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Updated: May 1, 2025
This wonderful genius had taken the musical world of London by storm, and struck terror and despair into the hearts of the violinists of his day; one and all of whom declaring, as a friend of mine said of his own playing although eminent in his profession "that they were only fiddlers." Paganini's playing was most unearthly and inhuman.
Look at his seven concertos of course they are written with an eye to effect, from the virtuoso's standpoint, yet how firmly and solidly they are built up! How interesting is their working-out: and the orchestral score is far more than a mere accompaniment. As regards virtuose effect only Paganini's music compares with his, and Paganini, of course, did not play it as it is now played.
Rossini during this Carnival produced his "Cenerentola," and Paganini gave a series of concerts which excited great enthusiasm. Shortly after this, Paganini's health gave way completely at Naples, and the landlord of the hotel where he was stopping got the impression that his sickness was infectious. In the most brutal manner he turned the sick musician into the street.
While the secret of Paganini's marvellous technique was incessant hard work, to which he was urged not less by his own ambition than by his father's cruelty, yet in later years he seldom practised, and his playing was chiefly confined to his concerts and rehearsals. There are several good stories dealing with this peculiarity.
The elder Paganini's knowledge of music was not sufficient to carry the lad far in mastering the instrument, but the extraordinary precocity shown so interested Signor Corvetto, the leader at the Genoese theatre, that he undertook to instruct the gifted child.
A strange episode was his retirement in the country château of a beautiful Bolognese lady for three years, between the years 1801 and 1804. This charming idyl in Paganini's life reminds one of the retirement of the pianist Chopin to the island of Majorca in the company of Mme. George Sand.
In every other respect there was a wide difference, for while Paganini's manner was such as to induce his hearers to believe that they were under the spell of a demon, Ole Bull took his hearers to the dreamy moonlit regions of the North. It is this power of conveying a highly poetic charm which enabled him to fascinate his audiences, and it is a power far beyond any mere trickster or charlatan.
While Paganini was a genius, a great musician, and a wonderful violinist, he combined with these qualities that of a trickster, and the exponents of the modern French school adopted some of the less commendable features of Paganini's playing, while the Belgian school followed the more serious lines, and became a much sounder school.
In the meantime every effort was being made to secure Christian burial. The spiritual tribunal decided that Paganini had died a good Catholic. The bishop refused to accept the decision, and an appeal to the archbishop was unavailing. Eventually the case was brought before the Pope himself by the friends of the dead man, and the Pope overruled the decision of the archbishop and ordained that Christian burial should be accorded to the artist. On the 21st of August, 1843, the Conte di Cessole took away the coffin from Villafranca, and interred it in the churchyard near Paganini's old residence at Villa Gavon
George Hogarth, the musical critic, writes about Paganini's "running up and down a single string, from the nut to the bridge, for ten minutes together, or playing with the bow and the fingers of his right hand, mingling pizzicato and arcato notes with the dexterity of an Indian juggler."
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