Movimiento perpetuo paganini biography

Come, open your ears, and pay attention, for Paganini solves and creates difficulties which no one has ever dared to undertake. His phenome- nal triumphs, such as no artist has ever yet met with, showed to the incomparable virtuoso that the public tried, at least in a measure, to show their appreciation of his achievements. In April, the "Magician of the South" gave two charity concerts, on the 6th and 29th, at the Opera House, half the receipts going to the victims of the floods in Prussia.

He played a concerto by Rode, and had hardly begun when the E string of his violin broke ; he continued playing on the three others without the slightest sign of discomfiture. At the eighth concert, he played "Le Streghe" and "Heil dir im Siegerkranz" fCod save the Kingon which he had composed variations while at Berlin. As at Vienna, Paganini inspired the poets ; in March a cer- tain Karl Holtei published a poem in his honor.

From Berlin, Paganini left, towards the niicMle of May, for Warsaw; in passing through Frankfort-on-the-Odcr, he gave a concert there, "a great deal better rendered than was to be ex- pected. He excited the greatest enthusiasm. Suffering physically, he reached the Polish capital on Friday, May 22nd. Chopin was present. At Warsaw Paganini again met his former rival of This time, the struggle lacked the courtesy 1 Revue Musicale.

June Berlin letter. May 19th. Petersburg and Moscow. He intended rather to visit the springs at Ems, by way of Breslau and Berlin. He returned once more to Germany, where he traveled for two months before settling in Frankfort-on-the-Main for a more pro- tracted stay. Towards the end of July, we find him at Breslau, where he writes under date of July 31st to the Maestro Onorio De-Vito, at Naples, that he "has just come back from Warsaw where he was called for the coronation of Emperor Nicholas as King of Poland, and where he gave six concerts.

He is returning to Berlin, having promised the public to do so. Ten days later the first of his four concerts was given at Frankfort-on-the-Main, for which he received two-thirds of the receipts, which were 9, florins. In September he was at Darmstadt, Mainz and Mannheim.

Movimiento perpetuo paganini biography

He loves me dearly, and I simply adore him. To-morrow I give my second concert at the theatre in this city; the third will be next Monday. I shall leave the day after to give a concert at the neighboring town, Halle, then at Magdeburg, Weimar, Erfurt, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Carlsruhe, Mannheim — " In the letter he mentions several persons, and among others Count Dietrich- stein.

Outline of letter furnished by M. On Oct. Among other things he played his Sonata Militaire on the G string, his concerto in B-flat minor, a sonata by Rode, the variations on Moses' Prayer, and the "La ci darem," from Don Juan, which were most ap- preciated by the amateurs. At Weimar, on the 31st of the same month, he played at the Court Theatre, assisted by Hiimmel ; at Nurem- berg, his two concerts, on the 9th and 12th respectively, created great enthusiasm, his variations on the Neapolitan song, "Oh!

The editor of the Allgemeine notes with some pride that Paga- nini expressed himself pleased with the work of the orchestra at the theatre he who was so very particular in this respectand also at the three entertainments which he gave at Munich on Nov. Before leaving the Bavarian capital, on the 27th, the queen in- vited him to the castle at Tegernsce.

She was informed that about sixty peasants from the environs, having heard of the arrival of the celebrated Italian violinist, had come in the hope of hearing him and now demanded that the windows be left ojicn so tli. The good queen, al- ways ready to please them, did more than grant their request, for she gave orders to admit them to the concert-hall, where they were noticeable not only for the judgment which they showed in ap- plauding, but by their genteel behavior.

On Dec. After a la. All the papers were full of him. It is said that after his first departure from Frankfort, that is, in less than three months, he had made more than 3, florins, and had deposited 44, Prussian thalers in an English bank. According to the Revue Musicale this movimiento perpetuo paganini biography drew only a small audience, and he realized only florins as compared to an average receipt of 3, at previous concerts.

