Students will find all that he knew of his instrument and everything he
did in his Le Stregghe (The Witches), the Rondo de la Clochette, and the
Carnaval de Venise, which have been handed down precisely as he left
them in manuscript.
Signora Calcagno, who at one time dazzled Italy by the boldness and
brilliancy of her violin playing, was his pupil when she was seven
years old. The only other person who could boast having direct
instructions from him was his young fellow townsman, Camillo Ernesto
Sivori (1815-1894), who was in his day a great celebrity in European
musical centres, and who was familiar to concert-goers in this country,
especially in Boston, during the late forties and early fifties. He was
thought to produce a small but electric tone, and to play invariably in
tune. To him his master willed his Stradivarius violin, besides having
given him in life the famous Vuillaume copy of his Guarnerius, a set of
manuscript violin studies and a high artistic ideal.
A scholarly teacher and composer for the violin was the German Ludwig
Spohr (1784-1859), who was born the same year as the wizard Paganini,
and who, although having less scintillant genius than the weird Italian,
is believed to have had a more beneficent influence over violin playing
in his treatment of the instrument.
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