A story of music, shadow and fear. .
by Marialuisa Veneziano
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🎧 MUSIC FOR LETTURE
Niccolò Paganini – Concerto for violin no. 1 in re major, op. 6
I. Allegro maeste
To accompany this story, let Paganini himself enter the room.
The first movement of his Concerto No. 1 has something theatrical and almost disturbing: the violin seduces, challenges, climbs towards the impossible, as if he wanted to demonstrate that for him the limits granted to other men are no longer valid.
It is the ideal music to follow "The company of the last row“.
Because while Paganini looks for the perfect sound, it may be worth asking:
How much of us are willing to lose even if we never miss?
Men have always found it easier to believe the devil than the talent of others.
The thing, if you consider it without too much haste, even has its own logic. The devil, at least, offers an explanation. The talent is not. The talent forces us to admit that another human being, provided little by little of our own number of fingers, bones and hours in the day, managed there where we would not even have arrived with a lifetime of trials and a reasonable amount of recommendations.
For this reason, when Niccolò Paganini began to make a violin something that seemed to exceed the possibilities of a violin, many preferred to think that some supernatural power had occurred.
It was more consoling.
No one knew exactly when the legend was born.
Someone swore he saw a black figure on the violinist's shoulder during a concert. Another claimed that a rope, broken in the middle of an execution, had continued to sing without being touched. A lady of excellent family, whose imagination was considerably superior to the musical ear, told she had two red eyes reflected in the paint of the instrument.
Versions increased from city to city.
Paganini listened to them.
At first he laughed.
Then he began to notice that every new story filled some extra place at the theatre.
He finally stopped worrying about where the truth ended and where legend began.
Moreover, fame also has its own music; and those who have learned to recognize it hardly give up listening to it.
One evening, after a particularly lucky concert, the theater seemed decided not to return it to the night.
The applause continued.
Paganini had already returned to the stage three times and every time he found the audience still standing.
A lady threw a flower.
A young man shouted his name.
An old master, who for many years considered the enthusiasm a disease of youth, had the shiny eyes and was visibly irritated.
Paganini saluted again.
When he could finally retire into the dressing room, he felt the particular fatigue that follows the great successes: not the fatigue of the body, but the strange vertigo of those who, for a few hours, had hundreds of people turned towards themselves.
He took off his gloves slowly.
Tickets, bouquets of flowers, invitations to dinner, compliments written with more or less legible prints were already on the table.
Paganini observed them without touching them.
Then he went out of the dressing room to search for water.
It was then that he heard two men converse behind a locked door.
— Extraordinary — said the first.
— That's amazing.
He felt the noise of a coat slipped quickly.
Then the other one added, almost with insecurity:
— But in fifty years, who will remember?
The two moved away.
They probably forgot that phrase before they even reached the exit.
Paganini doesn't.
The words, it must be said, have a very unusual behaviour. Some of us fall and fall. Others, although pronounced without intention, find exactly the crack in which to stick.
She found hers.
Paganini returned to the dressing room.
He sat in front of the mirror.
He did nothing for a few minutes.
In the glass he saw his skinny face, black hair, still alive eyes of the concert. Behind him, on the wall, the light of the candle stretched a subtle figure.
«In fifty years.»
He tried to smile.
He couldn't.
He always knew he had to die. That wasn't the discovery.
What suddenly seemed intolerable was another thing: that one day his name could no longer mean anything.
To die is a disgrace that time distributes with admirable impartiality; and precisely because no one is exempt, men end up accepting it with a certain mood.
Being forgotten is different.
It is to die a second time, without even the consolation of knowing in which day it happened.
That night Paganini slept little.
Every time she closed her eyes, she felt that sentence again.
In fifty years.
In fifty years.
In fifty years.
In the next few days no one noticed anything.
Paganini continued to travel.
He tried.
It sounded.
He received guests.
She smiled at the ladies.
He responded to journalists.
But inside him something changed place.
He wasn't just trying to be big anymore.
Being great still meant being able to be overcome.
He didn't even want to be the best.
Even the best, sooner or later, meets someone who comes after.
Paganini wanted to become something different.
He wanted to be unrepeatable.
He thus began to demand from himself what no man should claim from another, and that instead the particularly ambitious men demand with surprising ease from themselves: the complete absence of error.
