The great Niccolò Paganini was born in Genoa in 1792; ever since his early childhood he managed to be spoken of, as during a measles attack he looked dead and at his funeral ceremony he suddenly moved , narrowly escaping burial.
His lifetime is rich in strange and mysterious events and/or behaviour which caused a sensation in people around him.
The improvisations exalting the impressive skills of his left hand conveyed thoroughly original violin sounds and harmonies, which Paganini only was able to bring out.
All this depended on the fact that , during his childhood, he was dominated by his father, who forced him to do exhausting violin practice all day long, so that his adult behaviour may be traced back to the hardness of his father's coercion!
Unfortunately, Paganini had delicate health, made even worse by a tooth abscess which spread to the whole lower jaw, with subsequent extraction of all of his teeth.
Despite this serious physical impairment, Paganini always managed to “capture” his large audiences with his magnificent performances. His violin became an integral part of the musician's body and the fingers moved following magic movements, giving originality to improvisation.
People say that the peculiar way of moving his left hand was due to the fact that it was smaller than his right hand, though there is no evidence in support of this theory.
What is certain is that Paganini, who always appeared at his concerts dressed in black, has handed down to posterity an indelible proof of extraordinary capabilities which no other violinist has showed since.
Moreover, the fascination he wielded on women was demonstrated by his numerous love affairs, which nonentheless were hardly ever expressions of true love as far as he was concerned; he only showed affection for his iligitimate son Achille!
Everybody is familiar with the sentence “Paganini does not repeat!”, but do we know how and when it was pronounced?
Here are the circumstances when the sentence was said. Paganini, in February 1818 , was performing one of his extraordinary concertos at Carignano Theatre in Turin and one of the spectators was Carlo Felice, who asked the musician to repeat the execution of a piece.
As Paganini used to improvise his playing, he answered with the famous sentence “PAGANINI DOES NOT REPEAT”, arousing both astonishment and irritation among the audience, so that he was no longer allowed to continue his tour in Turin.
His 24 capriccios for violin are well - renowned and so are his quartets for violin, viola, guitar and cello, like many other concertos such as Nos. 1/2/3/4/5/6 for violin.
Niccolò Paganini's artistic personality appears to be superb, thanks to his unparalled virtuosism, though the critics of his time sometimes attacked his dubious attitudes fiercely, without ever succeeding in tarnishing his personality.
Niccolò Paganini died in Nice on 27th May 1840, undermined by a lung disease.

Considering everything, I can claim that Niccolò Paganini has left a permanent message of extraordinary communicative skills, expressed through his sounds, magically transformed by his left hand, considered as a real master of the stringed instrument, as if it were bewitched!

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