Caprices, Violin, M.S.25, op. 1, Nos. 13, 14, 16 (c. 1805)
NICOLÒ PAGANINI
Born 27 October 1782, Genoa, Italy.
Died 27 May 1840, Nice, France.
It has always been difficult to think of the greatest violin virtuoso the world has ever known as an underrated musician and composer, but this seems to be his posthumous fate. In his time, audiences marveled at his ability, and at his musical compositions, which only he among his many competitive contemporaries could play. Soon after his death, other violinists learned how to negotiate at least some of these pieces. Still others made simplified arrangements so that they could seem to manage the originals when actually faking them. The texts of many of his compositions thus became distorted while the original manuscripts passed into the hands of people whose interests dictated keeping them away from the public.
Critics scorned the five violin concertos and Paganini’s other works, including those he wrote for himself as an incomparable guitarist, as works of virtuosity lacking real musical substance. This idea began as a trickle in the 1830s and grew into common wisdom by the beginning of the 20th century. Yet all evidence shows Paganini to have been a man of great taste and judgment. He encouraged many young composers who became important figures afterwards, and may have been the first man in Europe to truly appreciate the late Beethoven string quartets. He organized a quartet of his own, made up of the best possible players all playing updated and reconditioned Stradivarius instruments to tour Europe playing op. 127, 130, 131, 132, 133 and 135. He hoped that audiences wanting to hear him play would come away with increased appreciation of Beethoven’s brilliant and transcendent, if difficult, achievement. Unhappily this did not happen, and it took several generations for the public to come to terms with late Beethoven.
Paganini published the twenty-four Caprices, opus 1, in his lifetime, so that the text has remained fairly clear and uncontroversial. This single, unique work became the basis of virtuoso violin technique as it developed in the second half of the 19th century. The French, German and Russian schools may each have altered its message in their own ways, but through all that the Caprices live on as his one acknowledged masterpiece. The piano virtuosity of Thalberg, Moscheles, Liszt and Chopin, also springs from Paganini’s Caprices. Many of these composers arranged some of them for piano. And the famous 24th in A minor, itself a breath-taking theme-and-variations form, became the subject of many similar treatments by all these composers, not to mention Brahms’ magnificent op. 35, and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini. But even now, at violin solo renditions of the Caprices, audiences sit with mouths agape at the almost inhuman skill required to project each of these pieces, and thus do not focus on the musical ideas or expressive qualities within them. This cannot be said of the piano compositions inspired by Paganini, where enthralled audiences drink in most every nuance, no matter how the pianist shows off. The famous eighteenth variation of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody, for example, has become the model of Romantic passion that Paganini thought he had achieved in his own work.
The fourteenth, thirteenth and sixteenth of the Caprices that comprise this evening’s selection each displays a special character, expressiveness and form. Each begins with a few measures of a distinctive opening gesture marked with a repeat sign so that its literal reiteration sinks into the heads of the listeners before the complex development unfolds. The governing sonority in number 14 in E-flat major imitates the sound of trumpets and horns, perhaps in a municipal festival. To negotiate this, the soloist must go beyond the usual double stops to triple stops, and in the climax, quadruple stops. This Moderato movement may not seem to require great virtuosity, but the management of three and four strings simultaneously takes great strength and skill. Its harmonic momentum carries the movement through several twists and turns in the most masterful way.
The evocation of the gypsy fiddler in number 13 in B-flat major acts as well as an etude in parallel thirds, a management of rapid alternating octaves and a study in the niceties of hemiola (a shifting of duple and triple rhythmic divisions). Every one of the gypsy’s shifting moods, in all their sudden capriciousness, Paganini captures in this portrait in Minuet-and-Trio form. When one thinks of the gypsy style this piece always comes to mind first, and may have been the inspiration for the many Zigeunerweisen of subsequent 19th-century masters, all the way to the epic-scale and magnificent Tzigane of Ravel.
Number 16 in G minor echoes the similar G-minor finale of the first Sonata for unaccompanied violin by Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as several similar sounding Presto movements. I believe all violinists take this Presto (and the Bach too, for that matter) too fast. The chief evidence for this can be observed in measures 39-44, where Paganini asks for rapid shifts in bowing and articulation that no one bothers to observe, because they become impossible to execute at the tempo chosen at the outset. I can testify to witnessing Jascha Heifetz, Michael Rabin, and Mischa Elman all make that same strategic mistake; I have always felt that if Paganini had the reputation as a magisterial composer of a Bach or a Brahms, that they would not overlook this detail. This piece displays the contrapuntal brilliance of the violin in much the same way as so many of the Bach movements do, but with a Romantic sonority and sense of rhythmic drive. And the constant push forward would work just as well at a slightly slower reading than the one we invariably hear.
An unusual detail about the notation of number 16: within its 53 measures, it employs the f sign (for forte) seventy times, an even more impressive statistic when one notes that it does not appear even once in m. 27-32 or 36-45. I know of no other piece to use this sign in this way. One can posit at least six different, though somewhat overlapping reasons for Paganini to employ this sign in so obsessive a manner, but this is not the place to go into detail about all of these. Suffice it to say that the violinist must not let the dynamic level or the accentual weight at the point of each f flag or wane. Thus another element of virtuosity comes into play in this number.
This triptych cannot fail to impress. I have always found it easier on both violinist and listeners to hear three or four of these at a time rather than the entire set. Besides, after trying to play them all, one would have to carry the fiddler out on his shield. This music NEVER employs a virtuoso technique for its own sake, but the substance of the music as music may best be taken in small portions, like a very rich French pastry. The increase in performance of samples of these pieces may ultimately raise the composer’s status in the serious music world. Why should Paganini continue to be a victim of his own success?
Joel Sheveloff
