“From this did Paganini comb the
fierce
Electric sparks, or to tenuity
Pull forth the inmost wailing of
the wire?
No catgut could swoon out so much
of soul!”
Browning, “Red
Cotton Night-Cap Country.”
Many people have based their idea
of the moral status of musicians and the moral effects
of music upon a certain work by Tolstoi, who is no
more eminent as a crusader in the fields of real life
and real fiction, than he is incompetent as a critic
of art. His novel, “The Kreutzer Sonata,”
is musically a hopeless fallacy. And Tolstoi’s
claim, that Beethoven must have written it under the
inspiration of a too amorous mood, is pretty well
answered by the fact that Beethoven, who was so liberal
of his dedications to women, whenever they had inspired
him, dedicated this work to two different violinists,
both men.
It is said that he first inscribed
it to George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, a mulatto
violinist, who, being lucky enough to be born in Europe,
was not ostracised from paleface society. This
can be only too well proved by the fact that Beethoven who
spelled the man’s name “Brischdower” after
dedicating the sonata to him, found that the Africo-European
had been his successful rival in one of those numberless
flirtations of his, in which Beethoven always came
out second. Indignant at his dusky rival’s
success, Beethoven erased his name from the title-page
and substituted that of Rudolphe Kreutzer. The
curious thing about this great piece of music, known
to fame as the “Kreutzer Sonata,” is that
Beethoven had never seen Kreutzer, and that Kreutzer
never played the sonata.
I have not discovered whether or no
Kreutzer was married; he probably was, for he died
insane. A German composer, Conradin Kreutzer,
with whom he might be confused, had a daughter whom
he trained as a singer. As for Bridgetower, he
married and had a daughter.
But speaking of violinists, what would
become of them if there never had been makers of violins,
especially such luthiers as the Amati? Yet
all I know of the Amati is that they formed a dynasty,
and doubtless fell in love on occasion, though how,
or when, I do not learn.
The great Antonio Stradivari, however,
began his love-making like David Copperfield, by falling
in love with a woman ten years his senior, when he
was only seventeen. She was Francesca Capra; her
husband had been assassinated three years before,
leaving her a child. The boy Stradivari and the
widow were married July 4, 1667, and on December 23d,
a daughter named Julia was born. Francesca bore
Stradivari six children. Her second child was
a son named after her, Francesco; but Francesco died
in infancy, and the name, in spite of the omen, was
given to the next son, who followed his father’s
profession, but never married. The next child
was a daughter, who died a spinster; the next was
a son, who became a priest, and the next a son, who
died a bachelor. The failure of all their children
to marry does not indicate a particularly happy home-life,
but this is mere speculation. We only know that
Stradivari’s first wife died, after a marriage
lasting thirty-four years.
A year and a half later Stradivari
married a girl fifteen years his junior; Antonia Zambelli
was, indeed, born the very year Francesca’s
first husband had been assassinated. Antonia bore
Stradivari five children: a daughter, who died
at the age of twenty; a son, who died in infancy;
a son, who died at twenty-four; a son, who became a
priest and lasted seventy-seven years, and, finally,
a son, Paolo, the only child of Stradivari that
seems to have married, and certainly the only one
who handed down the family name. How happy Antonia
was with her husband, we do not know. “As
rich as Stradivari,” became a proverb. She
died at the age of seventy-three, and Stradivari survived
her less than one year; this may have been because
he was overcome with grief; or because he was already
nearly ninety years of age.
In the workshop of Stradivari was
a fiddle-maker named Andreas Guarnieri, who had two
sons, Pietro and Giuseppe, who had a son named Pietro,
and a more famous cousin named Giuseppe, who was a
dissipated genius, and blasphemously gave himself
the nickname, “del Gesù.”
Of him there is a pretty fable, that once being sent
to prison for debt, he won over the jailer’s
daughter, and she brought him stealthily wood and
implements with which he made the so-called “prison
fiddles,” of whose curious shape Charles Reade
said: “Such is the force of genius that
I believe in our secret hearts we love these impudent
fiddles best; they are so full of chic.”