A minimum inaccuracy was enough to ruin him an evening.
A successful pass a hundred times became useless if a finger hesitated to the centennial.
He was trying for hours.
Sometimes until you feel your hand hardened.
One evening the theatre keeper found it on the stage when all the lamps had been turned off except two.
— Teacher, it's late.
— I know.
— I should close.
— Close.
The keeper looked at the violin.
Then he looked at Paganini.
He wisely decided that it was not his job to establish how to close a theatre leaving inside the most famous violinist in Europe, and he left.
It was raining outside.
Paganini remained alone.
He took a ride.
He did.
He stopped.
I'll shoot it.
A note came out just less clean than it would have liked.
It stiffened.
She repeated it.
The note still escaped.
This time Paganini lowered the violin.
Waiting.
As if, giving a few seconds to silence, he could persuade his body to be ashamed.
Then he started again.
The note failed a third time.
— Damn it.
From the bottom of the audience was an applause.
One.
Slow.
Paganini turned.
In the last row a man sat.
He wouldn't have known how long he was there.
He wore a dark dress of great cut, ash gloves and held a stick in his hands.
He didn't have horns.
He had no eyes on fire.
He didn't smell sulfur.
Which, if you allow, would make this much easier.
— The theatre is closed — said Paganini.
— I know.
— So how did you get in?
The man lifted just the stick.
— Men always ask how to enter. Rarely wonder why a door was left open.
Paganini fixed it.
— Who are you?
— An entrepreneur.
— I don't need contractors.
— Those you know, maybe.
Man stood up.
He began to descend to the stage.
The stick scanned every step.
Tac.
Tac.
Tac.
Paganini did not move a muscle.
— I heard you. — said the man.
— Then you've heard enough.
— I heard three mistakes.
Paganini squeezed his hand on the bow.
— Two.
The other smiled.
— Three.
He followed a silence.
— See? — he finally said. — That's your problem.
— What?
The man came in front of the stage.
— You can't bear something to escape.
Paganini distracted his gaze.
— You don't know anything about me.
— You want to be remembered.
This time Paganini looked at him.
Man continued:
— It's not a fault.
— Everyone wants to be remembered.
— No. Most men want to be loved while they live. You have more expensive aspirations.
Paganini felt a thrill.
— Go away.
— I could help you.
The violinist laughed, but it was a short laugh.
— You?
— I could take away your mistake.
Paganini did not answer.
Man lifted his eyes toward him.
— No hesitation. No tremors. No surrender. What you think, fingers will. What you will ask the violin, the violin will give you.
Paganini should have laughed again.
But he asked:
— What about the audience?
— The audience will no longer come to listen to you.
A break.
— He'll come to say he saw you.
The sentence fell into the empty theatre.
And it was precisely what Paganini wanted to hear.
— What about the price?
Man cried the head.
Paganini said:
— My soul?
The impresario burst out laughing.
He laughed so naturally that the violinist was almost irritated.
— The soul? Master, please. It is a very bulky commodity and, among us, much overrated.
Then he pointed the floor.
— I just need your shadow.
Paganini looked at his feet.
The candle projected an elongated figure behind him.
— My shadow?
— That's it.
— What would you do with it?
— It's my business.
Paganini continued to look at her.
He seemed absurd.
A shadow didn’t weigh.
He wasn't talking.
She didn't suffer.
It didn't sound.
It was just a consequence of light.
— Take her.
Man did not smile.
He raised a hand.
A candle is lost.
Then the other.
The theater disappeared.
For a few seconds, Paganini only heard the rain and breath.
Then a flame turned on again.
The company was gone.
Paganini turned to the wall.
Nothing.
He raised an arm.
The wall was empty.
He moved under the candle.
Nothing yet.
She felt a stomach fit.
It was scared.
Vera.
But it lasted little.
So little that already the aftermath Paganini would have abstained in reminding her.
At first, change seemed to him a blessing.
Her hands were obedient.
The violin obeyed.
Even the body seemed to have forgotten the possibility of failing.
Paganini entered the scene and no longer had that short moment, almost imperceptible, in which every musician, before the first note, feels open before himself the possibility of disaster.
That moment had disappeared.
He played.
Enough.
The difficulties stopped appearing to him.
The harmonics were lit with crystalline precision.
