RELIGION

and the ARTS

BRILL Religion and the Arts 16 (2012) 305-327 brill.nl/rart

The Devil, the Violin, and Paganini:

The Myth of the Violin as Satan’s Instrument

Robert W. Berger*
Brookline, Massachusetts

Abstract
Stringed instruments are included in Psalm 150 among those appropriate for music-making
in praise of the Lord. For that reason, angels frequently appear in medieval and Renaissance
art playing bowed and plucked instruments. The later association of the violin and the Devil
is therefore a departure from the religious tradition. This paper traces the appearance of this
notion in eastern European folklore, Shakespeare and his contemporaries, reactions to
instrumental virtuosity in the Baroque period, Tartini’s dream, and the career of Paganini,
in whom the myth reached its apogee.

Keywords
Psalm 150, folklore, popular religion, Shakespeare, Niccolo Paganini, fiddlestick, musical
dream, virtuosity

I Introduction
documentary film, “The Art of Violin2001) ‫)״‬, features snippets of some
A of the greatest virtuosos of the last century playing their instruments
(Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, David Oistrakh, Yehudi
Menuhin, and many others).1 The first part is called “The Devil’s Instru-
ment”; no explanation of the phrase is given in the film or in the accompa-
nying booklet. That was evidently thought unnecessary, for the notion has
long been embedded in Western culture. This study is an attempt to trace
the appearance of this myth over a long stretch of historical time, culminât-
ing in the career of Niccolo Paganini. The myth’s origins remain obscure

My thanks to Professors Lewis Lockwood and Judith Tick for useful conversations about
my research.
‫ ״‬Released by NVC Arts; available in DVD or VHS format.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/156852912X651045
306 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2072) 305-32/

and its manifestations cannot at present be traced in a continuous manner,

but only as a series of markers along a path that hopefully will be uncov-
ered more fully by other scholars.

II Laúdate eum in chordis

The Psalmist, in the last of his poems (Psalm 150), established the locus clas-
stem for those instruments appropriate for praising God:

Alleluia.
Laudate Dominum in sanctis ejus;
laúdate eum in firmamento virtutis ejus.
Laúdate eum in virtutibus ejus;
laúdate eum secundum multitudinem magnitudinis ejus.
Laúdate eum in sono tubae;
laúdate eum in psalterio et cithera.
Laúdate eum in tympano et choro;
laúdate eum in chordis et organo.
Laúdate eum in cymbalis benesonantibus;
laúdate eum in cymbalis jubilationis.
Omnis Spiritus laudet Dominum!
Alleluia.
Praise Ye the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his
power.
Praise him for his mighty acts; praise him according to his
excellent greatness.
Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the
psaltery and harp.
Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed
instruments and organs.
Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high
sounding cymbals.
Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord.
Praise ye the Lord. (KJV)

Trumpet and psaltery, harp and timbrel, stringed instruments, organ, cym-
bals. In a study concerned with “The Devil’s Instrument”—the violin—it is
 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2012) 305-32/ 307

the medieval ancestors of that instrument that are of particular interest to

us. Bowed stringed instruments frequently appear in medieval and Renais-
sanee art, typically played by angels. In the Musicians panel from the Ghent
Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan Van Eyck (Ghent, St. Bavo’s Cathedral;
completed 1432), one angel holds a viol and bow; another holds a harp, and
a third plays upon an organ. The inscription below the panel reads:
LAUDATE EUM IN CORDIS ET ORGANO, a direct quotation from Psalm
150.2 A well-known Italian example of an angel playing upon a bowed
stringed instrument is found in one of the wings accompanying Leonardo
da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks (London, National Gallery; c. 1508) attributed
to one of his assistants; the angel plays a medieval fiddle.3

Ill The Devil and Music in Medieval Art

What about the Devil as musician? In medieval art the Devil or devilish
figures are occasionally depicted playing or holding musical instruments,
and these are very varied: horn, bells, drum, pipe and tabor, and tambou-
rine (in one depiction the instrument may be a harp);4 they appear with
bagpipe, pipe and tabor, triangle, and hurdy-gurdy in the margins of several

2) In a slightly later work from Renaissance Italy—Luca della Robbia’s Cantoria (formerly
Duomo, Florence; now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, 1431-38)—the Latin text of the
entire psalm appears in the frieze; the line found in the Ghent Altarpiece reappears beneath
the children in the second panel form the left in the lower row, where they are playing a
portable organ, harp, and lute—the latter two being plucked rather than bowed instra-
ments. See Pope-Hennessy plate 16.
3) Dunkerton et al. 385, fig. 68b. In the accompanying panel, also by an assistant (fig. 68c),
an angel plays a lute. Many angels playing bowed string instruments can be found in Win-
ternitz. A prominent iconographie theme relevant to our inquiry is Christ in Glory accom-
panied by the twenty-four Elders (Book of Revelations, 4, 5-11). In 5.1.8, the Elders are
described as holding harps (“habentes singuli citharas”) (an instrument listed in Psalm 150),
with which they praise the Lord. The medieval fiddle (devised in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries) is substituted for the harp beginning in a mid-eleventh-century ms., the Beatus
de Saint-Sever (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ms. lat. 8878), and later in sculpture
in the tympanum of the south porch of the narthex of the Abbey of Moissac (c. 1125). In the
later central tympanum of the west façade at Chartres (c. 1145-70), of identical iconography,
some Elders hold harps, others fiddles. For more on this topic, see Reuter, 23-27.
4) See the Index of Christian Art (on-line) (s.v. “Devil as Musician”) and Hammerstein, ch. 2.
According to Hammerstein, the Devil’s instruments in the medieval period were fistula
(Lat. Pipe), tympanum, and horn. Sometimes he played instruments with neutral or positive
associations, like the harp and psalter, or played the horn backwards (“Pervertierte
Instrumente”).
308 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2072) 305-32/