As Giuseppe called himself “Gesù,”
so there was a member of the famous violin-making
family of Guadagnini who was called “John the
Baptist,” and of whom I only know that he belonged
to a large family.
TARTINI
But to turn from these unsatisfactory
violin makers to violin players: I know nothing
of the great Corelli’s personal history; his
pupil Geminiani is said to have led a life full of
romance. Philidor spent his years chiefly in
the intrigues of chess-playing. The great Tartini,
whom the devil visited in the dream he immortalised
in his famous Sonata del Diavolo, had
a checkerboard career. As a young university
student he fell in love with a niece of Cardinal Cornaro,
and married her in secret. Like Romeo, his romance
brought him separation and exile. His parents
cast him off; the cardinal made his life unsafe.
He fled from Padua, and took up the violin to save
him from starvation. “And some have greatness
thrust upon them.”
One day, as he was playing at the
monastery where he was in retirement, the wind blew
aside a curtain just as a fellow townsman was passing.
He took home the news, and by this time resentment
had died out so much, that Tartini and his young wife
were permitted to resume their romance. They
went to Venice. Later his ambition for the violin
caused them to separate, but finally they returned
to Padua to live. Burney says that his wife was
“of the Xantippe sort.” His love story
somewhat suggests that of Desmarets, who also had
to flee for his life in consequence of a secret marriage,
and who was twenty-two years appeasing the wrath of
the aristocratic family.
A contemporary violinist and composer
was Benedetto Marcello, whose melodramatic affair
has been described by Crowest and may be quoted here,
with full permission to believe as much of it as you
please.
“Marcello was the victim of
a hopeless passion for a beautiful lady, Leonora Manfrotti,
and on the occasion of her marriage to Paolo
Seranzo, a Venetian of high rank, Marcello was unwise
enough to send her a rose and a billet-doux containing
words more complimentary to the lady’s beauty
than to her taste in the choice of a husband.
This epistle, coming to Seranzo’s notice, caused
him so violent a fit of jealousy that he tormented
his young wife by supervision and suspicion to such
an extent that she actually sank under his ill-treatment
and died. Her body was laid out in state in the
church ‘Dei Frari,’ and here Marcello
seeing it, learned the ill effects of his rash passion.
He fell into a state of melancholy madness, and at
last, having with the craft and ingenuity of a madman
succeeded in stealing the body of his love, he conveyed
it to a ruined crypt in one of the neighbouring islands,
which, bearing the reputation of being haunted, was
seldom visited by any one. Here, watched only
by a faithful old nurse, he sat day and night watching
the dead form of Leonora, singing and playing to it
as though by the force of music he would recall her
to life.
“Long ere this, Venice, and
indeed Italy, was full of excitement at the composition
of some unknown musician (no other than Marcello).
Among other admirers of this music was Eliade, twin
sister of Leonora, and resembling her so closely that
even friends could scarcely distinguish her.
Eliade had even been effected to insensibility by the
strain of the unknown, and hearing one day a gondola
pass, in which a voice was singing one of the songs
which was an especial favourite, in such a way as
she had never heard it sung before, she followed and
traced the gondola to the deserted island. A
visit to this island resulted in a meeting with the
old nurse, and a few explanations. The ingenious
woman contrived to take advantage of a short absence
of Marcello, and, substituting the living sister for
the dead one, awaited the mad musician. This
time, however, his usual invocation was not in vain:
as he called on Leonora to awake, a living image arose
from the coffin, and Marcello, restored to happiness
by the delusion, was quite content with the exchange
when he found out that, although the lady was not
Leonora, she was a devoted admirer of his musical skill,
and professed an ‘affinity of soul’ for
him, in which her sister had been wanting. Their
happiness was short-lived, for Marcello died a few
years after their marriage.”
This has a faint resemblance to the
romance of “The Quick or the Dead,” with
a certain vice-versation.
