Statuette by J. P. Dantan (1832).
Still, though the secrets of his mechanism are now clear as day, and within the control of many even mediocre players, his music, wherewith he literally set half Europe crazy, has fully responded to no fingers but his own. This may be because his tricks have become known and familiar; but more likely his success drew from more than these tricks, and the secret of it was in his astounding appearance and uncanny personal magnetism. Tall, lank, gaunt, dark, with blazing eyes and fingers like a skeleton, he may well have brought with him a sulphurous halo when he glided like a spectre upon the stage. He was indeed more a magician than a musician, a sorcerer too inspired to be called a charlatan.
The effect of his playing upon all branches of music was instantaneous. His name became the synonym for the highest perfection in playing and singing of all kinds. In the opinion of Chopin, Mlle. Sontag is as perfect as Paganini; and in that of Mendelssohn Chopin upon the piano rivals Paganini upon the violin. Schumann sets about transcribing the caprices of Paganini for the piano. Liszt makes of himself a second wonder of the world by imitating Paganini; and not only that, but expands the technique of his own instrument to unheard of dimensions.
Paganini’s compositions are for the most part without conspicuous value, except for the purely technical extravagances which they display. Relatively few were published during his lifetime. These include the universally famous twenty-four caprices for solo violin, opus 1, two sets of sonatas for violin and guitar, and three quartets for violin, viola, guitar and 'cello. After his death a host of spurious works appeared; but Fétis gives as genuine two concertos, one in E-flat, one in B minor, the latter of which contains the Rondo à la clochette, which was one of his most successful pieces; two sets of variations, one on an air by S. Mayer, known as Le Stregghe (‘Witch’s Dance’), one on the immortal air Le carnaval de Venise, both of which were almost invariably on his programs; and the Allegro de concerto in perpetual motion.
III
Paganini’s success was hardly less brilliant in Germany than it was elsewhere in Europe. At least Schumann and Mendelssohn submitted to the fascination of his incomparable skill. Yet on the whole violin playing in Germany remained less influenced by Paganini than it proved to be in France, Belgium and England. This was not only because of the influence of the great German classics, nor because the tendency of the German violinists was rather away from solo virtuosity and toward orchestral and quartet playing; but largely also because of the firm leadership of Ludwig Spohr, practically the one man about whom a definite German school of violin playing of international importance centres.
Spohr was born in the same year as Paganini (1784). His training on the violin was received from Franz Eck, a descendant of the famous Mannheim school. But according to his own account, the example of Rode, whom he heard in 1803, was of great importance in finally determining his style of playing. His numerous activities took him considerably beyond the field of playing and composing for the violin. He was famous as a conductor in Vienna, in Dresden and Berlin, and in London, whither he was frequently called to undertake the conducting of his own works. As a composer he was famous for his symphonies, his oratorios, and his operas. Yet he was not, in a sense, a great musician; and the only part of his great number of works which now seems at all likely to endure much longer in anything but name is made up of the compositions, chiefly the concertos, for violin.
Of these concertos there are seventeen in all. Among them the seventh, eighth, and ninth are often singled out as the best; and indeed these may be said to be the best of all his works. The eighth was written on the way to a concert tour in Italy, and was intended especially to please the Italians, and written in a confessedly dramatic style, in modo d’una scena cantante. None of the concertos is, strictly speaking, virtuoso music. Naturally all reveal an intimate knowledge of the peculiarities of the violin; but these hardly over-rule the claim of the music itself. He calls for a sort of solid playing, for a particularly broad, deep tone in the cantilena passages, for a heavy, rather than a light and piquant, bow. He was a big man in stature, and his hands were powerful and broad. Evidently he was more than usually confined within the limits of his own individuality; and his treatment of the violin in the concertos is peculiar to him in its demand for strength and for unusually wide stretches. Even the passage work, which, it must be said, is far more original than that with which even Rode and Viotti were willing to be content, hardly ever exhibits the quality of grace. He is at times sweet and pure, but he is almost never bewitching.
A great many will say of him that he deliberately avoids brilliant display, and they will say it with contentment and pride. But it may be asked if the avoidance of brilliancy for its own sake is a virtue in a great musician. This sort of musical chastity becomes perilously like a convenient apology in the hands of the prejudiced admirer. In the case of Brahms, for example, it daily becomes more so. And now we read of Spohr’s unlimited skill as a player and of the dignified restraint manifested in his compositions for the violin. But by all tokens the concertos are being reluctantly left behind.
Among his other works for violin the duets have enjoyed a wide popularity, greater probably than that once enjoyed by Viotti’s. His Violinschule, published in 1831, has remained one of the standard books on violin playing. Its remarks and historical comments are, however, now of greater significance than the exercises and examples for practice. These, indeed, are like everything Spohr touched, only a reflection of his own personality; so much so that the entire series hardly serves as more than a preparation for playing Spohr’s own works.