Gothic manuscripts.5 Medieval depictions of the Devil playing the fiddle

are extremely rare: an example appears in an early thirteenth-century Eng-
lish Psalter, where the musician-Devil is part of the decorated initial D.6
This rarity is not surprising since there is no textual source for the motif of
the Devil playing a stringed instrument in canonical religious writings.7

IV Mythical Legends from Eastern Europe

Ethnographers have collected stories from the oral traditions of eastern
European countries that are directly relevant to our subject; they concern
the invention of musical instruments soon after the creation of the world in
pre-Christian cosmological accounts. Dating these folk legends is very dif-
ficult; the use of the word “fiddle‫( ״‬in the various languages), if it denotes
the violin, suggests a date no earlier than the sixteenth century (when the
instrument was invented), but the word could just as easily refer to the
medieval ancestors of the modern instrument, pushing back the dating
much earlier. Be that as it may, here is one such tale from Romania:

When God was on earth, he pastured sheep. He made the flute and put
it under the wool of a sheep; when the sheep were being shorn, the
shepherds came upon it. The devil wanted to make something also, so
he made a fiddle, but so that no one would find it, he hid it in a goat. As
the goat went with her tail up, a gypsy caught sight of the neck of the
fiddle and took it out. Because the flute was made by God, it is blest, so
that its song might be pleasant; but the fiddle, a work of the devil, so
that he might be beaten with it.8

From Latgalia (Latvia) comes the following saying:

5) Randall 90. See also note 10.

6) New York, Morgan Library, Manuscript M. 43, fol. 32r (Huntingfield Psalter. English,
Oxford?, 1210-20). Illustration of Psalm 7 (D=Dominus Deus meus in te speravi).
7) On demonic music, see the excellent study by Leppe.
8) Reynolds 6. Reynolds adds: “The goat is commonly associated with the Devil, as is the
violin wherever it exists, and the gypsy is generally regarded as a devilish fellow. The Ruma-
nian peasant would know the violin only as an instrument of gypsy (or Jewish) musicians”
(7). Reynolds demonstrates that the Baltic psaltery (Latvian kokle) was regarded as God’s
instrument; in Psalm 150 (see text, above), the psaltery is named as one of the instruments
appropriate for praising God.
 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2012) 305-32/ 309

The fiddle is from the devil,

the kokle [Baltic psaltery] from God.
the accordion from the prisoner,
the flute from the shepherd,
the little drum (?tambourine) from the dog.9

In another example from Estonia, the Devil—descended from the Baltic

pre-Christian god of the dead (Reynolds 5)—invents the bagpipe, which
some people consider to be the Devil’s bellows.10 Nevertheless, it is the vio-
lin that is most often cited as the Devil’s instrument in these Eastern Euro-
pean legends of indeterminate date.

V Shakespeare and the Devil’s Fiddle-Stick

In 7Henry IV, written in 1596, the Sheriff and his men arrive at the Boar’s
Head Tavern, seeking Falstaff, whom they rightly suspect of having been
involved in a robbery. Mistress Quickly, the tavern hostess, runs in to warn
Prince Hal, who is with Falstaff:

Hostess. O Jesu, my lord, my lord!

Prince. Heigh, heigh! the devil rides upon a fiddle-stick. What’s the
matter? (2.4.487-88)

The expression is interpreted by Shakespeare scholars as meaning that a

great commotion is afoot, caused by something extraordinary.11 The exprès-
sion later appears in John Fletcher’s The Humorous Lieutenant (ms. 1625;
first published 1647):

9) Reynolds 7,14. The problematic accordion-prisoner link is discussed on 14.

10) Reynolds 6; see also the Estonian saying quoted on 7, which affirms the bagpipe as the
Devil’s instrument, and 8ff. For the bagpipe, see text, above (section III, on “The Devil and
Music in Medieval Art”). The bagpipe appears prominently in the Hell panel (right wing)
from Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden ofEarthly Delights triptych (c. 1500; Madrid, Prado).
u) The earliest comment on the expression is in Shakespeare, 1914, 98, n. for 1. 486: “A pro-
verbial expression signifying that there is some great commotion afoot, and that the cause
must be something extraordinary, for instance, the devil flying on a fiddlestick.” This is
quoted in Shakespeare, 1936,168, n. for 11. 457-58. The expression is catalogued in Tilley 153
(D263) and in Dent 90 (D263). It is interpreted as “Here’s a fine commotion” in The Oxford
Dictionary ofEnglish Proverbs 183.
310 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2072) 305-32/

Leontius. I must go see him presently,

For this is such a jig, for certain, gentlemen,
The fiend rides on a fiddlestick (4.4)

Leontius is here responding to the love-agonies of Demetrius; the meaning

seems to be that the Devil is the cause of Demetrius’s bizarre behavior.
We find the expression used again in another Jacobean play, The Witches
ofLancashire by Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome, staged at the Globe
Theatre in 1634 and published the same year in a quarto edition.12 In Act
Three, Scene three (11. íooff.), a group of fiddlers play a round in the house
of wealthy squire Seely, whose household is bewitched. As the wedding
guests begin to dance, the musicians play another tune and then each fid-
dler plays a different one, evidently the work of demonic powers. The
guests, musically confused, exclaim: “Whither now, ho!” “Hey day! Why,
you rogues,” followed by “What, does the devil ride o’ your fiddlesticks?”
spoken by Whetstone.13 A little later (11.143ff.), the fiddlers cannot produce
any sounds from their instruments, and when Doughty, Seely’s friend,
threatens to smash their fiddles, the players do the deed themselves. Here
the meaning of the expression seems to be that confusion, musical or oth-
erwise, is the product of the Devil.
Up to this point, it is impossible to decide whether these playwrights—
Fletcher, and later Heywood and Brome—were echoing Prince Hal’s line
from 7Henry LV or whether they were drawing, like Shakespeare, upon an
old proverb. The problem can be resolved by examining another early
seventeenth-century play—Wit at Several Weapons. Although included in
the 1647 fol10 °f Beaumont and Fletcher, it is now thought to have been a
collaborative work by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, written
sometime between 1609 and 1620, but most probably in 1613.14 If so, it pre-
ceded both The Humorous Lieutenant (ms. 1625) and The Witches of Lan-
cashire (1634).
In the first scene of Wit at Several Weapons, Sir Perfidious Oldcraft seeks
to marry his niece to Sir Gregory Fop, a witless landed lord. Oldcraft tries a
practical joke: he first introduces his niece to Sir Gregory’s friend

12) See Heywood and Brome.