LOUIS SPOHR
To come back to earth: The eminent
violinist, Spohr, and his pupil, Francis Eck, made
an extensive concert-tour together, in which they
rivalled each other almost more in their rapid series
of amorous adventures, than in their more legitimate
concert work. While in St. Petersburg, Eck met
the daughter of one of the members of the Imperial
Orchestra, and began a flirtation, which she took so
seriously that her father gave him the alternative
of matrimony or Siberia. After some hesitation
he chose matrimony. Had he foreseen the sequel,
he would doubtless have greatly preferred Siberia,
for his wife was a virago, and collaborated with his
ill-health to guide him to the madhouse.
Spohr may have profited by Eck’s
experience, when some years later he met the beautiful
and brilliant Dorette Scheidler; she was eighteen
years old, and played that most becoming instrument,
the harp, as well as the piano and violin. They
appeared together in a court concert, and on the way
to her home, in the carriage, he made the not particularly
original proposition: “Shall we thus play
together for life?” She, with hardly more originality,
wept her consent upon his shoulder. They were
married without delay, and began a series of very successful
concert-tours. They seem to have been happy together
for twenty-six years, and they reared a large family.
Her death in 1832 broke down his health for several
months. But two years later, he then being fifty,
he married the skilful pianist, Marianne Pfeiffer,
over twenty years his junior. They also made
a brilliant concert-tour together.
PAGANINI, THE INFERNAL
Paganini, as everybody knows, sold
his soul to the devil for fame. He made the best
of the gamble, as he usually did when he gambled; for
the poor, innocent Lucifer got only a fourth-rate
soul, while Paganini secured a fame that will not
be surpassed while fiddlers fiddle.
Gambling was not Paganini’s
only vice. In spite of the fact that he will
always be almost as famous for his multiplex ugliness
as for his skill, women found him fascinating, and
kept him busy. When he was only seventeen, a
beautiful dame of Bologna abducted him and held him
prisoner in her country chateau, as once Liszt, his
rival in technical fame, was kept a few months.
Can there be any secret technical virtue in being
kidnapped thus? The fair Bolognese kept Paganini
captive for three years in this retreat, where he
fed upon scenery, love, and music. For her sake
he practised her favourite instrument, the guitar,
and worked miracles with it as with the violin.
At the age of twenty, Paganini broke the spell and
resumed his gipsying, persuading the public, and not
without reason, that he was aided by magic. He
lived for many years with the singer, Antonia Bianchi,
who bore him a son, Achille, whom he legitimised.
Antonia was devotion itself, until she was gradually
driven to a jealousy that was almost fiendish, and
led to a separation. Paganini himself tells this
story:
“Antonia was constantly tormented
by the most fearful jealousy. One day, she happened
to be behind my chair when I was writing some lines
in the album of a great pianist, and, when she read
the few amiable words I had composed in honour of
the artist, to whom the book belonged, she tore it
from my hands, demolished it on the spot. So
fearful was her rage, she would have assassinated me.”
When he died, he left his son a fortune
of $400,000. Surely this sum alone proves the
justice of the popular belief that he had sold himself
to the devil, and, knowing it, none can doubt the story
Liszt quotes in one of his essays concerning the G
string of Paganini’s violin: “It was
the intestine of his wife, whom he had killed with
his own hands.” There is no record of the
secret marriage, but there is record enough of the
superhuman power of the melodies he drew from that
string.
DE BERIOT, SONTAG, AND MALIBRAN
Among the chief contemporaries of
Paganini was De Beriot. When he was not quite
thirty, he found himself in Paris at the time of the
deadly vocal feud between Sontag and Malibran.
The rivalry of the two singers was ended by the influence
of music. One night, singing together the duet
from “Semiramide,” each was so overcome
at the beauty of the other’s voice and art,
that they embraced and became friends.
