Paganini: Capriccio
By Tomás Cotik
In the collective imagination, Paganini’s story is one of wizardry and the supernatural. The so-called “lone genius” evokes images of witchcraft and a Faustian exchange with the devil, fairytales of angelical gifts, innate talents, superpowers, and even magical secrets used to keep anyone else from achieving his instrumental prowess. Since the early 19th century, accounts exist of the Genoese violinist and composer’s exaggerated, bizarre appearance, strange posture, and eccentric lifestyle, which encompassed not only his gambling habits but also gruesome criminal activities. He was alleged to have abducted and raped a 20-year prostitute and served a lengthy jail sentence for murder, during which he taught himself to play the violin. Later, the strings of his violin were said to be made from the intestines of the women he murdered.
Indeed, Paganini was a womanizer. The fascination and admiration he received might have been caused by both his extraordinary skill and the novelty of women’s presence in public in concert halls. Due to its shape and higher pitch, the violin was often compared at the time to a woman’s body, and Paganini’s theatrical performance and gestures with the magic wand (A.K.A. violin bow)–attacking and sometimes even breaking the strings with strikes from the air–were associated by some with extra-musical connotations and fantasies. In a purely technical sense, they were a dramatic performance of Paganini’s virtuosic writing of ricochet, up-bow staccato, and rapid string changes.
Satan has had recurrent surges of popularity throughout history, and the devil’s associations in Paganini’s time—in revived Middle Ages imagery and gothic novels–may speak more about society and the zeitgeist than about Niccolò himself. Pointedly, Paganini said, “I’ve never found it worth my while to deny publicly all the silly nonsense circulated about me. If I please people as an artist, then they can believe all the romantic tales they like.” Or in another instance: “I regret that there is a general opinion among all classes that I’m in collusion with the Devil. The papers talk too much about my outward appearance, which arouses incredible curiosity. …I still have one hope and that is that after my death…those who have cruelly avenged my triumphs will let my ashes rest in peace.” Still, even many years after his death in 1840, people would share accounts of hearing his ghost play the violin on full-moon nights. The fact that he was denied a Christian burial and subsequently buried and reburied about 9 times over 36 years may have incited such speculations.
Perhaps Paganini’s supernatural gift was an extraordinary facility forced by his father’s abusive demands to practice up to 16 hours a day under the threat of starvation and his mother’s “prophetic” dream of an angel promising her that Niccolò would become the greatest violinist in the world. Perhaps his superb finger flexibility was caused by Marfan’s or Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, diseases affecting the connective tissue. He had a well-kept red book, but it contained his accounting notes, memos, and contacts–not violinistic secrets. He did, however, keep many of the violin scores of the music he wrote only for himself.
Some might argue that in the moment of a successful performance, actors not only impersonate but fully embody their fictitious character. I can’t imagine a more distant picture between myself and those myths of Paganini, the performer. Maybe because of that, I favor the more recent revisions to these over-romanticized and, at the very least, partially inaccurate and distorted accounts, many of which have been debunked throughout the years.
Virtuosity in the 19th century meant remarkably brilliant musical artistry and skill. Paganini’s meaningful and unique virtuosity, if not the phenomenon of “Paganini,” produced a mania that set him apart. It impressed masses of people of diverse status and interests, making him a superstar of his day, if not the first superstar in music, following the kind of fascination that castrati had produced a hundred years earlier. It is interesting to note that Paganini admired the castrati’s expression, control, and pathos.
Music was at the forefront of Paganini’s enchantment as judged by many of the most esteemed composers of all time including Rossini, Donizetti, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Verdi, Brahms, and Bellini. Numerous compositions by his contemporaries quote and draw from his works, and reverence for Paganini’s musicality can be illustrated by quotes from Schubert: “I have heard an angel sing in the Adagio” and Rossini: “I have wept only three times in my life…The first time when my earliest opera failed, the second time when, with a boating party, a truffled turkey fell into the water, and the third time when I heard Paganini play.”
To me, his music represents an irresistible challenge, a way to explore and reconsider deeply the efficiency and intricacies of my own playing, all the while performing in a musical language not unlike the human voice–one that is beautiful, moving, and full of character. The parallels to vocal music are profound. A singing legato style, intricate ornate embellishments, rhetorical dramatic pauses, register, and tonal qualities that match the emotion of the music are characteristic of the Bel Canto (beautiful singing) of the Opera Seria. Additional Bel Canto qualities of the time included prosody (emphasizing syllables with accents), the use of lofty and varied articulations, portamenti (connection between different pitches), messa di voce (expressive swelling), tempo rubato (tempo flexibility), grand musical gestures for effect, and vibrato for expression in long notes or to emphasize certain words. Accounts from Paganini’s performances refer to his lyricism, deep feeling, tonal variation, and communicative playing; in his words, “suonare parlante” (a playing that speaks).
I also appreciate the dramatic characters, theatrical gestures, and humor found in Paganini’s music, which are characteristic of Opera Buffa. All these Italian influences stem from musicians of the time as well as his teachers, Giovanni Cervetto, Giacomo Costa, Alessandro Rolla, Gasparo Ghiretti, and Ferdinando Paër. Under their guidance, Paganini studied works by Italian composers Viotti, Lolli, Pugnani, Giornovishi, and Locatelli. Paganini’s violin compositions evolved from the Italian tradition of Corelli, Tartini, Veracini, Vivaldi, Geminiani, Nandini, and Torelli, whose idiomatic writing in turn was made possible and inspired by the Cremonese virtuoso luthiers, Amati, Stradivari, and Guarneri. Also important was the influence of Italian popular songs and dance traditions.