The double strings seemed a perfectly governed conversation.
The most risky jumps didn't even cost him a thought.
The audience was overwhelmed.
The legend grew.
In a city they said that a rope had broken and that Paganini had finished the piece as if nothing were.
In another it was reported that a woman had fainted at the first variation.
Elsewhere a man claimed to have seen an invisible hand move the bow along with his.
Paganini did not forget.
A journalist, one evening, asked him:
— Teacher, is it true that the devil suggests certain passages?
Paganini replied:
— If he did, he would have a great musical taste.
The sentence went around the cities.
The theatres filled even more.
And Paganini, who had feared he was forgotten, began to be remembered before he was absent.
He should have been happy.
He thought he was.
Then things started harder to name.
It wasn't a precise morning.
There was no signal.
No bells sounded to announce that he was losing something.
Simply, one day he realized that before a concert he was no longer afraid.
He was glad.
A few weeks later he received a letter from home.
He read it during breakfast.
It was a loving letter.
He put it next to the cup.
Only in the evening, almost by chance, he realized that he had no nostalgia.
It just disturbed him.
Then an orchestra musician told him that his wife was seriously ill.
Paganini spoke kind words.
The words were perfect.
That's why he noticed.
As he spoke, nothing happened within him.
He then began to observe himself.
He did so with the same precision he had always observed his hands.
A carriage hit a dog in front of the theatre.
People stopped.
A woman cried.
Paganini continued.
He later recalled the scene and tried to question himself.
He didn't feel remorse.
He didn't feel sad.
He didn't even feel bothered.
It was then that he thought for the first time in the shadows.
That night he stayed long in front of a candle.
He moved right.
Then left.
He stepped back.
The wall continued to return nothing.
Paganini raised a hand towards the wall.
It was absurd, of course.
No man can touch what's missing.
And yet he stayed there.
He began to understand that the impresario had not taken anything useless from him.
But he still didn't understand what.
The next day he sounded like he never played.
The public shouted his name.
He saluted.
That night, for the first time, the applause seemed only to him noise.
Agnese appeared a few weeks later.
Paganini saw it behind the scenes of a small theatre, sitting on a wooden case.
He had his legs too short to get to the floor and held a button in his hand that slipped back and forth between his fingers.
He passed.
The girl followed him with her eyes.
Paganini made two more steps, then returned.
— Who are you?
— Agnes.
— That I understood from the way you responded. I meant what you're doing here.
Agnese pointed out a woman who was making a costume.
— My aunt works in the theater.
— What about you?
— I'm waiting.
— It's a tough job.
The child looked at him without knowing if he was joking.
Paganini directed the stage.
— Did you hear me?
— Yes.
— Do you like the violin?
Agnese thought about it.
— Depends.
That answer surprises him.
— From what?
— Who's playing it?
Paganini smiled.
— How do I sound?
— Great.
It should have been enough.
It wasn't enough.
— Just fine?
Agnes lowered his eyes.
— Everyone says you're the best in the world.
— What about you?
The child was silent.
Paganini stood by her.
— Come on.
— Aren't you mad?
— No.
— Promise?
— Promise.
Agnese watched him.
— When you play, I don't cry.
For a few moments, Paganini thought he misunderstood.
— And should he?
— I don't know.
— Then why do you say that?
The child turned the button again.
— My mom was singing bad.
Paganini did not speak.
— She died last year.
The baby's voice didn't change, but the button stopped moving.
— But when he was singing, I was crying sometimes.
Paganini sat down better.
— Maybe because she was your mother.
— Maybe.
They were silent.
Then he asked:
— What did she sing?
Agnese sang a melody.
It was simple.
Few notes.
A nest as there are so many, of those that seem not to belong to anyone because they always belong to someone.
Paganini listened to her once.
He took the violin.
She repeated it.
— Was it?
Agnese shook the boss.
Paganini played her again.
This time slower.
— No.
He fixed it.
— Did you change any notes?
— I don't know.
— Try again.
The girl sang.
Paganini listened.
He waved again.
Perfectly.
— That's it.
Agnese still shook the boss.
For the first time, Paganini felt something similar to irritation.
And that little irritation almost pleased him.
— Baby, you can't tell me I'm playing it wrong.
— I didn't say bad.
— So?
Agnese approached the violin.
He indicated a point of melody.
