I don’t know how to translate into English chordas succidere, though the meaning is clear, of course. I lack an appropriate English verb. In Russian it will be ‘подрезать струны’.
“To cut the chords” or “strings” or “ropes” depending the context.
Can you provide the context? My Russian dictionary gives “shorten the strings” for подрезать струны, presumably shortening strings on a musical instrument by cutting them. Chorda in Latin is a string on a musical instrument, but I don’t find that specific usage for succidere in the Oxford Latin Dictionary.
Remember the legend about Paganini’s famous concert when he played on a single string that was left intact? The others were cut or succisae by his invisores (another word I do not how to render into English), so that they appeared intact but broke at the first touch of the bow. This is the context.
inuīsor ~ōris m. [inuideō + -tor] A person who is jealous of or hates.
siquis ‥ ex illis ~oribus meis malignus sedet APUL. Fl. 9.
Glare, P. G. W. (Ed.). (2012). Oxford Latin Dictionary (Second Edition, Vol. I & II). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Paganini’s strings weren’t cut by his inuisores – he deliberately cut into the three upper strings himself so that they would break during the performance one by one. (Perhaps he used his fingernail to make sure they’d break in the right order.) Then he ended up playing exclusively on the lowest string, the G, in all the positions, right up to the high notes at the edge of the fingerboard, a technique he pioneered. The high positions on the G have a unique sound quality that’s quite different from the same notes played on the D, A and E. His unnaturally long fingers, along with his absolute mastery of the instrument, allowed him to reach around the neck of the violin with ease.
I hate to pour cold water on an often told story which has no basis in fact but…
As someone who plays the violin and more importantly plays on gut strings, when I use my 18th century baroque violin, I can tell you that its just not possible to reliably saw through a string in the hope that you might break it in performance. Certainly I can’t see how its possible at all to partially cut through the highest string, the e its just too thin. The a string likewise is quite thin and I doubt you could sabotage it as described. The d, especially if it is pure gut and not sliver covered, is a possibility. But what would the effect be for the poor violinist who had broken three strings? He would be left with a very unstable bridge which may well collapse. The release in tension could have all sorts of problems including the collapse of the sound post (beginners are always advised to change strings one at a time to avoid this).
But where are the pieces that Paganini is is supposed to have played in this way? I think he only wrote one piece for the g string, the variations on the prayer from Rossini’s Moise. I am sure I have read but dont have a reference to hand that he played this on the g string tuned up a minor third. This would have made the sonorous g string sound much brighter. It would also have put much greater pressure on the bridge and made it unlikely that he would have done without the counterbalancing pressure of the other strings to keep the bridge in place.
All the other pieces I know by Paganini have passages on the g string but none end that way. breaking the strings would just not have made playing the rest of the piece possible.
One doesn’t need long fingers to play at the top of the g string. You just need to move your thumb so that it is only just in contact with the neck of the violin and one can easily reach to the top of the fingerboard. Moise goes up to c two octaves above middle c. One needs great bow technique and lots of practice to make that note sound good not long fingers!
Finally although Paganini certainly made great strides in violin technique he didnt pioneer playing on the g string. Several Haydn quartets include passages which are to played on the g string, one going up to c above middle c. Before Paganini was born Locatelli was writing very high up on the g string in arpeggiated chordal passages. Even Vivaldi writes passages quite high up.
I think that these kinds of sensational stories do a great disservice to Paganini. Schumann saw him play and said he heard the voice of an angel. Berlioz was also captivated by his musicianship. These undoubtedly great musicians were responding to something very special and not the meretricious tricks alleged in this story.
I apologise if this takes the thread completely off topic.
I’m a violinist too, though not a very good one. While I love and admire some of Paganini’s music and he was certainly a great musician, he was also a shameless showman, and some of his music is pretty meretricious. Nel cor più non mi sento variations, for example. You don’t need long fingers to play high up on the G – Oistrakh undoubtedly could – but it certainly helps. And while some of his predecessors did write high up sul G, Paganini pushed the technique beyond the limits of his contemporaries. I still believe the story, and I think he could have contrived to have his strings break in performance.
I have looked in Fetis’ (1784 – 1871) biography of Paganini, the first to be written. He doesnt mention this story but I think I can see how it arose from a conflation of the following two stories.
“He has related, with much humour, a series of tribulations which happened to him upon the occasion of his first concert there. “A nail,” he said, “had run into my heel, and I came on limping, at which the audience laughed. At the moment I was about to commence my concerto, the candles of my desk fell out. (Another laugh.) At the end of the first few bars of the solo, my first string broke, which increased the hilarity of the audience, but I played the piece on the three strings—and the grins quickly changed into acclamations of applause.” The broken string frequently occurred afterwards; and Paganini has been accused of using it as a means of success, having previously practised upon the three strings, pieces which appear to require the use of the first also.” (p 39-40).
“The qualities even of his talent were but weapons for his enemies, and it was said that the solitude of a prison, and the impossibility of replacing the strings of his Violin which had broken, led to his his marvellous performance on the fourth, the only one that remained upon his instrument.” (p 53)
There is one further story about him playing on two outer strings and removing the two middle ones, a kind of duet. This and the story about playing on three strings shows that Paganini had some regard for the possibility of the collapse of his bridge. The descriptions of his playing on one string (the G) do not mention any other breaking strings.
Rather than cutting through the e string to achieve the trick in the three strings story it would only be only be necessary to put on a string that was near the end of its life. Gut E strings need frequent replacement if you play a lot and it’s usually easy to tell when one is going to break (although surprises happen!).
I am posting this because I think it’s a lesson in how sources can become garbled. I recently visited the Nero exhibition at The British Museum. One of the curators mentioned in a talk that the idea of “damnatio memoriae”, used to account for the re-purposing of some of Nero’s busts, is in fact not present in any of the sources. It is in fact a modern invention. But how many times have we read that the senate invoked “damnatio memoriae”? I may well post on this and the exhibition in a separate thread.
Perhaps Philo could bring this thread back to his original question by providing some Latin context?
Thanks, Seneca. I actually think you’re probably right: the danger of bridge collapse – and then soundpost collapse – with a single string does cast doubt on the story in its one-string version. But it’s just too good a story to dismiss.
I’ve attended performances in which a string has snapped (once the Emerson Quartet in the last movement of op. 59 no. 3, as I recall, but the violinist didn’t keep playing on just three strings – the quartet went back and started the movement over after the string was replaced), and we’ve all had it happen to us on occasion.
Philo?
Bill
Like all good stories it encapsulates a truth that Paganini was a showman as well as a musician. In a sense all soloists are like this to some degree even if they are better behaved these days in public at least.
I was at a concert in which Kavakos was playing the Berg concerto and he broke his e string. Without hesitation he took the leader’s violin and god knows how managed to find himself straightaway and carried on for the rest of the piece, the orchestra had carried on playing. Maybe we lost a bar and a half of him. He must have known the music so well to have carried on like that playing from memory as he was. Meanwhile his violin was passed back for someone to look after and the leader was given a violin by the player behind.
I dont know whether you have seen this video before of 14 year old Midori breaking two strings and getting two replacements. Quite extraordinary!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkp8YSuePPM
And here she talks about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDQp8iJRqTY
I dont think I have seen the Emerson in Beethoven but I remember fondly the complete series of Shostakovich they did in London a few years back.
I meant to write op. 59 no. 3, just after the point in the last movement where the already impossible tempo suddenly accelerates . . .