13) Heywood and Brome 63. Cf. Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Act I, Scene 5, where three small
instrument groups play simultaneously in different rhythms (minuet, country dance, waltz)
during a party given by the Don—a feat due not to witchcraft but to musical genius.
14) For a discussion of the play’s authorship, see Sharp 4-18, 34-42.
 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2012) 305-32/ 311

Cunningham, pretending that he is her suitor. There is mutual attraction.

Then Oldcraft brings in Sir Gregory and reveals that he is the real suitor.
The niece is repelled by him, and advises Sir Gregory to remain a bachelor.
Oldcraft interjects:

Oldcraft. Why, how now, niece, this is the man, I tell you.
Niece. He? Hang him, sir. I know you do but mock.
This is the man you would say.
Oldcraft. The devil rides, I think. (1.1.201-04; qtd. in Sharp 93)

In this last line—perhaps directed at the audience—Oldcraft is saying that

his plan has been thrown into confusion by his niece’s reaction to Sir Greg-
ory. But there is no mention of a fiddle-stick. “The devil rides” by itself is not
an identifiable proverb; its effect depends upon the audience knowing its
completion. This suggests that the proverbial expression was already well
established; it is doubtful that the playwrights would have quoted incom-
pletely from !Henry IV (a relatively recent play)—if that is where “The devil
rides upon a fiddle-stick” had first appeared in the language—for too few
people would have seen it or read it, even though it seems to have been a
popular play.15
It is generally not possible to give a date to the inception of a popular
proverb. At the least, we may note that the word “fiddlestick” is attested in
an early fifteenth-century Latin-English noun-list (Nominale): uHlc arculus,
Angllce fydylstyk.”16 At that time, the medieval fiddle existed, played with a
bow (the fiddlestick). By the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, the violin was
in use in England, although medieval instruments may still have been

15) Shakespeare, 1954,158. Six quarto editions were published between 1598 and 1622 (Boyce,
ed., 255). Dent has raised the possibility that Prince Hal’s line may have been Shakespeare’s
invention: “It is... perilous to assume something is proverbial where the only cited exam-
pies outside Shakespeare may merely be echoes. Conceivably this is true of Hal’s ‘the devil
rides upon a fiddle-stick’ ” (xx). Dent reaches this conclusion even though 7 Henry IV is
unusually rich in proverbial expressions (see Dent 3). But I believe that Oldcraft’s line (“The
devil rides”) demonstrates that a familiar proverb was in use, and this only reinforces Tilley’s
words about Shakespeare and proverbs: “In this Dictionary I have given especial promi-
nence to Shakespeare, not only because of his unchallenged position but also because he
knew the proverb more thoroughly than anyone else. Proverbs reflected the common beliefs
of the time, they were the small change of conversation. It is obvious that Shakespeare
observed the speech habits of the people around him with close attention” (vii).
16) London, British Library, MS. Reg. 17, C. XVII., fol. 43VO (qtd. in Wright I, 693, n. 1). The
word “fiddle” (variously written) is attested in English as early as c. 1205 (OED2 5:874).
312 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2072) 305-32/

played.17 Although the proverb links the Devil with bowed stringed instru-
ments, it does not say that he played upon them, only that he used their
bow as a means of transport—however fragile and uncomfortable—like
witches used brooms or cooking sticks.18 We may conclude that these folk-
lorie means of transportation suggested to the English popular imagination
a vehicle suitable for the Arch-Fiend when sowing commotion and confu-
sion in the world.19

VI Virtuosity and Evil: Early References to Devil-Violinists

Anthony à Wood (1632-95) in his Fastί Oxonienses (1691-92) includes a
story about the German violinist Thomas Baltzar (c. 1631-63), who had set-
tied in England in 1655. Wood heard him play in 1658 in Oxford, and com-
mented on his left-hand technique: “He [Wood] then saw him run up his
Fingers to the end of the Finger-board of the Violin, and run them back
insensibly, and all with alacrity and in very good tune, which he nor any in
England saw the like before‫( ״‬Scholes 278). At one of his performances, the
Oxford professor of music, John Wilson (“the greatest Judg of Musick that
ever was,‫ ״‬according to Wood), “after his humoursome way, [did] stoop

17) The violin was brought to King Henry VHTs court in 1540 by six Jewish string players
from Milan, Brescia, and Venice, and was thereafter used in the Royal Consorts; the instru-
ment appeared in English aristocratic households from the 1560s on and was taken up by
theater groups and the humbler classes around 1600. See The New Grove Dictionary ofMusic
and Musicians 26:709 (entry: “Violin”).
18) See Golden, ed., 4:1086-87 (entry: “Sticks” by Charles Zika).
19) The English proverb we have been studying did not survive the Jacobean period (as far
as is known), and there is no evidence that it was translated into Continental languages.
There is therefore virtually no possibility that it was known to Tartini (see text, below); his
dream of the Devil apparently arose independently. In this context we should note a line in
Henry VIII, a play generally thought to be a collaborative effort between Shakespeare and
John Fletcher (before 1613). Sir Thomas Lovell is bemoaning the corruption of English
women by Frenchmen:

