Paganini, the Violinist Said to Have a Pact with the Devil
Virtuosity, a ghostly thinness and rumours of infernal pacts: how Niccolò Paganini's dark legend arose and why his burial was delayed for decades.
No musician embodied the myth of the diabolical pact like Niccolò Paganini. Born in Genoa in 1782 and dead in Nice in 1840, the Ligurian violinist astonished European audiences with a technique that seemed to go beyond human limits. It was precisely this apparent impossibility that produced a dark legend which followed him in life and haunted him even after death. The myth, however, must be carefully separated from the documented biography.
A Virtuosity that Seemed Supernatural
Paganini developed a repertoire of effects that were then almost unknown: double harmonics, left-hand pizzicato while the bow kept playing, dizzying leaps, whole melodies performed on a single string. His Twenty-Four Caprices for solo violin, published in Milan in 1820, gather many of these inventions and are still a supreme test for violinists today.
The European tours that began in 1828, from Vienna to Paris and London, turned this skill into a mass phenomenon. Schubert, Liszt, Chopin and Schumann heard him and were deeply marked. Liszt in particular resolved to become the Paganini of the piano and transcribed several Caprices in his Transcendental Études after Paganini.
Rumours and the Demonic Image
Alongside admiration, disturbing rumours circulated. It was said that Paganini had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his talent, that he had learned to play in prison after a crime, or that the strings of his violin were made from the entrails of a murdered lover. These stories had no foundation, but newspapers and the public gladly fed them.
His physical appearance also played a part. Paganini was tall, extremely thin and pale, with long black hair and fragile health; later some physicians suggested a connective tissue disorder, but this is an uncertain retrospective diagnosis. The musician himself partly exploited this reputation, appearing on stage dressed in black and carefully managing the effect of his entrance. In Paris in 1831 he sent a letter to a music journal denying the rumour of his imprisonment.
A Burial Denied
The legend had concrete consequences. Paganini died in Nice on 27 May 1840 without having received the sacraments, and the bishop of the city refused burial in consecrated ground. For years the embalmed body was kept in various places, between Nice, Villefranche and the family's properties, while his son Achille conducted long negotiations with the church authorities.
Only in 1876 was the body received in the cemetery of Parma, where it still rests after a further transfer at the end of the century. His favourite violin, a Guarneri del Gesù that he called «il Cannone», the Cannon, was bequeathed to the city of Genoa and is kept in Palazzo Tursi. It is still played on special occasions by selected violinists, according to a civic tradition.
The case of Paganini shows how, in the Romantic age, exceptional talent could still be read through magical categories. The devil, in this story, is above all the name the public gave to what it could not explain. Today what remains is the music: the Caprices, the violin concertos and the variations that inspired Liszt, Brahms and Rachmaninoff.