At this time it was repeatedly reported that he would soon leave for Holland, where he was to stay until the end of the year, and go to Paris about the middle of December, remaining there four months. The papers 1 Allg. It mu. According to Harrys, Paganini had deposited, In the summer ofthe sum offTorins in a Viennese bank. His last concerts in Northern Germany had brought him from 9, to 10, thalers 37, francs.

The report that he had deposited 40, ducats in London, was false. From Paganini's own statement his receipts in had been as follows: 11, florins at Milan, 12, at Bologna, 10, at Genoa, 30, at Vienna, and 5, at Prague, making a total of As a matter of fact, after leaving Cologne and Dusseldorf, he was in Cassel during May, having been invited by Spohr.

The result of the first concert, however, did not seem to satisfy him. He asks him, therefore, to cancel the second concert on Sunday, as it seems that foreign artists are little regarded there. He would very much like to have a souvenir of. His left hand work, as well as his intonation, are marvellous in my estima- tion. In his compositions as well as in his playing, however, I found a certain mixture of childlike lack of taste and the stamp of genius, so that the total impression, after hearing him repeatedly, did not entirely satisfy me.

He was there at the time of the Pente- cost holidays, and I invited him to a luncheon on the second day, at Wilhelmshoehc; he was very gay and positively merry. On the 13th he arrived at Hamburg and gave two or three con- certs there, the first being on the 25th, and the second on the 28th; his variations on Moses' Prayer and the Neapolitan song "Oh!

The Grand Duke of Oldenburg was present. On the 27th Paganini assisted at the St. Peter's church at the religious festivals at. II, p. It may have been at this time, rather than the preceding year, that he appeared at Karlsruhe. The Revue Musicale of Aug. He was there as a patient and did not let himself be heard. Nevertheless, he excited so much curiosity that in Ems a travelling artist, who gave a concert, and announced that Paganini would assist, had excellent box-office results.

Several times a rumor of his being in Paris incognito had been spread, and malevolent stories were added to the wonderful ad- ventures told with Paganini as the hero; a letter from one of his countrymen, Fontano Pino, urging him to put an end to these ab- movimiento perpetuo paganini biographies, which would surely cause trouble for him, prompted him to leave at once for Paris.

He stopped only once on the way, long enough to give two concerts at the theatre in Strassburg, Feb. On Saturday the 19th he finally arrived in Paris, and that same evening he went to the "Italiens" to "rapturously applaud Mme. Malibran's wonderful art" in Othello. Politics were very much unsettled, and inspired violent and lengthy tirades in the press.

The literary and artistic world was beginning to boil with the ro- mantic fever; "Notre-Dame de Paris" was to come out on March 15th; and on the 9th Paganini gave his first concert. Previously, on March 2nd, he was to be presented at the court in the Palais-Royal, which was occupied by the citizen-king. Paer to play before the king yesterday ; a sudden indisposition deprived the virtuoso of this honor.

After having spent several days looking for a hall he had not yet chosen on the 5thhe found he could have the "Opera," of which Dr. I-'inally, on tlie 8th the Cowricr des Theatres announced : "To- morrow the celebrated Paganini will be heard. There will be a special program in honor of the occasion. A ballet will conclude the performance, and it will be a gala night in every way.

The hall was crowded with celebrities and notables of all kinds; the court, the aristocracy, politics, litcra- 1 Contents of autograph letter, fumlahed by M. March 7lh. The wild enthusiasm of the assemblage might be estimated by the receipts, which amounted to 19, francs. A body specially suited for this marvellous playing is not sufficient to obtain such results; it requires earnest, deep and persevering study; a happy instinct in solving the problems of his art and his indomitable will, help him to surmount all obstacles.

He has paid homage to our musical world by writing a concerto especially for France, and which is not to be produced anywhere except in Paris. It seems another evidence of his wonderful intuition which led him to feel that our taste runs decidedly to noble music, elegant, passionate and graceful, to compositions treated with all the vigor of coloring that harmony can give, and all the charm of dreamy, playful, and heroic moods in turn, and the wildest daring of which melody is capable.