... the sly whoresons

Have got a speeding trick to lay down ladies;
A French song and a fiddle has no fellow.
To which Lord Sandys replies:
The devil fiddle 'em! (1.3.39-42)
The use of “fiddle” as a lewd verb and not as a noun would seem to preclude the association
that is the theme of this paper. Act I Scene Three of Henry VIII is generally ascribed to Fletcher.
 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2012) 305-32/ 313

downe to Baltzar’s Feet, to see whether he had a Huff on, that is to say, to
see whether he was a Devil or not, because he acted beyond the parts of a
man‫( ״‬Scholes 279).
Another German Devil-violinist turned up in Rome later in the century,
in 1685. This was Nicolaus Adam Strunck (1640-1700; also a harpsichordist),
who sought out the famous violinist Arcangelo Corelli. After accompany-
ing the Italian on the harpsichord, Strunck proceeded to play a toccata on
the keyboard, which Corelli greatly admired. Then:

Strunck finished playing and, without waiting for the Italian’s compli-
ments, placed the latter’s violin on his shoulder. Also after this perfor-
manee Corelli was not sparing of compliments: he pointed out that his
colleague had a beautiful bow stroke; he had no need of another to be
able to be considered an excellent violinist. But, while Corelli was
expressing his opinion, Strunck put the violin out of tune and, calling
upon all his virtuosity, played with such skill that Corelli, employing
broken German, exclaimed: “I am called Arcangelo, a name that in the
language of my country means an angel of God, but let me tell you, Sir,
you are an Arch-devil.”20

It is apparent that Corelli was impressed by Strunck’s great skill, but his use
of the term “Arch-devil” was provoked by the violinist’s use of scordatura—
the tuning of strings to non-standard pitch, a technique later used by
Paganini.21
That extraordinary technical skill, when applied to other musical instru-
ments or even to musical composition, could elicit a Satanic attribution, is
demonstrated by other entries by Anthony à Wood in his Fastί Oxomenses.
These concern the Elizabethan musician, John Bull (1562/63-1628). In an
entry for 1586 about Bull’s ability as a composer, Wood quotes another
musician as saying that “he that added these 40 parts must be either the
Devil or Dr. Bull,” and (under the date 1592), Wood wrote that Bull (then
chief organist to James I of Scotland) “was so much admired for his dex-
trous hand on the Orgon [sic], that many thought there was more than

20) Rinaldi 104. Johann Jakob Walther first reported this anecdote in his Musikalisches
Lexicon in 1792.
21) The New Grove Dictionary ofMusic and Musicians 22: 890-94 [entry: “Scordatura”]; the
technique started to be adopted for the violin in the early seventeenth century (891). Pagan-
ini employed scordatura in his violin concerti to increase the brilliance of the instrument in
contrast to the orchestra.
314 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2072) 305-32/

Man in him‫( ״‬Hollander 223-24, η. 96). Many more such examples could be
cited, and we may note in passing the common use of the adjective “devil-
ish‫ ״‬to denote something extremely difficult or tricky.22

VII Tartini’s Dream

While traveling in Italy in 1766, the French astronomer Jérôme-Joseph
Lefrançais de Lalande called upon the famous Italian violin virtuoso and
composer Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) at his home in Padua.23 The musi-
cian revealed to Lalande a most remarkable dream from years ago:

He dreamed one night in 1713 [Tartini was then scarcely twenty-one

years old] that he had made a pact, and that the Devil was at his service:
everything succeeded for him to his heart’s content, his wishes were
always anticipated, and his desires always surpassed by the services of
his new servant. Finally, he thought of giving him his violin to see if he
would even succeed in playing beautiful tunes for him. But how great
was his astonishment when he heard a sonata so unusual and so beau-
tiful, played with so much superiority and intelligence, that he had
never heard nor even conceived of anything that could compare to it.
He experienced so much surprise, rapture, pleasure that he lost his
breathing. He was awakened by that violent sensation. He immediately
grasped his violin, hoping to reproduce a part of what he had just expe-
rienced, but it was in vain. The piece that he then composed is truly the
most beautiful that he ever wrote, and it is still called the Devil’s Sonata
[la sonate du diable]; but it is so very much inferior to what he had
heard, that he would have broken his violin and abandoned music for­

22) we may note here the much later anecdote about Franz Schubert and his “Wanderer”
Fantasy in C Major for pianoforte (D 760, op. 15; composed 1822); when the composer him-
self attempted to play the last section, he abandoned the instrument because of its difh-
culty, exclaiming “Let the Devil himself play it.” I have not been able to discover the
documentary source for this anecdote. “Devilry” is defined in the OED as a “Magical opera-
tion performed by the supposed help of Satan; dealing with the Devil; diabolical art.” See
OED 2 4:573 for citations from 1375 on. The link between the Devil and technical virtuosity
has been studied by Fournier.
23) On Lalande see Dictonnaire de biographiefrançaise, fase. CX, 1997, cois. 386-87.
 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2012) 305-32/ 315

ever, if he had been in a position to do without the benefits that [music]

gave him.24

If the dream occurred in 1713, then Tartini experienced it while living in the
Minorite cloister of San Francesco at Assisi.25 The Devil’s Sonata (which it
is said he regarded as his best work) lay in manuscript until well after the
composer’s death in 1770. In 1798 it was published in Paris for the first time
by the French violinist-composer Jean-Baptiste Cartier in a collection called
“L’Art du Violon,” with the following fascinating note: “Sonata by Tartini,
which his school had named the Devil’s Trill according to the dream of the
master, who said that he had seen the Devil at the foot of his bed playing
the trill written in the final section of this sonata.”26
In a footnote, Cartier added: “This piece is very rare, I owe it to Baillot,
whose love for the beautiful productions of Tartini made him decide to
make a sacrificial gift of it to me.” The reference is to the French violinist-
composer Pierre Baillot (1771-1842).27 Tartini’s three-movement G minor

