About Paganini

Niccolò Paganini (Genoa, October 27th, 1782 – Nice, May 27th, 1840), was an Italian violinist and composer. He was born in Genoa in 1782 among a modest family native from Carro (SP). His father Antonio was a trader and had a great passion for music. They lived in Vico Fosse del Colle, at Passo della Gatta Mora, a “carugio” of Genoa. Continuing the Italian school of Pietro Antonio Locatelli and Gaetano Pugnani, he is considered one the greatest violinist of the nineteenth Century for the mastery of the instrument as well as for the innovations particularly brought to the staccato and pizzicato. His activity as composer was connected to his activity as performer because he found unnatural performing music which he did not control completely. Since his childhood, Niccolò started learning the mandolin from his father and then moved to the violin. Paganini is considered an autodidact due to the low artistic value of his two teachers and because he received only thirty lessons from Gaspare Ghiretti. Despite this, at the age of 12 he performed in the churches of Genoa . In 1801, when he was only 19, he interrupted his career as concert performer and for some time dedicated himself to farming and studying guitar. Soon he became a guitar virtuoso and wrote many sonatas, variations and concerts that weren’t published. Unsatisfied, he started writing sonatas for violin and guitar, trios, quartets also for arc instruments. Paganini wrote for six strings guitar which at that time replaced the nine strings Spanish guitar (four double ones and a single one in the high part) and this explains his talent in the pizzicato plucking. In 1804, at the age of 22, he reappeared in Genoa . The next year he returned to Lucca where he became first solo violinist at the court of the princess Elisa Baciocchi, Napoleon’s sister.
In 1809, when the court moved to Florence , Paganini went with them. However, due to a banal incident he left and did not want to come back never again despite several invitations. In Turin he was invited by a relative of Napoleon, Paolina Borghese, to play in the Stupinigi castle. During his life, Paganini went through Italy three times, being clapped in several cities. The first one was Milan , where he was particularly loved. On October 29th, 1813 at the Carcano theatre the critics acclaimed him as the first violinist in the world. In the following years he performed 37 concerts both at the Scala and at the Carcano theatres. Since then, his precarious health condition prevented him from realizing that project. Instead, he went South to Palermo where his son Achille was born in 1825. Paganini loved so much this illegitimate child, conceived with the a member of the choir called Antonia Bianchi, that he paid to buy him and have him as a recognized son. In 1828 he went to Vienna where he received unanimous approval for his concerts. The Emperor Francesco II appointed him his virtuoso. After 20 concerts in Vienna , he went to Prague where many discussions rose regarding his value. From 1817 to1830 he composed six concerts for violin and orchestra (it is very famous the final of the second one called La Campanella ). Back in Genoa in 1832 he started the composition of the famous caprices for violin. In 1834 he wrote a sonata for viola variations on themes of Süssmayr and Rossini, serenades, nocturnal, tarantella. 1834 marks the beginning of the symptoms of a pulmonary disease not diagnosed at the time and characterized by uncontrollable cough which could last for an hour and prevented him to play concerts. This disease weakened him so much that more than twenty excellent European doctors were consulted but nobody could treat him. Paganini died on May 27th, 1840. Because of the rumors about him and his bad reputation (mostly due to the irreligious life lived), The Archbishop of Nice issued an edict refusing his body Christian burial. His corpse was embalmed and kept in the cellar of the house he died in (initially with the coffin open). After several displacement, only in the thirties the Church authorized his burial in the cemetery of Parma where he still lies. His graves is always full of fresh flowers and many tourists come visiting