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Many pupils are apt to try and run ahead of their technical ability, and do not find out their mistake until it is too late. The argument that Paganini was self-taught leads many a young violinist into error.
When the concert was over, and Paganini brought back the instrument, its owner was so delighted with what he had heard that he refused to receive it. "Never will I profane strings which your fingers have touched," he said, "the instrument is now yours." And Paganini used that violin afterwards in all his concerts.
De Bériot, however, did not remain long in the class, but applied himself most assiduously to the study of the violin in his own way. This is what Paganini had done, and through this course had been able to form a style so peculiarly his own. It is not probable that De Bériot at this time knew much about Paganini; certainly he had never heard him.
He was eventually enlightened as to the mistake he had made. Once, when he was at Naples, Paganini was taken ill, and in his desire to secure lodgings where the conditions would be favourable for his recovery, he made a mistake and soon became worse.
He set a great example of purity of style and legitimate treatment of the instrument, and is considered to have had a more beneficial effect on violin playing than Paganini, who was born in the same year, 1784. Louis Spohr was the son of a physician, who, two years after Louis was born at Brunswick, took up his residence at Seesen, where the childhood of the future virtuoso was passed.
Paganini made a great fortune by the exercise of his art, and in 1834 purchased, among other property in his native country, a charming country seat called Villa Gajona, near Parma. Here he spent two years in comparative quiet, though still continuing to give concerts. At this period and for some time previous many music-sellers had striven to buy the copyright of his works.
Paganini was at that time travelling in Europe, and Ernst, in the desire to learn something from this great artist, followed him from town to town, and endeavoured to model his own playing upon the style of the Italian virtuoso, an effort which seems to have brought down upon him the censure of some critics, but which others have considered highly praiseworthy.
When the Italian violinist, a week later, gave a concert at La Scala, Lafont was in the audience, and the very next day he proposed that Paganini and himself should play together at the same concert.
At the age of thirty-six Paganini again found himself at Milan, and there organized a society of musical amateurs, called "Gli Orfei." He conducted several of their concerts. But either the love of a roving life or the necessity of wandering in order to fill his exchequer kept him constantly on the move; and, though during these travels he is said to have met with many extraordinary adventures, very little reliance can be placed upon the accounts that have come down to us, the more so when we consider that Paga-nini's mode of life was, as we shall see presently, become by this time extremely sober. It was not until he was forty-four years old that he finally quitted Italy to make himself better known in foreign countries. He had been encouraged to visit Vienna by Prince Metternich, who had heard and admired his playing at Rome in 1817, and had repeatedly made plans to visit Germany, but his health had been so wretched as to prevent his departure from his native country. But a sojourn in the balmy climate of Sicily for a few months had done him so much good that in 1828 he put his long-deferred plans into execution. The first concert in March of that year made an unparalleled sensation. He gave a great number of concerts in Vienna, among them several for the poor. A fever seized all classes of society. The shop windows were crowded with goods
People find fault with Berlioz's continual complaints; and I, too, find in them a lack of virility and almost a lack of dignity. To all appearances, he had far fewer material reasons for unhappiness than I won't say Beethoven Wagner and other great men, past, present, and future. When thirty-five years old he had achieved glory; and Paganini proclaimed him Beethoven's successor.
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