De Beriot had an equally strange experience
with the two women. He fell madly in love with
Sontag, slight, blue-eyed and blonde as she was, and
then only twenty-five. But De Beriot paid his
court in vain, because at this time Sontag was engaged
to the young diplomat, Count Rossi; as it would have
hurt his influence to be engaged to the child of strolling
players, the engagement was kept secret, until the
count could persuade the King of Prussia to grant
her a patent of nobility. When they were married,
she gave up the stage, and travelled from court to
court with her husband, singing only for charity.
As her brother said: “Rossi made my sister
happy, in the best sense of the word. To the day
of their death they loved each other as on their wedding-day.”
But political troubles ruined the
count’s fortunes, and it seemed necessary for
the countess to return to the stage. Now again
the court wished to separate diplomacy from the drama
played on the open stage. Rossi was told that
he might retain his ambassadorship if he would formally
separate from his wife, at least until she could again
leave the stage. But Rossi believed that it was
his turn to make a sacrifice, and could not bear a
separation; so he resigned, and travelled with his
wife. They came to America, and in Mexico the
cholera ended her beautiful life at the age of forty-nine.
It was into this ideal romance that
De Beriot had wandered unwittingly in 1830. It
was fortunate that he could not prevail against the
noble Count Rossi, even though his failure caused
him pain. It almost cost him his health, and
he suffered so obviously that his friends were alarmed.
Among those endeavouring to console him was Madame
Malibran, whom people, who like exclusive superlatives,
have been pleased to select as the greatest singer
in the history of music. Like Sontag, she was
the child of stage people, and, indeed, had made her
first appearance at the age of five.
In 1826 she, and that wonderful assembly,
the Garcia family, had found themselves in New York,
where an old French merchant, supposed to be rich,
married her. It is certain that Malibran married
the old merchant for his money a thing
so common that one cannot stop to express indignation.
The horrible thing is that, as it turned out, the old
man had also an eye to the weather. He had hoped
to stave off bankruptcy by marrying the prosperous
singer. He succeeded in getting neither her money
nor her heart, for she left him within a year and returned
to Paris.
Here, then, we find her again, with
her rival Sontag out of the way, and Sontag’s
lover to console. She furnished him with contrast
enough, for she differed from Sontag in these respects,
that she was only twenty-two, she was a contralto,
dark and Spanish, and was known to be married.
Her consolation of De Beriot was complete. They
lived together the rest of her life, touring in concerts
occasionally, with enormous financial success, she
creating an immortal name as an operatic singer, and
he as a violinist. In 1831 they built a palatial
home in the suburbs of Brussels, where they spent
the time when they were not travelling. She bore
him a son and a daughter, the latter dying in infancy.
Meanwhile, she was trying to divorce
her husband, who was now living in Paris. The
freedom was a long while coming, and it was 1836 before
the Gordian knot was cut. On March 26th of the
same year, she and De Beriot were married. The
very next month, in London, she was thrown from a
horse and more severely injured than she realised.
As soon as she could, she resumed her concerts; brain-fever
attacked her. She died at the age of twenty-eight.
Two hours after her death, De Beriot
hastened away to make sure of the possession of the
wealth this young woman had already heaped up.
He did not wait for the funeral, and all Europe was
scandalised. But it is claimed in his defence
that he had been devoted to her, and during her illness
had never left her side, and that his mercenary haste
was due to his fear that a moment’s delay might
give Monsieur Malibran a chance to claim her property,
and thus rob the child she had borne De Beriot of
his inheritance. Those who know the peculiar attitude
the French law takes toward the property of a wife,
can understand the difficulty of the situation.
In any case, the child was saved from
poverty or from the necessity of professionalism in
later life, though he was a distinguished pianist.
As for De Beriot, after the success of his mission
he returned to the country home and remained in seclusion,
not playing again in public for one year. Two
years later he married Fraeulein Huber, the daughter
of a Vienna magistrate and the adopted ward of a prince.
De Beriot travelled little after this, and lived to
be sixty-eight years old. He died in blindness
that had been creeping on him for the last eighteen
years of his life.