Paganini's Ghost

by Paul Adam

  I put the music on my stand and studied it. There is a pattern to these great bravura variations on operatic arias that Paganini wrote. The opening few bars generally state the theme in its simplest form; then the variations that follow get progressively harder, utilising double and triple stops, running demi-semiquavers, left-hand pizzicato, and artificial harmonics of quite fiendish difficulty. The piano accompaniments to these dazzling pyrotechnics are always basic in the extreme. I used to attempt a few of them with my wife—who was a far better pianist than I am a violinist—and she found them unbearably dull. The accompaniment to “Le Carnaval de Venise,” for instance, consists of the same sixteen-bar sequence repeated twenty times. The “Moses Fantasy” is similar—a showy, near-impossible violin part, and a piano accompaniment that a moderately dexterous chimpanzee could probably manage.

  There is a pattern to the way I play these pieces, too. I start off boldly, giving a rendition of the opening bars that is close to what Paganini actually wrote—the notes are generally in tune and in the right order. But as I get farther into the piece, the accuracy begins to disintegrate. I miss notes, I miss chords, and sometimes I miss whole bars, until what I am playing is only a vague approximation of the music. By bar twenty, I am out of my depth, by bar thirty I am sinking, by bar forty I am drowning, and by bar fifty I have had to be dragged out and given artificial resuscitation.

  The “Moses Fantasy” is a particularly sadistic piece of composition, for not only is it devilishly difficult but it all has to be played on just one string of the violin—the lowest string, the G, which is the hardest of all to play on because of the contortions the left hand must go through to get to the notes.

  I put my violin under my chin and lifted the bow.

  Then I paused, the bow in midair.

  I stared at the music on the stand before me. I’d just noticed the small line of text that was printed beneath the title.

  Of course. Of course. How unforgiveably stupid of me. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten.

  I put the violin and bow back down in the case and went to the telephone. It was gone half-past seven, but I knew Guastafeste would still be at the questura. I dialled his direct line.

  “It’s me,” I said when he answered. “The gold box, I think I might know how to open it.”

  “You do? How?”

  “Scordatura,” I said.

  Nicolò Paganini was nothing if not a showman. He realised very early on in his career that if he was going to make a mark on the musical world, he needed an image. He wouldn’t have used that word, of course, but he would have known that he had to do something to make himself stand out from the crowd. Music then, as now, was an intensely competitive business. Instrumentalists, in particular, found it hard to establish themselves. The voice, certainly in Italy, was king—or, more often, queen, for the female voice had an especial appeal to audiences. The great sopranos of the day commanded huge fees for their appearances, a tradition that continued throughout the nineteenth century and, indeed, still holds sway today. Adelina Patti, the most celebrated vocalist of the late-Victorian era, was once famously engaged to give a recital at the White House, in Washington. When it was pointed out to her that her fee for one evening’s entertainment was greater than the annual salary of the U.S. president, she replied pointedly, “Can he sing?”

  The singers of Paganini’s time had a similarly exalted status. This must have been firmly imprinted on young Nicolò’s consciousness when, as a ten-year-old prodigy, he appeared as the supporting act to Teresa Bertinotti and Luigi Marchese, who had come to Genoa to perform a concert. Bertinotti was a famous, and very expensive, soprano, but Marchese was, if anything, even more renowned because he was a castrato. In that final decade of the eighteenth century, castrati were still immensely popular. Handel, Mozart, and Rossini all wrote for that voice, and audiences seemed to find castrati both musically and sexually fascinating. They were already a dying breed—volunteers to join their dwindling number were understandably thin on the ground—but by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the practice of castration had virtually ceased, though a pocket of resistance was maintained in the Papal States, where at least one castrato still sang in the Sistine Chapel Choir up to the age of the gramophone.

  Paganini must have gazed on these two superstar celebrities with awe and perhaps wondered how he was going to emulate them in the field of violin playing. There had been great virtuosi violinists before—men like Corelli and Tartini, whose names have endured more as composers than players—but it was difficult for a young instrumentalist, even one as gifted as Paganini, to make a name for himself.

  There was no easy route to the top. There were no national newspapers in Italy—indeed, at that time it wasn’t even a nation at all—and there were no radio stations or recording companies to promote an artist. A young player had to travel round from town to town organising his own concerts—hiring the venue, booking the orchestra, organising the publicity, as well as actually getting up on the stage and performing. Attracting an audience required shrewd and effective marketing—the soloist had to sell himself, create a persona that would bring the punters through the doors—and Paganini proved himself an adept self-publicist right from the beginning.

  The “Moses Fantasy” was written in 1819, when Paganini was in his late thirties, but many of its key features date from much earlier in his career. It wasn’t the first piece he’d composed for the G string alone. Playing on one string had been a speciality of his for many years—one of the ways in which he distinguished himself from his competitors. Violin strings in those days, being made of gut, frequently broke, and they sometimes snapped in the middle of a concert. The highest string—the E—because of its greater tension, was particularly prone to giving way. In such circumstances, most soloists would stop and replace the broken string. Paganini, however, would continue playing on the remaining three strings, going higher and higher on the A string to produce the notes normally played on the E. If his A string snapped, he kept going on the D; then if that broke, the G. This was such an impressive party piece that Paganini was rumoured to begin his concerts with deliberately frayed strings, or that he even kept a knife concealed about him to cut through a string while he was actually playing. Whether this was true or not it is impossible to say, but Paganini did little to dispel these kinds of stories at any stage in his career. In the short term, this made a kind of perverse professional sense—the rumours added to the controversy that seemed to follow him round like a shadow, boosting audiences for his concerts—but in the longer term, it earned him a reputation for charlatanry.

