"THE DEMON FIDDLER"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 48, 24 May 1940, Page 11

"THE DEMON FIDDLER"

The Centennial Of A Showman

one of the world’s greatest masters of publicity died at Nice, of tuberculosis, at the age of fifty-six. This was Nicolo Paganini, the immortal violinist, whose religious opinions and observances were so eccentric that he was denied, or failed to receive, the last rites of the Church and, after his death, was refusegd consecrated ground for his bones. From Nice his remains went to Marseilles, the home of his son, but found no resting place. Even in Genoa, his own birthplace, there was no place for him. The municipality refused decent burial to one of its most distinguished sons on the ground that an epidemic had broken out in the town, and that extra hygienic precautions were necessary. Cannes next would not receive the body, and it was HUNDRED years ago, on May 27, 1840,

only after urgent entreaties that the citizens of San Tessiol consented to bury Paganini. It was said that he made a compact with the Devil who, directly the violinist shuffled off this mortal coil, would claim his soul. So Paganini rested in this grudgingly granted grave at Tessiol till the Empress Marie Louise, in the year 1845, was instrumental in having the body moved to Parma, where in the neighbouring Villa Gaione it was embalmed. But the coffin had been so shockingly knocked about in its travels that it was mecessary to renovate it. Paganini’s remains rested in Villa Gaione till the year 1876, when they were again moved to Parma. From contemporary accounts, this translation seems to have been attended by extraordinary and quite uncanny ceremonial. At dead of night a fantastically-garbed procession of mourners, bearing torches, wound along the bank of the River Boganza to the cemetery. As the procession passed, onlookers sank on their knees and crossed themselves. Attila Paganini, the artist’s grandson, was present at the funeral. In Life as in Death But in life as in death Paganini managed to keep himself continually "in the news." He was born in 1784 (or 1782, the exact date is still in doubt), the son of a packer at the port of Genoa, a man who loved hard work, but was grasping, cross-grained, and a gambler. The father had one quality, however, which powerfully affected his son; he loved. music passionately, and played the mandolin. He also loved gambling. So Antonio, the father, taught his five-year-old son his first notes on the mandolin, and a friend of the family, a tailor who played the violin, taught him how to hold a bow. At eight years of age, a marvel of precocity, Nicolo made his first appearance, and performed variations of his own on the French revolutionary song, "The Carmagnole." Then after studying at Parma under the strict supervision of Antonio, who had become the fierce

impresario of nig own son, Nicolo set out with his father on a concért tour to Milan and the cities of Lombardy. Antonio, having thus recovered the cost of his son’s education, sent him back to study; and this time Nicolo, studied economically — without a master. It was now 1801; Nicolo had reached seventeen, and wished to escape from his father’s control. How he managed this is a long story, but he did free himself at last. That the Violinist became a melodramatic figure cannot have been entirely due to chance. He enjoyed being talked about, even if people accused him of murder} A Pen Picture This is a friend’s description of Paganini: ""He is so’ thin that no one could be thinner with decency; and with it he has a pale yellow complexion, a large, curved nose, and bony fingers. He looks as if he were hardly held together under his clothes, and, when he bows his acknowledgments his body moves in so extraordinary a manner that one fears to see his legs part from his trunk at any moment, and the whole frame fall together, as a heap of bones. When he plays, his right foot is well advanced, and with it he beats time when the music becomes more animated. At the same time his face does not lose any of its death-like immobilityexcept when thunders of applause provoke. his peculiar smile, and his eyes flash, not without good humour, in all directions." ’ A credulous public accounted for the breath-taking magic of this great violinist’s performances on @ single string by repeating the fantastic legend that "his G string was the intestine of his wife, whom he had murdered with his own hands." America can’t beat that for publicity. But what Barnum would have done with such a man baffles the imagination, A special presentation, "The Paganini Centenary," will be broadcast by 2YA Wellington on Sunday, May 26, at 3 p.m.