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Rode's Caprices, for instance, are particularly suited for such a purpose, and many of Paganini's famous Caprices have found a lasting place in the concert repertory, with piano accompaniments by artists like Kreisler, Eddy Brown, Edward Behm and Max Vogrich the last-named composer's three beautiful 'Characteristic Pieces' after Paganini are worth any violinist's attention.
The diversity of sounds, the different methods of tuning his instrument, the frequent employment of harmonics, single and double, the simultaneous pizzicato and bow passages, the various staccato effects, the use of double and even triple notes, a prodigious facility in executing wide intervals with unerring precision, together with an extraordinary knowledge of all styles of bowing such were the principal features of Paganini's talent, rendered all the more perfect by his great execution, exquisitely nervous sensibility, and his deep musical feeling."
Over men of genius, as well as the commonplace herd, he cast the same spell, stamping himself as a personage who could be compared with no other. The German poet Heine thus describes his first acquaintance with this paragon of violinists: "It was in the theatre at Hamburg that I first heard Paganini's violin.
Paganini's lengthened tour through London and the provinces was everywhere attended with the same success, and brought him in a golden harvest, for his reputation had now grown so portentous that he could exact the greatest terms from managers.
Surely this sum alone proves the justice of the popular belief that he had sold himself to the devil, and, knowing it, none can doubt the story Liszt quotes in one of his essays concerning the G string of Paganini's violin: "It was the intestine of his wife, whom he had killed with his own hands."
Although several violinists endeavoured to copy Paganini's style, or at least to learn as much as possible from hearing and seeing him play, there was only one, excepting Catarina Calcagno, who received direct instruction from him, and on whom his mantle was said, by his admirers, to have fallen. That one was Camillo Sivori, born at Genoa, June 6, 1817.
"That is the most astonishing part of all; for they say in Strasbourg that his performance upon the violin was far finer than Paganini's; but there seems some secret in it, after all: for Madame Baptiste swears that he is Meerberger; and in fact the matter is far from being cleared up nor can it be till he is apprehended."
Then he threw his arms around him and hailed the astonished composer as the master-spirit of the age in terms of glowing eulogium. The next morning, while Berlioz was in bed, there was a tap at the door, and Paganini's son, Achille, entered with a note, saying his father was sick, or he would have come to pay his respects in person.
On one sublime theme after another he executed variations, putting into them sometimes Chopin's sorrow, Chopin's Raphael-like perfection; sometimes the stormy Dante's grandeur of Liszt the two musicians who most nearly approach Paganini's temperament.
He was accustomed to say that his whole early life had been one of prodigious and continual study, and that he could afford to repose in after years. Paganini's knowledge of music was profound and exact, and the most difficult music was mere child's play to him.
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