Great Violinists And Pianists

related to her little son: "My son, you will be a great musician. An angel radiant with be

e fulfilled." The child who was thus addressed became that incomparable artist, Paganini, whose name now, a

nts of the man, conspired to make him an object of such interest that the announcement of a concert by him in any European city made as much stir as some great public event. Crowds followed his strange figure in the streets wherever he went, and, had the time been the mediaeval ages, he himself a celeb

cribes his first acquaintance

eared still longer as he advanced, holding in one hand his violin, and in the other the bow, hanging down so as almost to touch the ground-all the while making a series of extraordinary reverences. In the angular contortions of his body there was something so painfully wooden, and also something so like the movements of a droll animal, that a strange disposition to laughter overcame the audience; but his face, which the glaring footlights caused to assume an even more corpse-like aspect than was natural to it, had in it something so appealing, something so imbecile and meek, that a strange feeling of compassion removed all tendency to laughter. Had he learned these reverences from an automaton or a performing do

the lower world. These were sounds out of whose bottomless depth gleamed no ray of hope or comfort; when the blessed in heaven hear them, the praises of God die away upon their pallid lips, and, sighing, they veil their holy faces." Leigh Hunt, in one of his essays, thus describes the playing of this greatest of all virtuosos: "Paganini, the first time I saw and heard him, and the first moment he struck a note, seemed literally to strike it, to give it a blow. The house was so cramm

ng the air with

it fell, a na

clinging to th

avishment drew

ong, so fervid,

laden as with

arned with n

burthen of th

mystery of t

t; and, with hi

unt, hanging

flowing locks,

or to mela

arted from his

able secret

to himself, with a long sigh, 'O Dio!' and this had not been said long, when another person in the same tone uttered 'Oh Christ!' Musi

him for the assassination of a rival in love, during which he had a violin with one string only. Paganini himself writes that, "At Vienna one of the audience affirmed publicly that my performance was not surprising, for he had distinctly seen, while I was playing my variations, the devil at my elbow, directing my arm and guiding my bow. My resemblance to the devil was a proof of my origin." Even sensible people believed that Paganini had some uncanny and unlawful secret which enabled him to do what was impossible for other players. At Prague he actually printed a letter from his mother to prove that he was not the son of the devil. It was not only the perfectly novel and astonishing character of his playing, but to a large extent his ghostlike appearance, which