This concerto, in D minor, has a m. The first violin, in the highest regis- ter, replies to the trombones, which roar in hollow tones ; it takes up the strain where the trumpets have just left it and renders it in harmonics, in such a way that it seems as though the same in- strument were still playing; the sound is identical. The skill, the magic of Paganini's playing astonishes me more every day.

On the same evening he played "La Clochette" and the variations on Moses' Prayer. Nourrit, Levasseur, Dabadie and Mile. Dorus appeared with him. Fetis asserted that Baillot "puts more passion, more delicate sentiment into an adagio by Mo- zart or Beethoven, than Paganini has in his entire system. A BIOGRAPHY 39 The third concert, postponed on account of a court function, took place a week later, on the 20th ; the receipts for this reached the highest figure of the eleven concerts given by Paganini, 21, francs.

On Wednesday, the 23rd, the receipts were scarcely less 20, francs. The artist asked the Duchess of Orleans to assist at his concert on Sunday the 27th, and wrote to Veron : "I want this concert to be more ornamental than useful," and to this end he asked Her Majesty to do him the honor to assist; he also asked the Director of the Opera to have Mme.

Damoreau sing: "I would ask, in your interest as well as for my satisfaction, that you advertise her appearance in large letters on your announcements for the week, and I would also like you to put on some pretty ballet. The following concerts April ist, 3d, 8th and 15th brought On Sunday, April 17th, an extra concert for the benefit of the poor brought the receipts down to 6, francs 2which did not rise above 11, francs at the last concert April 24th.

The total for the eleven wasfrancs. Paganini had to give up the Opera on the loth on account of a charity affair which was to be held there the next day. He then gave concerts at the Theatre Italien. He was accused of hav- ing refused to assist in this charitable work, and refuted this ac- cusation in a letter, under date of April 9th, published by the papers.

It meant a loss to him, he said, to give up his concert on the loth, and it was, moreover, his intention, before he left Paris, to give a concert for charity, as he had done in all the foreign cities which he had visited. Paganini left Paris about the enrl of A] ril, on his way to Eng- land. On the 27th he wrote a farewell letter to Paer, signing him- self "his grateful pupil.

Tlio ex- penses to the management of the Opera were 3,3?. Nourrit, Dahadle. Dupont and Mllo Donis. Only 4, francs were realized" May 12th. He was engaged by Laporte to appear for the first time. May 2ist, on the stage of the Royal Theatre, but the day before, being indisposed, he was forced to postpone his debut. The musical journal. The Harmonic on, reports all the contro- versies in the daily papers which arose upon Paganini's arrival, and the reports of his exorbitant demands.

In general, aside from the artistic question, the English press could scarcely be called favor- ably disposed toward him. All this noise, these discussions explain better than any indisposition which may, however, have been realwhy the first concert was postponed for two weeks. The Revue Musicale echoed the sentiment. Never before has the price of the cheap seats been raised in Lon- don.

This explains the letter in which he excuses himself for having demanded the raising of prices. Charavay as follows: "Being in the habit of doubling the ordinary price of seats in all the towns In which he had played on the Continent, he wanted to do the same in London; however, when he learned that ordinary prices were already far higher than on the other side of the Channel, he readily conformed to the English customs.

A week later the second concert brought ii On the 1 6th he played a Cantabile which he had composed for two strings, a Rondo Scherzoso by Kreutzer and variations on La Cene- rentola; at the fifth concert, which was announced to be the last, the hall was filled to overflowing; but this last concert was followed by ten further ones, announced as "the very last, positively the last, irrevocably the last," etc.

Finally, on August 20th, at his last appear- ance before the London public, he was "rapturously encored. In the meantime he had appeared at London Tavern July 13th and 1 6thand in several drawing rooms of the highest aristocracy June 2ist at Lord Holland's, etc. Paganini left London for a few days toward the end of July. His manager.

