Nicolo Paganini: His Life and Work

He was called the devil's violinist. In an era before recording technology, Nicolo Paganini's performances became the stuff of legend - audiences wept, fainted, and whispered that he'd sold his soul. This early twentieth-century biography, written when memories of the man still lingered, traces the arc of that extraordinary life from his miserable childhood in Genoa - where his father kept him nearly imprisoned, practicing fourteen hours a day - through his scandalous affairs, gambling debts, mysterious illnesses, and his eventual coronation as the greatest violinist the world had ever seen. Stephen S. Stratton examines how this tormented genius invented techniques that still baffle violinists today, and how the political turbulence of nineteenth-century Europe shaped both the man and his revolutionary art. The portrait that emerges is neither hagiography nor condemnation: it is the complicated portrait of an artist whose suffering and brilliance were forever intertwined.