e the wife of Wagner. During the last ten
years of his life they had an elegant residence at Bayreuth, where
Mme. Wagner still has her home. Wagner died in Venice, whither he had
gone for the mild climate. No musician in the entire history of art
has occupied the attention of the whole contemporaneous world to
anything like the same degree as did Richard Wagner, from the
performance of "_Lohengrin_," in 1850, until his death in 1883.

CHAPTER XXXV.

VIRTUOSITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY; PAGANINI; BERLIOZ; CHOPIN;
LISZT.

I.

Strictly speaking, there was no break in the continuity of art
development represented in the virtuoso appearances recorded in
Chapter XXX, and those with which we have presently to deal. In point
of chronology, many of those recorded in the present chapter were
contemporaneous with some of those in the former. Nevertheless, the
artists with whom we are now concerned represent principles more
decidedly belonging to the romantic, and hence to the nineteenth
century, than did those whose operations have already been discussed
as part of the record of the eighteenth. This is seen in the quality
and the novelty of their playing, and still more in the influence
which they exercised upon the musicians who came after.

[Illustration: [autograph] N. Paganini

Fig. 80.]

Earliest of these in point of time, and most influential in other
departments than his own, was the famous Italian violinist, Nicolo
Paganini (1784-1840), perhaps the most remarkable executant upon the
violin who has ever appeared. His father, a clever amateur, had him
taught music at an early age, and when only nine years of age he
played in a concert at Genoa with triumphant success. He had already
practiced diligently and, with the intuition of genius, had found out
his own ways of accomplishing things, so that when, at the age of
eleven, he was taken to Parma to the teacher Rolla, he was told that
there was nothing to teach him. Returning home, he continued his
practice, applying himself as much as eight or ten hours a day, and
producing a number of compositions so difficult that he alone could
play them. His first European tour took place in 1805, and astonished
the world. The most marvelous stories were told of him. It was
popularly supposed that he could play upon anything, provided only the
catgut and the horsehair were furnished him. His first appearance in
France was in 1831, and in the same year he played in Lond