At the end of August Paganini was engaged for the festival at Dublin, from where he seems to have vi. On October ist he was at 1 The "Harmonlcon," Sept. Toward the end of Novem- ber he played at Brighton he had been paid guineas in ad- vance to come there. On December ist, in London, he had to undergo an operation at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, regarding which the Harmonicon gives us no actual details, but of which it speaks with unmerciful sarcasm: "Paganini in the surgical The- atre.

He demanded ii6,ooo for fif- teen evenings at Vauxhall Gardens. Paganini was the first, it seems, to thus "hire himself out" to a man- ager. The matter nearly caused a scandal at the time ; it seemed unworthy of an artist to sell his talent to a third party, who under- 1 The "Harmonicon," November,p. However, in view of the good results, the practical side of this proceeding had to be recognized, which, moreover, was absolutely legitimate, and soon others followed his example.

And this does not apply merely to the ordinary crowd, but to the better class of people. Paganini ar- rived in a city decimated by the ravages of cholera. He gave a concert at Havre on March 8th or 9th. J Letter movimiento perpetuo paganini biography poatscrlpt. The box office re- ceipts were 9, francs 40 centimes, leaving, after deducting ex- penses, 9, francs 20 centimes for "the poor people afflicted by the cholera.

Some time later, he was again in London, where he gave a series of concerts of which the four "positively the last" took place in August at Covent Garden. The slight attention which the press pretended to pay to Paganini at this time is noticeable, although his popularity with the public was fully as great as the year before. Paganini finished in France in the year He was dan- gerously ill about the month of December, but, as the Gazette Musicale reports on January 5th, "he is better and will soon be re- stored to his art and to his admirers.

This work will be en- titled 'The Last Moments of Mary Stuart,' dramatic phantasy for orchestra, chorus and viola solo. Paganini will take the viola part for the first time in public. In the beginning of March, without having been heard in Paris during the winter, the virtuoso left for Amiens, Lille, Valen- ciennes and Brussels.

At Brussels, where he appeared three times, beginning March 15th, after having played at the house of Fetis, Paganini encoun- tered one of the rare defeats of his career. Here and there he had met with hostility, but nowhere had there been the indifference shown at the "Theatre de la Monnaie. At Bruges, which then had 33, inhabitants, a subscription for a concert showed only fourteen signatures.

It was therefore better to cross the Channel as soon as possible. In London, a series of ten concert'? A peculiar incident, of which more than one happened to him in his life, drew attention to Paganini in a scandalous way, on his return to London. Watson, with whom he had boarded while in London, Cal- thorpe Street, Gray's Inn Lane, imagined that he had carried off his daughter and pursued Paganini, whom he joined first at Dover and then at Boulogne.

Paganini re- plied in the Annotatetir of Boulogne, and his letter made the rounds of the entire Parisian press, about March 15th, Far from having carried off Miss Watson, said he, she had sought refuge with him, having been ill-treated by her father and step-mother. Paganini having proved "not guilty," Watson finally returned to London with his daughter.

Meanwhile the musical papers reported that Paganini had invented, some said a contra-viola, others said "a new in- strument, which he was trying in London, and on which he claims to imitate the human voice more nearly than has heretofore been done with any other instrument. The previous year, the "luirope Litterairc," a paper for which Berlioz wrote, had denounced him violently for having refused to "play even a little air" at the benefit given to Miss Smithson.

IBth and 22nd; Figaro. Janin in a very clever article in the Dcbat. It is an actual fact that the celebrated artist has refused to play for a quarter of an hour, for the benefit of the victims of the flood at Saint-Etienne. Paganini can announce, if he likes, a concert for his own benefit ; no one will attend. A letter from him replying to the attacks, set these facts straight.

