Niccolo Paganini was born in Genoa on 27th October, 1782. His natural aptitude for violin became apparent at an early age, and he had his first lessons on the instrument from his father, who was in the shipping trade but was an accomplished performer on the mandoline. The young Paganini subsequently had lessons with Giacomo Costa, maestro di cappella of the Cathedral of San Lorenzo. He made his first public appearance in 1793, and at Costa's suggestion he then began to play solos regularly in church every Sunday - a discipline which he was to appreciate in later years.
A period of study in Parma with Alessandro Rolla and Gaspara Ghiretti followed, and in 1797 Paganini, accompanied by his father, embarked on the first of his many concert tours. On his return to Genoa he wrote down his first compositions for his instrument. He spent the years 1801-4 in Tuscany, in comparative retirement, but devoting himself principally to composition (for the guitar as well as the violin), and between 1805 and 1813 he was, for much of the time, in the service of Elisa Bacciochi, sister of Napoleon and Princess of Lucca and Piombo (later Grand Duchess of Tuscany).
From about 1813 onwards Paganini undertook a succession of concert tours, first in Italy, then in Austria, Germany, France, and the British Isles. He spent just over a year in England (from June 1831 to June 1832), during which time he made a profit of 17,000 pounds British Sterling, and his business acumen - if not his mastery of the fiddle - was summed up in a contemporary pun which ran: "Who are these who pay five guineas, To hear this tune of Paganini's? -
Echo answers - "Pack o' ninnies."
His last years were spent partly in Parma, partly in Paris (where he met Berlioz and, in January 1834, asked him to compose a work for him to play on his Stradivarius viola - the result of which commission being Harold en Italie, which Paganini never deigned to perform because "there was not enough for me to do"), and partly in the South of France.
He died in Nice on 27th May 1840 of a disease of the throat from which he had been suffering for some years.
Musical Legacy
No musician had more fantastic stories to his name, and certainly none took less trouble to refute them. Many people seriously believed that he had been convicted of murder and that he had taught himself to play the violin with one string only while eking out a prison sentence, and it was almost common knowledge that he was in league with the devil (unlike an earlier violinist/composer - Tartini - who only dreamed about him), yet the maestro, who undoubtedly knew the value of good publicity, seems almost to have encouraged these and similar rumours to spread.
As to his breathtaking command of his instrument there can be no doubt, legends or no: no violinist before him had displayed such a stunning degree of virtuosity, and there have been few since who could claim to have equalled him. The fact that he allowed only a few of his compositions to be published during his lifetime shows how jealously he guarded his secrets.
The 24 Caprices
As we have seen, only a handful of Paganini's compositions were published during his lifetime; of those that were, the twenty-four Caprices, Op. 1, which were probably inspired by the astonishing cadenza-like caprices in the twelve violin concertos that form Pietro Locatelli's L'Arte del Violino, Op. 3, published in 1732, are by far the most important. They appeared in 1820, and are still the supreme test of any virtuoso violinist.
They have exercised an extraordinary influence on later composers: Schumann based two sets of piano studies on them (and provided piano accompaniments for the originals); Liszt based his whole conception of virtuoso piano playing on them, as can be seen from the six Etudes d'execution transcendante d'apres Paganini and the twelve Etudes d'execution transcendante; and the celebrated No. 24 - a theme with twelve variations - was the basis of Brahms's Paganini Variations, Op. 35, Rachmaninov's Rhapsody for piano and orchestra, Op. 43, and Boris Blacher's Orchestervariationen, Op. 26.
Inasmuch as they explore virtually every aspect of violin technique - legato, staccato, spiccato, tremolo, harmonics, trills, arpeggios, scales, left-hand pizzicato, and multiple-stopping (thirds, sixths, octaves, and tenths) - the Caprices can be described as studies, though to treat them merely as technical exercises, however difficult they are to play, is hardly to do them justice.
In many of the pieces, such as Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 12, 16 and 22, a strong moto perpetuo element is noticeable, even though this may not always extend right through the movement. Several of the Caprices, such as Nos. 3, 8, 11, 20, 22 and 23, have a slow opening, often in octaves, which reappears, whether literally or in modified form, at the end. No. 6 is a remarkable study in tremolo; No. 9 imitates the sound of flutes and horns; No. 17 contains some terrifying octave semiquavers; Nos. 12 and 13 are markedly chromatic; and No. 24, as has already been pointed out, is a set of miniature variations.
James Strauss , He has had the courage to arrange the Op 1 Caprices for flute, a Herculean feat that involves some wholesale rearrangements. Since its impossible to replicate double stopping, string crossing, extra parts and chordal writing amongst other things he has had to "revamp" (his word) the flute part. In that respect, maybe surprisingly, he's not the first. There's an arrangement. I believe, by Jules Herman dating from the early 1890s and the French flautist Patrick Gallois has also brought out his own arrangement, published by Leduc, which sounds a good deal more avant-garde than Strauss's employing as it does circular breathing, flutter tongue and humming, Strauss prefers a degree of flexibility allied to more conventional means. He advocates crisp articulation at fast tempi, replacing, for instance, the double-stopping of No 8 with octave leaps (Gallois here employs "double articulation" to provide an octave effect). In No 9 Strauss uses grace notes to imitate the Caprice's huntsman's call; in the same Caprice the French flautist engages in some suitably pyrotechnic humming. I was anticipating No 6 with its sustained single string melody and simultaneous trill with some interest; here Strauss plays the melody with the trills quite an inventive solution. It takes quite some violinist to tackle the Caprices let alone a flautist and the young Brazilian man acquits himself well. Of course there are problems; the scintillating runs in No 2 are difficult to sustain (the flutes limitations here, due to breath taking, are really considerable and take their toll). Intrusive breaths compromise the melodic line; the trills of No 11 could have been more deftly and quickly taken, although I did most certainly enjoy Strauss's elegance in this rhetorical Caprice. Its very difficult to bring off the register leaps of No 15; quite a lot of line fracturing is involved. Transpositions are inevitable in a transcription of this kind but Strauss has an acute musical ear for incongruity and an occasionally frisky one as well listen to the over drone melody of No 12 and its attendant buzzing tone. No 22 emphasises an occasional fault of the recording which is to expose a certain shrillness in Strauss's tone, especially maybe inevitably at the top of the compass, though this is hardly surprising given the remorseless virtuoso rhetoric he has deal with. Its good that flautists are increasingly looking to this kind of repertoire; if you're going to do it at all you might as well do it as well as Strauss. And with a great difererential: Strauss´s added the Robert Schumann accompaniment of the Caprices, like that all the polifony we loose with the flute its on the piano.
Caros amigos e amigas leitores,
