many years are passed, we shall have a symphony of Haydn’s performed by babes in swaddling-clothes!”
As a matter of curiosity, I will here subjoin a few records of early feats, without attempting to distinguish those which may belong simply to the class of wunder-kinde.
Weichsel, the brother of Mrs. Billington, played in public with his sister, when she was six years old, and himself a year older—their instruments being the violin and the pianoforte.—Balfe, the singer and composer, made a kind of début as a juvenile violin-player (according to the Harmonicon) at a theatrical benefit.—Two Hungarian boys, of the name of Ebner, one ten and the other eleven, played some of Mayseder’s difficult variations at a Concert at Berlin, in 1823.—A boy of twelve years of age, named Khayll, pupil of Jansa, introduced by Moscheles at a Concert at Vienna in 1827, played some admirable variations on the violin, in which he displayed an ease and solidity far beyond his years, and a great knowledge of his instrument.—At Limberg, in 1831, Apollinarino Conski, five years old, surprised all hearers by his execution of a concerto of Maurer’s; and the son of this last-named Artist, at the age of twelve, performed in the same year some of Mayseder’s variations, at his father’s Concerts at Berlin.
At Stutgardt, in 1831, the brothers Eickhorn, the elder nine, and the younger seven years of age, gave a Concert at one of the saloons, and astonished not only the public in general, but the connoisseurs, by their early proficiency on that most difficult of instruments here under notice. The elder played variations by Mayseder and Rode, and a potpourri with his younger brother, composed by Jacobi—and some variations of Kummer’s.
In various towns of Switzerland, during the same year, the four brothers Koella, of Zurich, gave Concerts with great success. These boys were then respectively twelve, ten, nine, and seven years of age—“small by degrees, and beautifully less.” The elder played the violin and violoncello with great spirit and power; the third was a good tenor-player; and the youngest executed concertos of Viotti’s! Their quartett-playing, however, was their strongest point.
Dr. Crotch, when about five years old, was capable of fiddling, and after a fashion, too, by no means common to others—that is to say, left-handed.
Fiddlers’ Tricks.—In 1731, a Concert was announced at Hickford’s room, for the benefit of Signor Castrucci, first violin of the Opera, who, as the advertisement stated, was to play, amongst other pieces, a solo, in which he would execute “twenty-four” notes with one bow.” On the following day, this advertisement was burlesqued by another, in which was promised a solo by the last violin of Goodman’s Fields’ Playhouse, who would perform twenty-five notes with one bow. Such a feat as either of these, would, in our own days, be nothing at all.
A Signor Angelo Casirola, of Tortona, mystified the good people of Milan, in 1825, by playing the reverse way—that is, playing with a fiddle upon a bow! His plan was to fasten the bow in an upright position upon a table, and play upon it with the violin, according to the best manner in which he could manage to “rub on.” The effect was unpleasing, both to ear and eye. Another of his tricks was a sonata scherzosa, for which he had two violins fixed, with the heads screwed on a table, and then worked away right and left, with a bow in each hand, accompanied by a full orchestra. He fooled his audience to the top of their bent, and was applauded to the very echo! It might assist the gratification of the gapers after novelty, if the thaumaturgist, operating with his left hand, as usual, on the finger-board of his instrument, were to have the bow held and worked by another person. The Chinese flutists have done something like this in principle—one blowing the flute which another has played on! More wonderful still—at some entertainments given by their Emperor, two musicians played together the same air, each having one hand on his own flute, and the other on that of his companion!
At Munich, in 1827, M. Féréol Mazas raised a public astonishment somewhat akin to that created in London more recently by Paganini, as an operator on one string: and, indeed, all the more obvious peculiarities in the performance of the great Italian artist—those pertaining to mechanical dexterity—have been copied, more or less successfully. Assuming to be “the English Paganini,” a certain individual, of no distinction at that time as a legitimate player, was particularly prominent in this business of imitation. He presented, sooth to say, but a soul-less exhibition, having some of the externals of similitude, indeed, but none of that which “passeth show.” Upon the auditors scraped together, however, his “ad captandum” tricks appeared to tell abundantly—more especially when he worked with his left hand the pizzicato accompaniment to the bowed passages; when he brought out some harmonics from below, instead of above, the finger-stops; when (by way of going beyond Paganini) he thrust the instrument between the hair and stick of the relaxed bow, and thus played on the strings with the inner hair: and, above all, when he placed the bow between his knees, and, taking the fiddle in both hands, rubbed the strings against it, so as to execute some difficulties of which a judicious observer might have well regretted the possibility! One of the least pardonable of the faults attending this display, was that his instrument did not always tell the truth: in other words, its intonation was sometimes false.
ECCENTRIC VARIETIES OF THE VIOLIN KIND.