The substance of the letter was about as follows : "In two or three months I have given but one concert in France. I am returning to Genoa. I have already given two concerts in Paris for the benefit of the poor. For some time he had been planning important projects of various kinds; first the publi- cation of his works ; during his last stay at London, the Parisian editor, Troupenas, had made him an offer, but Paganini had stipu- lated a price so high that, under the most favorable conditions, the sales of several years would not have covered the sum ; according to Fetis, however, Paganini wanted to be his own publisher, but since he was not yet ready to end his career as a virtuoso entirely.

Another of his pet schemes was the founding of a conservatory, or rather a school for violin, in which he would teach the "secrets" of his art. Meanwhile he gave his countrymen an opportunity to hear him once more. On November 14th he gave a concert at Pla- centia, for the benefit of the poor, and the following month he went to Parma, at the request of Marie Louise; on December 12th he appeared at the court of the ex-empress, and on this occasion she presented him with a ring, bearing the royal crown and his initials in diamonds.

On July 28 Marquis Giancarlo Di Negro, one of his warmest admirers, gave a grand entertainment in honor of Paganini, at his villa on the outskirts of Genoa, which he had named "Earthly Paradise. As in the case of Liszt inand, ten years later, of O "Revue Musicale. The cholera raging just then, at Genoa, gave credence to the "sad event. A month later he was at Paris, where troubles of a different nature awaited him.

Two speculators, Tardif de Petitville and Rousseau-Desmelotries, had planned to open a casino on the Chaus- see d'Antin, just off the Boulevard. In this establishment will be concentrated all the pleasure which music, dancing, conversation, reading and promenades can give the Parisian public and the many strangers who flock there, and it will also enable them to enjoy conveniences and privileges of all kinds.

In the enormous grounds, which extended almost to the Rue Mathurins, that is, about the entire length of the actual Rue Meyer- beer, a pavilion was erected, of which a lithograph of the times shows us the general aspect. This pavilion, the old salons and the grounds were to constitute the Casino-Paganini, which was opened to the public for the first time on Saturday, November 25th, The orchestral parts of Paganini's works are polite, unadventurous in scoring, and supportive.

Critics of Paganini find his concerti long-winded and formulaic: one fast rondo finale could often be switched for another. During his public career, the violin parts of the concertos were kept secret. Paganini would rehearse his orchestra without ever playing the full violin solos. At his death, only two had been published. Paganini's heirs have cannily released his concertos one at a time, each given their second debut, over many years, at well-spaced intervals.

His father was an unsuccessful trader but made some money by playing the mandolin. Paganini studied early on with his father and then with a local violinist, Servetto, and then finally with the famous Giacomo Costa. Once his reputation had increased he became independent but also indulged himself in gambling and womanising. A French merchant lent him a Guarneri violin to play at a concert because he had pawned his own.

He was so impressed with his playing that he gave the instrument to Paganini permanently. He begins to write the first of his 24 Capricci for solo violin which all use innovative techniques. ByPaganini, who was used to touring with his father by this time, went to Lucca to perform at the Festival of Santa Croce. His appearance was a rousing success, endearing himself to the town.

But he had a weakness for gambling, womanizing and alcohol, reportedly having a breakdown early in his career due to the latter. Post recovery he returned to Lucca, earning the favor of Napoleon's sister, Princess Elisa Baciocchi, and securing the position of court violinist. He eventually grew restless and returned to the life of a virtuoso, touring Europe, amassing wealth by enchanting audiences with the ferocity or sensitivity of his playing — audiences were said to have burst into tears at his execution of tender passages.

One patron was purportedly so moved by a performance that he gave Paganini a coveted Guarnerius violin. Another vowed he had seen he had seen the devil helping Paganini with a particularly impassioned performance. Paganini's reputation began to take on mythic proportions — he was often mobbed in the streets. His pure talent, showmanship and dedication to his craft was further augmented by possibly two physical syndromes: Marfan's and Ehlers-Danlos—one giving him particularly long limbs, especially fingers, the other giving him extraordinary flexibility.

These certainly would have factored into his exceptional virtuosity, earning him nicknames such as "the Devil's Violinist" and "Rubber Man.