  Another technique he used in many of his compositions was scordatura—changing the tuning of the strings on his violin. He wasn’t the first musician to do this, but he certainly put it to greater use than any of his contemporaries. His first concerto, for example, was written in E-flat major, but the violin part is in D major, with the strings all tuned up a semitone so the instrument sounds as if it is playing in E flat. This makes the solo part easier to play, but it also adds to the brilliance of the violin, enabling it to stand out better against the orchestral accompaniment. Paganini used the same trick in other compositions, “I Palpiti” and “Le Carnaval de Venise” among them. And he also used it in the “Moses Fantasy.”

  “We were trying the wrong notes,” I said to Guastafeste.

  He’d driven out from Cremona and was sitting at my kitchen table with a glass of red wine in his hand. He’d brought the engraved gold box with him, which must have breached at least half a dozen official regulations, but he seemed to have a clear conscience. The Italian police, like police forces everywhere, are sticklers for rules when applied to the general population, but they are not nearly so rigorous in applying those same rules to themselves.

  “The wrong notes?” he said.

  I showed him my copy of the “Moses Fantasy.”

  “The first four notes appear to be G, C, D, and E flat,” I said. “That’s how they’re wri
tten. But look up here, under the title.” I pointed to the line of text—written in German, because this was a Schott edition. “Die G Saite nach B umstimmen.”

  “Which means?” Guastafeste said.

  “Tune the G string up a minor third to a B flat,” I said.

  “B flat? It says B.”

  “This is German, remember,” I said, then explained to him the mysteries of Teutonic musical notation; how their chromatic scale, for reasons best known to themselves, didn’t go A, B flat, B, C, as ours did, but, A, B, H, C.

  “The violin part is written in C minor,” I said. “But look here at the piano accompaniment. It’s in E-flat minor. So you have to retune your violin so that it sounds in the same key as the piano.”

  Guastafeste peered at the music, transposing the first four notes in his head.

  “So what we really have is B flat, E flat, F, and G flat.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  Guastafeste removed the gold box from its plastic evidence bag and placed it in the middle of the table.

  “Let’s give it a go.”

  He turned the first dial on the combination lock to B, then the second to E. He rotated the third dial to F, then paused. He looked up at me. “You’d better be right, Gianni, or I’m going to have to take a crowbar to this.”

  He turned the fourth dial to G. There was an audible click as the lock disengaged. Guastafeste glanced at me again.

  “You have your uses, you know.”

  He took hold of the top of the box and pulled gently. Nothing happened. He pulled harder. The lid swung open, the hinges sticking a little. The first thing we saw inside the box was a folded piece of paper. Guastafeste lifted the paper out by a corner and put it to one side, obviously hoping to find something else underneath. But there was nothing. Apart from the paper, the box was empty.

  “Oh,” Guastafeste said, unable to conceal his disappointment. “I thought . . . I didn’t expect nothing at all.”

  “It’s empty now,” I said. “But it hasn’t always been empty. Look at it.”

  The internal dimensions of the box were smaller than the external. The length and width were more or less the same, but the depth was different—shallower by about three centimetres because a false bottom had been inserted. It was like a platform across the whole base of the box—a platform covered in soft navy blue velvet, with a recess cut out in the centre, which was also lined with velvet.

  “What the . . .” Guastafeste began. “But that looks like . . .”

  “Doesn’t it?” I said.

  The recess was the exact shape of a violin. The gold box wasn’t just a gold box. It was a golden violin case.

  “But not a real violin, surely?” Guastafeste said. “It’s too small.”

  I looked more closely at the recess. It was about twenty centimetres long and ten centimetres across at the widest point. Violins come in many sizes. You can get half-and quarter-and even eighth-size instruments for very young children to begin on, but I’d never seen one that would have been small enough to fit into this recess.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It would be quite possible to make a violin that size, though it wouldn’t have much of a sound.”

  “Then why do it?”

  I shrugged.

  “As an ornament? As a joke? Who knows? The challenge, maybe. It would be a test of any luthier’s skill to make an instrument that tiny.”

  “Have you ever tried?”

  “No.”

  “Has anyone else? You know, the greats. Did Stradivari ever make any violins that size?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Certainly none has ever been discovered.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Quite sure. Why do you think Stradivari might have been involved?”

  Guastafeste ran his fingers over the outside of the box.

  “It can’t have been an ordinary violin that went in here,” he said. “This box must have cost a fortune. Look at the craftsmanship, the quality of the gold. It was made for a very special violin. But whose?”

  “Why don’t you look at the letter?” I said.

  “Letter? What letter?”

