Fiddler's Will

One day around 1800, an already notorious teen-age violinist arrived in Leghorn to play a concert--with no violin. His name was Nicolo Paganini, and he had pawned his fiddle to pay off a pressing gambling debt. A wealthy merchant offered to lend him a matchless Guarneri del Gesu and, when the performance was over, refused to take it back. "The Guarneri is yours," he cried. "My hands shall never profane the violin which you have touched!"

Paganini treasured the instrument for the rest of his life. He took it home to Genoa, where he devised some of the fantastic technical tricks--such as playing pizzicato with his left hand while bouncing his bow across the strings with his right to create a dazzling cascade of notes--that bewitched audiences all over Europe. On the last night of his life, in 1840, he called for it, and spent some of his last moments improvising on its strings. In his will, he left it to the city of Genoa, for "perpetual conservation."

Popular superstition had long suspected him of a pact with the devil: How else could a man do with a violin what Paganini did? The Genoese enshrined his Guarneri in the city hall--though they were still uneasy about its late owner, and the Pope himself had to launch an inquiry into Paganini's orthodoxy before he could be buried in consecrated ground years later.

Genoa has long abided by the fiddler's will. Every year the mayor, the community's secretary general, a museum official and a notary public gather around the glass case, solemnly break the seal and lift the violin out for an annual tuning and workout. In latter years, a distinguished violinist has been invited to do the job. This year Genoa took out some extra Paganini memorabilia, asked French Violinist Zino Francescatti to give the Guarneri its annual tuning. Perhaps because Francescatti is Paganini's lineal musical descendant (his father studied with Paganini's only real pupil), Genoese decided to give him a still greater honor: a half-hour concert in the city hall, to be played on the legendary Guarneri. His program: one of Paganini's 24 famed Caprices and the Bach Chaconne. Standing by for the event, Francescatti admitted he felt solemn. "It is like taking on the mantle of Paganini," he said, "or waiting anxiously to meet the devil."

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