The bookend pieces of this album directly connect to the vocal ideas of the fashionable Opera Italiana that so influenced Paganini’s work, including even their titles, “Cantabile” (Italian term meaning songlike) and “…bravura variation on a theme from Rossini’s Opera Mosè in Egitto.” The famously intimate Cantabile -–a three-part aria with variations–- displays legato, purity of tone, and coloratura. It is one of the few original compositions of Paganini’s for violin and piano, and the only one whose autograph survives. (Paganini played and preferred the guitar as a harmonic instrument in many of his duos.) First published posthumously in 1916, the composition possibly dates from around 1823, though this is uncertain.
Paganini would allegedly purposefully break strings for showmanship, sometimes ending the concert with a piece on only one string. I chose to conclude this album with “Sonata a Preghiera.” In this piece, Paganini borrows a famous aria from Rossini’s Opera Moses, loosely based on the Exodus from Egypt of the Israelites. The aria (“Dal tuo stellato soglio”)–very popular at that time–represents the famous prayer of Moses and the Israelites at the banks of the Red Sea. In his theme and bravura variations, Paganini imitates the different registers of Rossini’s dramatic aria and follows it with a set of virtuosic character variations upon the G string. Composed in 1818/19, it was originally written for scordatura (tuning the G string up to a B-flat) to achieve a quicker and easier response. I recorded it in “standard” tuning and used Zino Francescatti’s edition for violin and piano. (Anecdotally interesting is Francescatti’s teacher’s lineage, which can be traced back to Paganini through his mother Ernesta Feraud, student of Fortunata, who was a student of Camillo Sivori–one of the two successful students of Paganini.)
The central part of the album consists of a selection of Paganini’s emblematic “Capricci.” In music, “Capriccio” is a composition that is typically free-form and often characterized by its playful, lively, spontaneous, or improvisational nature, allowing the composer to showcase creativity and experiment with various musical ideas. Fast-paced and virtuosic, capricci may incorporate contrasting sections and moods. Paganini’s Capricci were probably inspired by Locatelli’s 24 Caprices and conceptually are in the realm of the contemporary etudes of Fiorillo, Kreutzer, and Rode. (These last two French composers were students of the Italian composer, Viotti, who had settled in France and would become influential in the Conservatoire du Paris and the development of the ascendent “French School.”) Modern scholarship seems to indicate that Niccolò wrote his Caprices over the course of several years prior to 1817. They were published in 1820 by Ricordi in Milan and dedicated by Paganini to “alli artisti” (to the artists). Later, in a copy of the work, Paganini would specify dedicatees for each Caprice. Just to name a few here: 1: Henri Vieuxtemps; 5: Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst; 6: Karol Józef Lipiński; 14: Jacques Pierre Rode; 15: Louis Spohr; 16: Rodolphe Kreutzer; 21: Antonio Bazzini; 24: Niccolò Paganini, sepolto pur troppo (to myself, regrettably buried).
In these caprices, the violin conveys a rich tapestry of emotions and meanings, including love, drama, paths, humor, seriousness, sweetness, intimacy, and even irony. Within their pyrotechnics, agility, brilliance, and lightness, we also hear animal sounds, fanfares, singing, beauty and numerous colors. All of these require purity of pitch, clarity, and accuracy. The technical means are challenging, varying, and combine many different layers of complexity. Summarizing some salient aspects, we find in Caprice #6 “The Trill”, never-ending trills; in #20, bagpipe sounds and flying staccato; in #21, double-stopped and up-bow staccato; in #1 “The Arpeggio”, ricochet across all 4 strings and intricate descending scales in thirds; in #9 nicknamed “La Chasse”, a hunt motive imitation of flutes and horns & ricochet fantasies; in #11, a multi-voice song and reverse bowing; in #2, string crossings across non-adjacent strings; in #13 “The Devil’s Laughter”, double-stopped passages and high-speed runs; in #14, three- and four-note chords; in #5, scales, arpeggio and 3+1 ricochet bowing; in #24, a bit of everything–double-stops, triple-stops, left-hand pizzicato, octaves, tenths, scales, and arpeggios.
I mostly used the Henle edition with Paganini’s original bowings, based on the existing autograph, took all the repeats of the original score, and adhered to the idea of vibrato as an effect rather than a continuous addition, as Paganini did. (This is implied by an annotated version in which Paganini indicates specific places where to use vibrato.)
Outside of music, capriccio (caprice) is defined as a sudden and whimsical wish to have or do something, or a sudden impulsive change of mind or behavior. Maybe there is something of that in this recording project. My midlife whim of recording some of the most difficult music ever written came around the end of the COVID-19 pandemic after I had finished recording a lot of solo music (Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, a transcription of the Cello Suites, and Telemann’s twelve fantasies). I was looking for yet another Aconcagua that would keep me climbing for as long as the pandemic might take, and my daughter, 14 at that time, encouraged me to take on a project I thought I would never be able to conquer. Yet as silly and impulsive as the start of this journey might have been, this album took a lot of time, self-study, energy, dedication, labor, and love.
I often enjoy museum exhibitions featuring a single artist, relishing the opportunity to dive deeply into one artistic idiom or the world of a creative personality. Rather than an encyclopedic recording of a complete opus as I presented in many past albums, I imagined this album as a personal and emotional journey curated in a way that would be enjoyable, flowing, and surprising to listen to and rediscover in one listening session (as a fixed 19-course meal, in an alternate order–even capriciously randomized), or in smaller portions as a musical snack, coffee, an expensive wine, or even a shot of liquor.
While I find many of these pieces even more challenging than they sound, to me “virtuosity” includes the how–not only the what–of the performance. Paganini’s quote, “In order to move others, I must be moved,” is a testament that the emotional musical message and sentiments were as important to him as the technical brilliancy. I couldn’t agree more.