  His eyes followed my gaze.

  “You mean . . .”

  He saw it now. The piece of paper he’d removed from the box had come unfolded slightly. Traces of handwriting were just visible on the reverse side.

  “Don’t touch it,” Guastafeste said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He went out of the kitchen and round the side of the house. I heard the distant, very faint sound of his car door opening and closing. When he returned, he was wearing a pair of thin latex gloves. He sat back down at the table and carefully examined the letter.

  It was written on a thick ivory-coloured sheet of notepaper that had been folded in half and sealed with red wax. The seal was still attached to the paper. It was an ornate affair—an elaborate coat of arms that only a nobleman or person of some consequence would have used, with the initials E.B. stamped in the centre.

  “E.B.?” Guastafeste said. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Who’s it addressed to?” I asked.

  Guastafeste turned the paper over and looked at the writing on the front. The ink had faded to a faint grey colour and wasn’t easy to read. Guastafeste studied the words for a moment, then let out a low exclamation.

  “Nicolò Paganini. The letter is addressed to Paganini.”

  He held the sheet up to the light to show me. There were three lines of writing, but the bottom two were so smudged, they were indecipherable. Only the top line was legible. “Sg. N. Paganini,” it read.

  Guastafeste unfolded the sheet and held it flat on the table, using only the tips of his gloved fingers. The letter itself was clearer than the address. The ink had faded a little and the paper had yellowed with age, but the writing was legible enough. At the top, in a bold feminine hand, were the words “Villa Vicentina, Trieste, September 1819.” Below that was the text of the letter.

  My dear Nicolò,

  I am distressed to have received no reply to my letter of June last. Have I done something to offend you? Have you forgotten your poor Elisa, languishing here in this dull, godforsaken little hole? Have pity on me and send me news of your adventures.

  I have been looking again at the wonderful “Moses Fantasy” you sent me in the summer. I have yet to see Signor Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto, but if it is half as beautiful as your variations, it must indeed be a masterpiece. I am honoured by your kind dedication, which brings back so many happy memories of our time in Lucca, not least that other piece—your Serenata Appassionata —that you wrote for me. I can still hear that haunting melody in my head. I think of it as your ghost, a spirit that is constantly with me though so many years have elapsed since we last saw each other.

  I am sending you this box as a gift, a token of my affection and my gratitude for your variations. I hope you like it. I had it specially commissioned to go with the other gift I gave you in Lucca—you will know the one I mean. You will be intrigued by the lock, but with your sharp mind I am sure you will quickly work out how to open it.

  Felice has attempted your variations and you have never seen or heard anything so comical in your life. I would dearly love to hear them played properly, to hear them the way you would play them, dearest Nicolò. Visit us, if you can, for nothing would make me happier. And if you cannot, and I must forego the pleasure of hearing you play, then write so that I may have the pleasure of your thoughts instead.

  Your affectionate friend, Elisa

  Guastafeste took his fingers off the letter and looked at me.

  “Elisa? Do you know who she was?”

  “Elisa Baciocchi,” I said. “The princess of Piombino and Lucca.”

  “A princess? She was a friend of Paganini’s?”

  “Not just a friend. They were lovers.”

  Guastafeste glanced back at the letter.

  “He moved in h
igh circles, didn’t he? Having an affair with a princess.”

  “No ordinary princess, either,” I said. “Baciocchi was her married name. Her maiden name was Elisa Bonaparte. She was Napoléon’s sister.”

  Seven

  I do not regard myself as an expert on Paganini, but I have read enough about him to know something of his life. If you are interested in violins, it is impossible not to be fascinated by this complex, troubled man, the most celebrated—and notorious—virtuoso in history.

  I know that he was born in Genoa in 1782, and from an early age showed a prodigious talent for the violin. His father, Antonio, a feckless porter at the harbour, realised quickly that his son’s gift had the potential to relieve the family’s poverty and maybe even bring great riches to them, so he encouraged Nicolò’s playing, finding him teachers and enforcing a brutal regime of practice, which undermined the boy’s already-fragile health.

  In later life, Paganini claimed that his father starved him in order to make him practise harder. This may be an exaggeration. Successful people have a tendency to play up the hardships of their youth, but it was certainly true that Antonio Paganini was a demanding taskmaster. His efforts paid off, however, for Nicolò was soon performing in public and astounding audiences with his technical prowess. Just as important to his father, he was also beginning to earn money—so much so that by the time he was sixteen, Nicolò’s parents could afford to buy themselves a retirement home in the countryside outside Genoa.

  Throughout that period, Antonio Paganini was a constant presence at his son’s side—supervising his practice, organising his concerts, accompanying him on tour, and pocketing the proceeds. Nicolò, like any other teenage boy, must have found his father’s attentions oppressive and longed to break away. His opportunity came in 1801, when he was permitted to travel to Lucca for the annual music festival of Santa Croce, accompanied not by his father this time but by his elder brother, Carlo. When the festival finished, Carlo returned home to Genoa. Nicolò didn’t. He went to Pisa instead and organised a concert himself. Then he went to Livorno and Florence and Sienna, putting on more concerts. Never again would he have his life controlled by his grasping father.