24) “Il rêvoit une nuit, en 1713, qu’il avoit fait un pacte, & que le diable étoit à son service;
tout lui réussissoit à souhait, ses volontés étoient toujours prévenues, 8c ses désirs toujours
surpassés par les services de son nouveau domestique ; enfin il imagina de lui donner son
violon pour voir s’il parviendrait encore à lui jouer de beaux airs : mais quel fut son étonne-
ment lorsqu’il entendit une sonate si singulière 8c si belle, exécutée avec tant de supériorité 8c
d’intelligence, que jamais il n’avoit rien entendu, ni même conçu qui pût entrer en parai-
lele ? Il éprouvoit tant de surprise, de ravissement, de plaisir qu’il en perdoit la respiration :
il fut reveillé par cette violente sensation ; il prit à l’instant son violon, espérant de rendre
une partie de ce qu’il venoit de sentir, mais ce fut en vain ; la piece, qu’il composa pour lors
est à la vérité la plus belle qu’il ait jamais faite, 8c il l’appelle encore la sonate du diable; mais
elle étoit si fort au-dessous de ce qu’il avoit entendu, qu’il eût brisé son violon 8c abandonné
pour toujours la musique, s’il eût été en état de se passer des secours qu’elle lui procurait”
(Lalande 8:293-94).
25) This fact was apparently known to the painter James Marshall (1838-1902), who depicted
Tartini and the Devil in a monastic cell, with the musician dressed as a monk (which he was
not). Tartini, lying upon a bed, grasps his own violin in his left hand and gestures with his
right. This wildly Romantic painting—‫״‬Tartini’s Dream”—is in the Schack-Galerie, Munich.
An earlier print of 1824 by Louis-Léopold Boilly depicts the dreaming musician in his night-
cap listening to the Devil—complete with wings, horns, and tail—who sits at the foot of the
bed, playing the violin. The dreaming Tartini raises both his hands as he listens to the
music.
26) ‫״‬Sonate de Tartini, que son école avoit nommé le Trille du Diable, d’apres le Rêve du
Maître qui disoit avoir vu le diable au pied de son lit exécutant le trille écrit dans le morceau
final de cette Sonate.”
27) Baillot had studied in Rome with Pollani, a pupil of Pietro Nardini, who in turn had
studied with Tartini (Abbado). Perhaps the ms. had reached him along this route.
316 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2072) 305-32/

sonata for violin and continuo, which he called “The Devil’s Sonata” in his
interview with Lalande, was dubbed “The Devil’s Trill Sonata” by his stu-
dents, the name that it still bears.28
In his conversation with Lalande, Tartini made no mention of the trill in
the last movement, and musicologists are agreed that a date of 1713 is much
too early for the composition of the piece; a date in the 1740s is favored.29
But it is known that Tartini re-worked his compositions (Ginsburg 104), and
it is probable that the sonata as it has come down to us is the result of con-
siderable revision and additions. As for the famous so-called “double trill”—
upper note trills over progressions of eighth notes on lower strings—it may
date from in or shortly before 1723, because the German flautist and com-
poser J. J. Quantz, who heard Tartini play in Prague in that year, praised the
violinist for his mastery of this type of trill.30 In his treatise on musical orna-
mentation, published posthumously in 1782, Tartini devoted space to the
“double trill,” and utilized it in some of his other compositions for the
violin.31 Ginsburg sums up the question thus:

The determination of the date is thereby complicated because the

autograph of the sonata is missing. One must logically accept that Tar-
tini had noted down the first version of the sonata in his youth and
afterwards returned frequently to the composition, perfecting and
polishing it down to its ripest formulation, in which it has come down
to our times and become lastingly fixed in the classical violin reper-
toire. The perfecting and “final version” of the sonata probably arose as
much through the composer’s performances as well as with working
with his pupils, who studied the work.32

According to Lalande, Tartini made a “pact” with the Devil, but apparently
this was not a true Faustian bargain; nothing is said about Tartini selling his

28) Available to performers from 1798 on, the Devil’s Trill Sonata was later published in 1855
in an edition by Vieuxtemps and Volkmann; the great German violinist Joseph Joachim
included it fairly early in his repertoire. In the twentieth century, David Oistrakh often
ended his recitals with the piece. It still can be heard occasionally in recital and modern
recordings.
29) Brainard 93. The autograph ms. is lost, and surviving mss. are listed by Brainard.
30) See Abbado. He believes that what Quantz heard was the Devil’s Trill Sonata.
31) Traité des agréments de la musique, Paris, 1782. See Ginsburg 105.
32) Ginsburg 104. Ginsburg gives an analysis of the music on 106-9. The last movement
bears the title “Sogni dell’ autore” in the early editions.
 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2012) 305-32/ 317

soul for the Devil’s services, which granted the musician success, the antic-
ipation of his wishes, and the surpassing of his desires. And the Devil’s great
gift to Tartini—the remarkable sonata, which the musician could record
only so imperfectly after he awakened—was totally unanticipated and not
bargained for.
A one-sided pact without ultimate damnation and the portrayal of the
Devil as a beneficent servant who grants Tartini a musical performance of
unimagined beauty—these aspects of the dream run counter to traditional
religious belief. But all of this reportedly happened in a dream, not in real-
ity, and Tartini as an Italian Catholic would not have been in danger of
accusations of trafficking with Satan. Catholic theology—which embraces
the concept of demonic possession—denies any linkage between dreams
and morality; as the New Catholic Encyclopedia states the matter: “Man’s
critical and deliberative ability is so reduced during sleep that he is not
morally responsible for whatever may happen” (Cuk 905).
But the dream, as related by Lalande, does not have the flavor of a real
dream. The narrative is too continuous and dramatic, like that of a short
story. Tartini related the dream to Lalande fifty-three years after its occur-
rence, so distortions are to be expected. It is difficult to believe that a three-
movement sonata, lasting over twelve minutes in performance, was actually
heard (composed) by the sleeper. We have already noted the discrepancies
between Lalande and the short notice published by Cartier, who reported
that the Devil played only the famous trill (unmentioned by Lalande). It is
Cartier’s version—transmitted via Tartini’s pupils—that seems far more
plausible as an authentic dream by its brevity, although its content is, of
course, most unusual.
Tartini made no attempt to promote the idea of the violin as the Devil’s
instrument, but the account of his dream seeped into public consciousness
at the beginning of the nineteenth century, reinforced by the increasing
popularity of the Devil’s Trill Sonata in performance. The ground was being
prepared just in time for the appearance of a startling new phenomenon:
Paganini.