— Here.
— Here what?
— Mom was always wrong with this note.
Paganini lowered the bow.
— Then your mother sang her badly.
Agnese thought about it.
— Maybe.
Then he added:
— But when that note came, I knew it was her.
Her aunt called her.
Agnese came out of the box and ran away.
Paganini remained still.
He watched the violin.
He tried to repeat the melody.
He came to that note.
The finger automatically went to the right place.
The note came out pure.
Paganini tried again.
Still pure.
Third time.
Perfect.
He put the violin.
He didn't want to receive anyone that night.
He slept badly.
He dreamed of his shadow.
He was walking in front of him.
Paganini chased her along a road she didn't recognize.
The more it accelerated, the more it moved away.
At some point the shadow stopped.
He turned.
He had no face.
Yet Paganini knew he was crying.
He woke up.
The room was dark.
I lit a candle.
He looked at the wall.
Nothing.
This time fear does not disappear immediately.
Rimase.
Baby.
Ostinata.
And Paganini, instead of rejecting it, noticed with astonishment that he was almost grateful.
It was the first thing she'd heard for months.
He started looking for the businessman.
At first with discretion.
Then no longer to look ridiculous.
He asked theater directors.
To the exits.
To musicians.
In hotels.
He always described the same things: the dark dress, the stick, the ash gloves.
No one remembered that man.
An old keeper, however, made himself the sign of the cross.
Paganini stopped.
— Do you know him?
— No.
— Then why did you score?
The old man shook his back.
— For caution.
Caution, we must recognize it, saved many men from explanations.
Days passed.
Then weeks.
Paganini continued to play.
Success did not diminish.
But now, when the audience stood up, he looked at the walls.
He was looking for something that didn't appear.
One evening he returned to the theatre where everything began.
It was late.
He went on stage.
He supported the violin over a chair.
— I know you're here.
Nothing.
— Come out.
Silence remained motionless.
Paganini lowered his head.
Then, from the bottom:
Tac.
Tac.
Tac.
Man appeared in darkness.
— Teacher.
Paganini didn't wait.
— I want my shadow back.
The impresario seemed genuinely curious.
— Why?
— You know that.
— I'd like to hear that.
Paganini stepped towards him.
— I don't feel anything anymore.
The man observed it.
— You didn't ask me to be happy.
He made another step.
— You asked me to be perfect.
— You tricked me.
— No.
— You took me...
— I didn't take anything you didn't give me.
Paganini did.
The impresario indicated his breast.
— You wanted to get rid of fear.
— Yes.
— Exhibitation.
— Yes.
— Of doubt.
Paganini did not answer.
Man just smiled.
— But some things live close.
— What does that mean?
— It means you can't tear a room out of a house without shaking its walls.
Paganini looked at him.
— You thought fear was just cowardice. But it is also proof that something can be lost. You thought doubt was just weakness. But it is what prevents man from believing infallible. You thought the pain was useless.
The impresario approached again.
— How would you recognize that of others?
Paganini lowered his eyes.
— Give it back.
— I can't.
— What's the price?
Man sighed.
— Always money.
— My violin.
— No.
— Everything I've earned.
— Not even.
— So what do you want?
The impresario turned towards a poster hanging on the wall.
It was the concert of the next day.
The most important of the season.
— I want you to risk it.
Paganini almost laughed.
— Every time I get on the stage I risk.
— No. You haven't risked anything for a long time.
Man turned.
— Tomorrow you'll get on stage and accept that something can escape.
Paganini fixed it.
— Should I be wrong on purpose?
— It would still be control.
— So what do you want?
— That for once you do not defend your perfection.
Paganini looked at the poster.
His name was huge.
— In front of everyone?
— The vulnerability in a closed room is only a general test.
Paganini remained silent.
— They could laugh.
— Yes.
— They could say I'm done.
— Of course.
— I could lose everything.
The company smiled.
— You're finally scared again.
Paganini raised his eyes.
The man had disappeared.
The next night the theater was gremished.
There was no empty chair left.
The ladies were shaking fans.
Men were arguing out loud.
A young violinist held the score on his knees as a soldier holds a map before the battle.
They told stories about Paganini before he appeared.
Someone claimed he spent years in prison.
Another one who learned to play from a spirit.
A third made sure he saw the strings of his violin move by himself.
