Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 187
Scan 187
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
8 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1OLD VIOLINS
3that no one should ever play upon it, recall Shakespeare's curse upon those who should move his bones. The great musician's orders have not been quite so scrupulously observed as those of the immortal bard of Avon. In "My Musical Life" will be found my "Homage à Paganini," together with a woodcut of Danton's very fine bust, given to me by John Ella, who played in the orchestra among the violins when first Paganini visited England.
5Nothing is so ephemeral as the fame of an orator, actor, or musician, unless they leave books or music behind them. Henceforth the phonograph may do something to give future generations some idea of the fascination which lived and died with them; but no phonograph will ever give us even a faint echo of Siddons' declamation or Paganini's playing; these are alike buried with the generation which they charmed and electrified. But in Leigh Hunt's description of Paganini's performance we have something like a pictorial phonograph, if I may hazard the hibernianism, of the "Pale Musician's" mighty personality and power. Somewhere between the forties and fifties, I remember, as a very young boy, standing awestruck before a thin, gaunt, dislocated wax effigy of Paganini in an ill-fitting dresscoat, with wild dreamy eyes and arm uplifted high—just as Leigh Hunt describes him—before his bow came down like a crash of thunder on the strings; but let the lively and graphic essayist who heard him, speak for himself:—
7"Paganini, the first time I saw and heard him, and the
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