CHAPTER IV.

THE HEART OF A VIOLINIST

  “From this did Paganini comb the fierce
   Electric sparks, or to tenuity
   Pull forth the inmost wailing of the wire?—­
   No catgut could swoon out so much of soul!”

   —­Browning, “Red Cotton Night-Cap Country.”

Many people have based their idea of the moral status of musicians and the moral effects of music upon a certain work by Tolstoi, who is no more eminent as a crusader in the fields of real life and real fiction, than he is incompetent as a critic of art.  His novel, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” is musically a hopeless fallacy.  And Tolstoi’s claim, that Beethoven must have written it under the inspiration of a too amorous mood, is pretty well answered by the fact that Beethoven, who was so liberal of his dedications to women, whenever they had inspired him, dedicated this work to two different violinists, both men.

It is said that he first inscribed it to George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, a mulatto violinist, who, being lucky enough to be born in Europe, was not ostracised from paleface society.  This can be only too well proved by the fact that Beethoven—­who spelled the man’s name “Brischdower”—­after dedicating the sonata to him, found that the Africo-European had been his successful rival in one of those numberless flirtations of his, in which Beethoven always came out second.  Indignant at his dusky rival’s success, Beethoven erased his name from the title-page and substituted that of Rudolphe Kreutzer.  The curious thing about this great piece of music, known to fame as the “Kreutzer Sonata,” is that Beethoven had never seen Kreutzer, and that Kreutzer never played the sonata.

I have not discovered whether or no Kreutzer was married; he probably was, for he died insane.  A German composer, Conradin Kreutzer, with whom he might be confused, had a daughter whom he trained as a singer.  As for Bridgetower, he married and had a daughter.

But speaking of violinists, what would become of them if there never had been makers of violins, especially such luthiers as the Amati?  Yet all I know of the Amati is that they formed a dynasty, and doubtless fell in love on occasion, though how, or when, I do not learn.

The great Antonio Stradivari, however, began his love-making like David Copperfield, by falling in love with a woman ten years his senior, when he was only seventeen.  She was Francesca Capra; her husband had been assassinated three years before, leaving her a child.  The boy Stradivari and the widow were married July 4, 1667, and on December 23d, a daughter named Julia was born.  Francesca bore Stradivari six children.  Her second child was a son named after her, Francesco; but Francesco died in infancy, and the name, in spite of the omen, was given to the next son, who followed his father’s profession, but never married.  The next child was a daughter, who died a spinster; the next was a son, who became a priest, and the next a son, who died a bachelor.  The failure of all their children to marry does not indicate a particularly happy home-life, but this is mere speculation.  We only know that Stradivari’s first wife died, after a marriage lasting thirty-four years.