VIII The Embodiment of the Myth: Niccolo Paganini

Berlioz (a friend of Paganini’s, but who never heard him play!) described
the effect of this musician on the Romantic generation:
318 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2072) 305-32/

A very intelligent man, [Alexandre] Choron [music theorist and teacher],

used to say of Weber: “He is a meteor.‫ ״‬One might with equal justice say
of Paganini: “He is a comet,‫ ״‬for never did a flaming body appear so
unexpectedly in the heavens of art, or excite in the course of his long
orbit greater amazement mixed with a sort of terror, before it disap-
peared forever.33

Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840)—generally acknowledged to have been the

greatest of all violinists—was rumored by contemporaries to have owed
his extraordinary gifts to the Devil. Although Paganini was not the source of
the rumor, he was very much aware of it, and, as we shall see, reacted
ambivalently—privately deprecating the rumor to his friends, yet simulta-
neously fostering a public image of the demonic violinist as effective pub-
licity that could ensure commercial gain. Thus was established in the first
half of the nineteenth century the idea of the violin as the Devil’s instru-
ment—an association present in eastern European folklore, hinted at in an
English proverb, fostered by notions linking virtuosity and evil in the
Baroque period, and approaching clearer definition in Tartini’s extraordi-
nary dream. These are the areas preceding the arrival of Paganini that my
research has led me to, but there are undoubtedly others, waiting to be
explored.
After his professional beginnings as a court musician in Lucca, Paganini
began his public concert career in 1809, performing in towns in northern
Italy.34 To ingratiate himself with provincial taste, he would sometimes
imitate the sounds of animals, the sighs and groans of lovers, and the weep-
ing of old women (Sugden 37-38,50). But Paganini the Buffoon was soon to
be superseded by a serious and startling virtuoso, playing mostly his own
compositions, which showcased his prodigious, revolutionary technique
(although even in later years, he sometimes included the imitations in his
programs ). That technique was such that anyone who heard him—including
professional violinists—could not understand how he could perform such
incredible, difficult feats.
The watershed year of his career was 1813, when Niccolo arrived in Milan,
Italy’s cultural center and home to the Teatro alla Scala, where operas,

33) Berlioz 194. Part of the selection on Paganini (194-99) originally appeared in 1840 as his
obituary notice.
34) See Sugden, chapter 2.
 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2012) 305-32/ 319

ballets, and concerts were performed. While awaiting his début perfor-
manee, he attended a ballet at La Scala, II Noce dt Benevento (The Walnut
Tree of Benevento) with music by Franz Xavier Süssmayr (Mozart’s pupil,
who had completed his Requiem). Paganini appropriated one of the tunes
from the ballet—the one that announced the arrival of the witches—and
wrote a series of variations for violin and orchestra; he called the piece Le
Streghe (The Witches). This short work contained most of Paganini’s revo-
lutionary technical innovations, and created a sensation, along with his
other pieces included in the program. His international career and reputa-
tion were launched. But it should be noted that in an extended review of
one of his Milan concerts, the Hungarian critic Peter Lichtenthal described
his playing as “truly inexplicable” (Lichtenthal’s emphasis)—an observa-
tion fraught with suggestions of the supernatural (Courcy 1,125).
It is not necessary to rehearse the violinist’s subsequent career on the
concert stage and as a composer; what concerns us is the growing belief of
his association with the Devil. Certainly, Le Streghe played into this phe-
nomenon, although Paganini surely had not chosen Süssmayr’s jaunty little
tune with the intention of fostering a diabolical image; it simply appealed
to him musically, and he saw the possibilities for writing variations upon it
(see below, n. 38).
The earliest references linking Paganini with the Devil are found in let-
ters written by Matthäus Nikolas de Ghetaldi, chief magistrate of Ragusa
(now Dubrovnik, Croatia), who met Paganini in Venice in 1824 and heard
him play. In one letter, dated 2 October 1824, he refers to his “demonic
effect” in the concert hall (Courcy I, 234), but another is of the greatest
interest for our subject:

[18 October 1824]

Yesterday evening Messer Sorgo told us that Paganini was now playing
every evening in the cemetery on the Lido. So we went over and found
a big crowd sitting and standing round listening to Paganini play. Some
people were amused but most of them—with tears in their eyes—said
that it was touching that this great artist played every evening gratis for
the dead. On the way home there was a Dominican monk in the gon-
dola who said that Paganini had sold his soul to the devil, and the
Bishop had given orders not to allow him in the cemetery any more
because he profaned the holy place. With that we threw him overboard.
(Courcy 1,234-35)
320 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2072) 305-32/