The public, when he paid the ticket, demands at least one miracle; if you can add a crime or an apparition, hardly protest.
Paganini entered.
The applause was immediate.
He jumped.
He raised the violin.
For a moment he remained still.
He saw the theatre in front of him.
He saw the weight of his eyes.
And he felt scared.
He didn't reject her.
He started.
It was great.
Maybe more than ever.
Every step could.
The difficulties opened in front of his fingers as doors.
The public was still.
Paganini understood, almost with relief, that he could still choose.
He could finish the concert like this.
He could keep the myth.
No one would know anything.
The impresario could not force him.
He would have continued to be perfect.
He would have continued to be empty.
He's still singing.
Then, at the end of the hall, he saw Agnes.
She was sitting next to her aunt.
The baby was watching him.
Paganini heard that phrase back.
«When that note came, I knew it was her.»
The bow slowed down.
The concert should have continued.
Paganini stopped.
The theatre was suspended.
The conductor looked at him.
Paganini lowered his eyes.
Then a different melody began.
The lullaby.
A Mormon crossed the hall.
It was simple.
Too easy for those who came to see the monster.
Too simple for those who wanted to be amazed.
Paganini continued.
Every note approached that one.
The wrong one.
The one who couldn't be wrong anymore.
The finger came to the exact point.
The hand trembled.
Paganini felt the ancient instinct to correct everything.
A millimeter.
Just a millimeter.
A life of discipline ordered him to move his finger.
Close your eyes.
He didn't.
The note went out.
Fragile.
Written.
Human.
Somebody laugh.
It was a little laugh.
But Paganini felt it distinctly.
He burned his face.
He was ashamed.
Immediately after fear.
Then something even more painful.
He realized he was trembling his breath.
He kept playing.
The melody was no longer perfect.
She was alive.
Paganini lifted his eyes.
Agnese was crying.
Not because he played better.
Not because he was the world's greatest violinist.
She was crying because for a few moments, that music had returned a person to her.
His mother.
It was then that Paganini understood.
The audience had always admired what was exceptional in him.
Agnes had recognized what in a note was irrepetibly human.
The closest candle to the stage rose.
A dark line appeared on the floor.
Paganini saw her stretch behind her.
One arm.
A shoulder.
The violin.
The head.
His shadow.
Don't go straight.
Not perfect.
His.
He kept playing.
When he finished, the theatre remained silent.
Paganini never knew how long he lasted.
Maybe a second.
Maybe enough.
Then someone applauded.
Another followed him.
Then many.
Not everyone.
And this was the most extraordinary thing of the evening:
Paganini didn't care.
Later he returned to the empty room.
On the last armchair he found a sheet.
It was the contract.
His signature was missing.
There was only one sentence left.
Paganini read it.
He didn't read it a second time.
He poisoned the leaf to the candle and let it burn.
The fire slowly ascended along the paper.
On the wall, behind him, the shadow made the same gesture.
Paganini looked at her.
For the first time he smiled at what he did not obey him perfectly.
In the following years the legend continued.
In fact, he improved.
The men continued to say that Niccolò Paganini had sold the soul to the devil.
Someone vowed to have seen Satan lead his bow.
Others told about spirits.
Others added details never happened that, being more interesting than the truth, they naturally had a much greater fortune.
The truth, as often happens to her when she arrives after a good legend, she no longer found a seat.
Maybe Paganini never sold the soul to the devil.
Perhaps he had done something much more common and, for this reason, more dangerous.
He wanted to get rid of everything he could tremble in him.
And he discovered that in the same place he also lived everything he could love.
One morning he went out of a theater.
The sun was low.
His shadow stretched out in front of him on the side.
Paganini slowed down.
He watched her cross the rocks, climb on the edge of a wall, break against a wheel and come back a little further.
He didn't have a perfect shape.
He never had it.
For a few moments he remained still.
Then he started walking again.
The shadow came after him.
Turn around.
Changeable.
True.
And Niccolò Paganini, who for so long wanted to be more than a man, finally discovered that it was enough to have returned whole.
Not all that makes us fragile is a defect to correct.
Fear, doubt, error and even our wounds are also the place from which we learn to recognize others and to let us recognize.
Perfection can arouse wonder.
But that's what trembles sometimes to make us feel less alone.
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