Amateur Bard

I’m absolutely dying. There was some weirdo in the 1880s who dressed up as Paganini’s corpse and performed Paganini pieces and got so bent out of shape about people wanting to hear him play other pieces that he paid for an ad in the Times to show how not owned he was:

“PAGANINI REDIVIVUS begs to make known, in reply to numerous inquiries, that he seldom performs Beethoven’s Concerto, Mendelssohn’s Concerto, Tartini’s Devil’s Sonata, Bach’s “Chaconne,” or the other stereotyped pieces of the inevitable so-called classical repertoire. Paganini Redivivus has heard them so frequently hackneyed about by little conservatoire pupils on the Continent, that they have lost their importance for him. However, although from a violinistic point of view they are worse than trivial, still as musical compositions they are very admirable. Therefore later on Paganini Redivivus may be induced to give a SPECIAL RECITAL of the above stated pieces, in order to show the London public how they should be played.”

Good to know people haven’t changed ever lol

(Also, the author* of the book I found it reprinted in has this to say as follow up:

“No comment of mine is needed to point the moral of the above edifying paragraph. True, he was a marvellous executant, but from an artistic point of view — bah ! It is this terrible temptation to charlatanry which spoils the playing of so many amateurs, for in their love of exciting wonder and applause, they lose sight entirely of the glories of purity of tone and expression, which must be the substratum to which all ornaments of style are purely incidental…”

To which I say, stop, stop, he’s already dead again!)

*Edward Heron-Allen, whose Violin-Making As It Was and Is was published in the 1880s and is still available in print today, was apparently a highly practiced palm reader and as well as enthusiastic about “the cultivation, gourmet appreciation of and culture of the asparagus,” according to Wikipedia.