The Bishop’s banishment of the violinist from the Lido cemetery uncannily
anticipated the refusal of the Church to allow him a Christian burial after
his death in 1840 (of which more later). Surely the playing of a musical
instrument in a cemetery and the gathering of an audience was very
unusual, but strikes us as symptomatic of the Romantic period and its
enthusiasms, which Paganini certainly embodied and to which he contrib-
uted. But missing from the historical record is why certain Venetian priests
were convinced that he was in league with the Devil. Perhaps hanging over
this affair was the widespread rumor that Paganini had spent time in prison
for murdering his mistress (and had used his incarceration as a time for
developing his fabulous technique). That calumnious and totally unfounded
rumor had even entered print in Stendhal’s Vie de Rossini (published in
1823, one year before the incident described above).35 The rumor contin-
ued to haunt the violinist for the remainder of his career, as did the whis-
perings about his pact with the Devil, which increased in volume from the
time the virtuoso first performed in Vienna in 1828 at the beginning of his
grand European tour, which included countries north of the Alps and the
British Isles (1828-34).36
Wherever he appeared on this tour—Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Warsaw,
Hamburg, Paris, Brussels, London, Dublin, Edinburgh, and many smaller
cities—Paganini triumphed to a degree that led two Viennese newspapers
to declare him the greatest instrumentalist music had ever known (Courcy I,
265). But underlying the extraordinary technical skill and expressive power
of his playing was the widely-held sentiment that a demonic force was at
work. This sentiment found expression not only in newspaper critics but

35) In a footnote Stendhal wrote: “This ardent spirit [Paganini] did not achieve his sublime
talent by eight years of patience and the conservatory, but through an erreur de l’amour,
which is said to have caused him to be cast into prison for many years. Solitary and aban-
doned in an imprisonment that might terminate in the gallows, nothing remained to him
but his violin. He learned to translate his soul into music and the long evenings of captivity
afforded him the time to perfect himself in this language” (as qtd. in Courcy I, 240, n. 9).
Rossini claimed the biography was unauthorized and threatened to bring legal action;
Paganini’s lawyer, Germi, encouraged Niccolo to do so, but nothing came of this. In 1825
Paganini requested a certificate from the governor of Genoa denying any criminal record;
the certificate, which satisfied the Church, was not issued until two years later. This allowed
the Pope to confer the Order of the Golden Spur upon Paganini in 1827, which included the
title of Cavaliere (Knight), the same Order and title awarded to Mozart in 1770 (Courcy I,
241, 249).
36) On the pact with the Devil, see Schaum; see also Palmer and More. For a recent study
that explores Paganini’s “demonic image,” see Kawabata.
 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2012) 305-32/ 321

also in two of the towering creative giants of the age, Franz Schubert and
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In the case of Schubert we have the diary of his friend, Eduard Bauern-
feld. 1828 was Schubert’s last year, but he heard Paganini twice in Vienna:

Of course [wrote Bauernfeld], it goes without saying that Schubert had

to hear him, but he insisted that he wouldn’t go again without me.
“Stuff and nonsense!” he said. “I’ve heard him once already! and I was
very cross because you weren’t there. Believe me, such a chap won’t
come a second time, and money is now as plentiful as blackberries—so
come along!”37 Such being the case, he took me with him. We heard the
infernal-divine fiddler and were no less charmed by his wonderful Ada-
gio than astounded by his other diabolical tricks. The awkward bows of
his Mephistophelean figure, which resembles a lanky black puppet,
had a slightly comical effect. (Courcy 1,265-66)

Although the words were written by Bauernfeld, we may safely presume

that they echoed Schubert’s impressions, which his friend shared.
In the following year, 1829, the violinist performed in Weimar, where the
aged Goethe heard him. He wrote to his friend Zelter a few days later that
“I only heard something meteoric and then couldn’t account for it” (Courcy I,
361). He came to believe that Paganini was the supreme embodiment of the
demonic element in the universe, a theme that preoccupied him until his
death in 1832. As he wrote to Eckermann:

The demonic is that which cannot be explained in a cerebral and a

rational manner. It is not peculiar to my nature but I am subject to its
spell. Napoleon possessed the quality to the highest degree. Amongst
artists one encounters it more often with musicians than with painters.
Paganini is imbued with it to a remarkable degree and it is through this
that he produces such a great effect. (Courcy I, 361-62)

Goethe’s definition of the “demonic” does not refer to the infernal or the
diabolical, but to the irrational—that which defies logical explanation or
normal experience; the same reaction was recorded by the critic Lichten-
thaï in 1813 (see above).

37) Schubert’s music had been performed at his first and only public concert just a few days
before. That performance netted him 32 pounds. See Brown 284.
322 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2072) 305-32/

Paganini himself, in the course of a long letter to the Revue Musicale

written soon after his sensational Paris debut in 1831, ridiculed the popular
association of him and Satan, but also recounted a most extraordinary inci-
dent which had occurred in Vienna three years earlier:

A still more ridiculous report in Vienna tested the credulity of some

enthusiasts. I played the variations entitled Le Streghe, which made
quite an impression. One individual, who was described to me as of a
sallow complexion, melancholy air, and bright eye, stated that he saw
nothing surprising in my performance since, while I was playing my
variations, he had distinctly seen the devil at my elbow directing my
arm and guiding my bow. My resemblance to him was proof of my ori-
gin. He was clothed in red, had horns on his head, and carried his tail
between his legs. After so minute a description you will understand
that it was impossible to doubt the fact; hence, many were persuaded
that they had discovered the secret of what one calls my tours de
force.38

That happened in Vienna. But the myth continued in full force in another
musically cultivated capital, Paris. Here is the music critic Castil-Blaze writ-
ing in the Journal des Débats after Paganini’s Parisian début in 1831:

[I] could not sleep all night from agitation__ Sell all you possess; pawn
everything, but go to hear him! Woe to those who let the opportunity
go by! Let the women bring their new-born babes so that sixty years
hence they can boast of having heard him!... This thing is the
most astounding, the most surprising, the most marvelous, the most

