This remarkable legend, under its obvious associations with the fearful and the grotesque, is so inviting for poetic treatment, that I have ventured on the following attempt: —
Grim-visag’d Satan on the Artist’s bed
Sat – and a cloud of sounds mirific spread!
Wild flow’d those notes, as from enchantment’s range,
“Wild, sweet, but incommunicably strange!”
Soft Luna, curious, as her sex beseems,
Shot through the casement her enquiring beams,
Which, entering, paler grew, yet half illum’d
The shade so deep that round the Arch-One gloomed:
And listening Night her pinions furled – for lo!
The Devil’s Soul, O!27 breathed beneath that bow!
Tranquil as death Tartini’s form reclin’d,
And sealing sleep was strong his eyes to bind;
But the wild music of the nether spheres
Was in a key that did unlock his ears.
Squat, like a toad or tailor, sat the Fiend,
And forward, to his task, his body leaned.
His griffin fingers, with their horny ends,
Hammer the stops; the bow submissive bends:
His lengthy chin, descending, forms a vice
With his sharp collar-bone, contrariwise,
To grasp the conscious instrument, held on
With ’scapeless gripe; – and, ever and anon,
As flows the strain, now quaint, and now sublime,
He marks, with beatings of his tail, the time!
Snakes gird his head; but, in that music’s bliss,
Enchanted, lose the discord of their hiss,
And twine in chords harmonic, though all mute,
As if they owned the sway of Orpheus’ lute.
Satan hath joy – for round his lips awhile
Creeps a sharp-set, sulphuric-acid smile;
And, at the mystic notes, successive sped,
Pleas’d, winketh he those eyes of flickering red,
And shakes the grizzly horrors of that head!
List! what a change! Soft wailings fill the air:
Plaintive and touching grows the demon-play’r.
Doth Satan mourn, with meltings all too late,
The sin and sorrow of his own sad state?
Night flies – the dream is past – and, pale and wan,
Starts from his spell-freed couch the anxious man.
Is it a marvel greater than his might,
Those winged sounds to summon back from flight?
To clutch them whole, in vain fond Hope inclin’d,
For Memory, overburthen’d, lagged behind,
Partly the strain fell ’neath Oblivion’s pall,
But it had partly “an un-dying fall;”
And, in that state defective, to the light
Brought forth – it lives – a relic of that night!
The next name for notice, in connexion with the Italian School of the instrument, is that of Francesco Maria Veracini (the younger), a great, but somewhat eccentric performer, who was born at Florence, at the close of the 17th century. Unlike his contemporary, Tartini, whose sensitive and modest disposition led him to court obscurity, Veracini was vain, ostentatious, and haughty. Various stories have been current in Italy about his arrogance and fantastic tricks, which obtained for him the designation of Capo pazzo. The following anecdote is sufficiently characteristic of him.
Being at Lucca at the time of the annual “Festa della Croce,” on which occasion it was customary for the principal professors of Italy, vocal and instrumental, to meet, Veracini put down his name for a Solo Concerto. When he entered the choir, to take possession of the principal place, he found it already occupied by the Padre Girolamo Laurenti,28 of Bologna, who, not knowing him, as he had been some years absent, asked him whither he was going? “To the place of first violin,” was the impetuous answer. Laurenti then explained that he had been always engaged to fill that post himself; but that if he wished to play a concerto, either at vespers or during high mass, he should have a place assigned to him. Veracini turned on his heel with contempt, and went to the lowest place in the orchestra. When he was called upon to play his concerto, he desired that the hoary old father would allow him, instead of it, to play a solo at the bottom of the choir, accompanied on the violoncello by Lanzetti. He played this in so brilliant and masterly a manner as to extort an e viva! in the public church; and, whenever he was about to make a close, he turned to Laurenti, and called out, Così si suona per fare il primo violino– “This is the way to play the first fiddle!”
Another characteristic story respecting this performer is the following: —
Pisendel, a native of Carlsburg, and one of the best violinists of the early part of the eighteenth century, piqued at the pride and hauteur of Veracini, who thought too highly of his own powers not to disdain a comparison of them with those of any performer then existing, determined, if possible, to mortify his conceit and self-consequence. For this purpose, while both were at Dresden, he composed a very difficult concerto, and engaged a ripienist, or inferior performer, to practise it till he had conceived the whole, and rendered the most intricate passages as familiar to his bow and finger as the more obvious and easy parts of the composition. He then took occasion, the practitioner being present, to request Veracini to perform it. The great executant condescended to comply; but did not get through the task without calling into requisition all his powers. When he had concluded, the ripienist, agreeably to his previous instructions, stepped up to the desk, and began to perform the same piece; upon which Veracini, in a passion, tore him away, and would have punished on the spot his perilous presumption, had not Pisendel actively interfered, and persuaded him, were it only for the jest of the thing, to “let the vain creature expose himself.” Veracini became pacified, the ripienist began again, and executed the whole even more perfectly than his precursor, who stamped on the floor with rage, swore he would never forgive Pisendel, and, scarcely less abashed than tormented, immediately quitted Dresden.
Veracini would give lessons to no one, except a nephew, who died young. The only master he himself had was his uncle, Antonio Veracini, of Florence; but, by travelling all over Europe, he formed a style of playing peculiar to himself. Besides being in the service of the King of Poland, he was for a considerable time at the various courts of Germany, and twice in England, where he composed several operas, and where Dr. Burney had the opportunity of witnessing and commenting on the bold and masterly character of his violin performance. Soon after his being here (about 1745), he was shipwrecked, and lost his two famous Steiner violins, reputed the best in the world, and all his effects. In his usual light style of discourse, he used to call one of these instruments St. Peter, and the other St. Paul.
As a composer, he had certainly a great share of whim and caprice; but he built his freaks on a good foundation, being an excellent contrapuntist; and indeed it is probable enough that these very freaks, if tested by a contact with some of the fiddle capriccios and