There are three virtuosos of the violin whose names stand out conspicuously in the history of violin music: Locatelli, Lolli, and Paganini. Each of these men is noted for special and in many ways overstretched efforts to bring out of the instrument sounds and combinations of sounds which, in that they can have little true musical significance and are indeed often of questionable beauty, are considered rather a sign of charlatanism than of true genius. This really means that the men are not geniuses as musicians, but as performers. Their intelligence is concentrated upon a discovery of the unusual. They adopt any means to the end of astonishing the multitude, such as altering the conventional tuning of the instrument, and employing kinds of strings which are serviceable only in the production of certain effects.
Of Locatelli some mention has already been made. He was a pupil of Corelli and the serious traditions of his master have found a worthy expression in many of his own works. On the other hand, his twenty-four caprices, in the L’arte del Violino (1733), and the Caprices enigmatiques in the L’arte di nuova modulazione, are sheer virtuoso music and little more. They are the prototypes for many of the studies and caprices of Paganini, who apparently devoted himself almost with frenzy to the study of these caprices during the year 1804.
But Locatelli was a thorough musician as well as an astonishing virtuoso. The type of empty-headed virtuoso who has apparently nothing in his musical equipment but tricks, is represented by Antonio Lolli (1730-1802). Here was a man who won unprecedented success in most of the capitals of Europe, yet who, by all accounts, knew little or nothing about music. Indeed, there is something pathetic in his frank admission that he was an ass. ‘How can I play anything serious?’ he is reported to have asked when requested to play a simple adagio. Apparently he could neither keep time nor read even easy music at sight. Yet he could so fiddle that many a man believed he heard, not the violin, but voices, oboes, and flutes. And some cried out that he must have ten fingers on the left hand and five bows in the right. And at least two of his pupils, Woldemar (1750-1816) and Jarnowick (1745-1804), were famous for no greater accomplishments. But in the main the ‘tone’ of violin playing was set, at the end of the century, by the great Italian, Viotti, and his followers. This endured, as we have said, until the advent of Paganini in the world of music.
Paganini’s early life in Italy (1784-1828) was at first not free from hardship, but after 1805, at least, it was brilliantly successful. The only lessons of importance in his training were received from Alessandro Rolla (1757-1804). His prodigious skill was almost wholly due to his own ingenuity, and to his indefatigable industry. There is every reason to believe that he practiced hour after hour until he was so exhausted that he fell upon the ground.
During the years between 1801 and 1804 he lived in retirement under the protection of a lady of high rank, and during these years gave up his violin and devoted himself almost wholly to the guitar. This is among the first of his eccentricities, which every now and then during his triumphant career cropped out to the amazement of the public of all Europe. He was in fact so unaccountable in many ways that a whole cycle of fables grew up about him, through which he loomed up, now as a murderer who had acquired his skill during long years of imprisonment, now as a man more than half spectre, who had bought at some hideous price the intimate, and it must be said wholly serviceable, coöperation of the devil. How many of these stories were originated and purposely circulated by Paganini himself, who knew how to cast a spell over the public in more ways than one, cannot be definitely answered. On more than one occasion he openly denied them and complained of them not without bitterness, all with the greatest of plausibleness; and yet one cannot but suspect that he knew the value of them in attracting the crowd out of a fearsome curiosity.
After his extended tour over Europe (1827-1834), which brought him a fame and a fortune hardly achieved since by any performer, he retired into a semi-private life at his Villa Gaiona, not far from Parma. From time to time he came again before the public. The more or less scandalous affair of the ‘Casino Paganini’ in Paris (1836) took a slice out of his fortune and perhaps seriously impaired his health. He died on May 27, 1840.
There can be no doubt that whatever the so-called serious musical value of his playing may have been, it took hold of the whole world and left a mark upon it. His technique was at once colossal and special. He built it up with the idea of playing before huge audiences, and Spohr has remarked that in small surroundings he did not show to good advantage. He had, of course, an incredible swiftness of fingering, an amazing skill with the bow, particularly in staccato passages, which he played, not in the classic manner of Rode, with a movement of the wrist for each separate note, but by allowing the bow to spring upon the strings. His intonation was faultless, in runs, in double-stops and in octaves. Though he used oftenest light strings in order to secure special effects in harmonics, and these precluded a full, rich tone in the playing of melodies, yet he could play simple passages with great sweetness and charm.
So far, however, his technique could hardly have exceeded that of Rode. It was in the realm of special effects that he proved himself little less than a wizard. Of these at least three are now within the command of all the great players of the present day. One was the combination of the left-hand pizzicato with notes played by the bow; another the playing of ‘harmonics,’ particularly double-harmonics; the third the playing of long and difficult movements upon a single string. Musicians were in that day so baffled by these amazing sounds, of which Paganini alone seemed to be master, that for years they attributed to him a special secret power. There was no end of speculation about Paganini’s secret, which, by the way, he was said to have imparted to but one man, his pupil Sivori. Now, however, it is all revealed. In playing pieces upon a single string he was accustomed to raise the pitch of the string, and to go into the highest registers by means of harmonics. He changed the tuning of his violin also in playing his concertos and some of his caprices, and he made a frequent practice of sliding his fingers, and was not above imitating sobs, cries, laughter, and on one occasion, of which he has left an account, somewhat maliciously the braying of donkeys in Ferrara!
Caricature of Paganini.