38) Courcy II, 28; the entire letter, dated 21 April 1831, is on 26-29. It is interesting that
Paganini mentions the Le Streghe variations in the context of this paragraph. The piece
made a strong impression ever since Niccolo introduced it at his Milan début in 1813 (see
text, above). Leigh Hunt wrote: “Levity, gravity, the homely, the supernatural, the odd, the
graceful, figures in strange combination. And every now and then a voice was heard as of
some fearful old beldame venting herself in a strain of feeble mystery, at once humorous
and alarming. You imagined a pale old woman, dancing and whining, with a sort of ghastly
affectation of the ridiculous” (Courcy I, 123-24). An arrangement for pianoforte called
“Paganini’s Dream” was published in London. The engraved title page shows the violinist
seated under the walnut tree of Benevento, his instrument and bow at his side, with a frog-
like, bespectacled monster seated on his lap, holding the music before him. Several devils
appear at the right, playing violins, while witches dance around the tree (rpt. in Sugden 49).
 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2012) 305-32/ 323

miraculous, the most triumphant, the most unheard of, the most
unique, the most extraordinary, the most incredible, the most unex-
pected that one can imagine!... In a dream Tartini saw a devil playing
a diabolic sonata—that devil was surely Paganini!39

The critic’s hyperbole may strike us as excessive, but it is an index of the

violinist’s effect on his audiences throughout his career. It may be noted
that seated in the audience at that première was the twenty-year old Franz
Liszt, who declared the concert to have been the decisive musical event of
his life (Courcy II, 15). But in our context, the reference to Tartini is of the
greatest interest. Paganini as the violin-playing Devil in Tartini’s dream! To
the French critic, Satan and Paganini are one. The extraordinary fiddler is
an eternal presence, who appears on concert stages but also in a musician’s
dream of the previous century, playing wonderful music never heard before.
The myth of the Devil’s Instrument had reached its apogee.
The association was reinforced by Paganini’s physical appearance.
Although of average height, he was thin to the point of emaciation, with
long black hair and clothed always in black. Above all it was his pallid com-
plexion, hollow cheeks, and jutting, prominent nose that accorded with
popular notions of Mephistopheles’s physiognomy. The German poet Hein-
rich Heine, observing Paganini strolling in Hamburg, jotted down his
impression of “the pale corpselike face in which care, genius, and hell had
engraved their indelible marks” (Courcy I, 397). The violinist wrote to his
close friend and personal lawyer, Luigi Germi, from Liverpool in 1832: “Now
no one ever asks if one has heard Paganini, but if one has seen him. To tell
you the truth, I regret that there is a general opinion among all classes that
I’m in collusion with the devil. The papers talk too much about my outward
appearance, which arouses incredible curiosity” (Courcy II, 89).
The alleged “collusion with the devil” was reinforced by wild rumors
about his personal life, rumors that had circulated from early on and which
were to haunt him throughout his career. It was said that he had strangled
wives and mistresses, had dissected them, and had fashioned the strings of
his instrument from their intestines; that he had been imprisoned for one
of these murders, but allowed to practice his violin in his dungeon cell,
where he had developed his astounding technique (a story found in Stend-
hal’s biography of Rossini, published in 1823; see n. 35). He was thought to
be dissolute, mean, and avaricious, a thoroughly sinister character.

39) Courcy II, 15. Castil-Blaze was the nom de plume of François Henri Joseph Blaze.
324 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2072) 305-32/

Paganini died in 1840 in Nice, whither he had come seeking a benign

climate. He had not concertized in several years because of deteriorating
health caused by syphilis. Unable to speak or even walk, he was attended
by a housekeeper and occasionally visited by his son, Achille. As Easter
approached in 1840, a Catholic priest sought admission to the musician’s
presence in order to hear his confession. Paganini, although raised as a
strict Catholic, had drifted away from religious practice and church atten-
dance. He excused himself to the priest on the grounds of ill health, but the
cleric persisted, and eventually Paganini, who was aphonic, promised to
write his confession on a slate board which could be erased. His house-
keeper, who served as a spy for the Church, informed the priest that he had
not fulfilled this promise, and probably filled his ears with fabricated cal-
umnies. Paganini died in his rented rooms in Nice on 27 May 1840 in his
fifty-eighth year.
What then commenced was a posthumous tragedy of epic proportions,
initiated by the refusal of the Bishop of Nice to allow Paganini a Christian
burial. In the words of the official Church verdict:

Considering the notoriously dissolute life that Paganini had led from
his earliest years, and considering furthermore the public scandal
resulting from his obstinacy—which was all the more heinous in view
of his fame—and the pernicious and deplorable effects on religion
were he to be accorded funeral honors, the action taken seems more
than justified. I canoni denegano ipso jure.40

Appeals were launched by Paganini’s friends, including one sent to the

Vatican (no recorded reply), all in vain. The coffin containing his body was
moved and reburied numerous times in different locales in France and
Italy, and it was not until 1876—thirty-six years after his death—that the
Bishop of Nice’s decision was revoked and Paganini’s soul was granted a
requiem service and his remains interred in a Christian cemetery in Parma,
Italy, where they remain to this day.41
In all the documentation surrounding Paganini’s death and the matter
of his burial, no specific allegations of trafficking with Satan were invoked

40) Courcy II, 331, n. 21. On this whole matter, see Courcy II, chapter XXXVIII (“Paganini and
the Church”).
41) Paganini is buried in the Cemetary Della Villetta in Parma; his grave is marked by an
elaborate domed classical portico sheltering his statue.
 R. W. Berger /Religion and the Arts 76 (2012) 305-32/ 325

in justification of the Bishop’s ruling. But given the background that we

have reviewed, it is highly likely that the great violinist’s alleged pact with
the Devil hovered in the minds of the churchmen and contributed to his
rejection from Christian burial. In this context we remember the decision
of the Bishop of Venice in 1824 to prohibit Paganini from playing in the Lido
cemetery because it was believed that he had sold his soul to the Devil—an
uncanny préfiguration of the fate that was to befall his earthly remains. In
death as in life, the myth of the Devil’s Instrument held this greatest of all
fiddlers in its icy grip.

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