A different perspective on the Violin Playing of the Nineteenth Century
This research investigates Niccolò Paganini’s violin technique as a dynamic system emerging from the interaction between body, instrument, and material conditions. Rather than treating Paganini’s playing as a fixed historical model, the project approaches it as a situated and evolving practice, shaped by specific configurations of posture, movement, and instrumental setup.
Developed through artistic research and practice-based experimentation, the study engages directly with historical playing conditions, including the use of gut strings, historical bows, and the absence of chin and shoulder rests. Work with a copy of Paganini’s instrument further enables an exploration of the violin as an active partner in sound production, highlighting the reciprocal relationship between bodily organisation and material response.
Within this framework, technique is understood as a generative system grounded in principles such as balance, leverage, and distribution of effort. These elements are examined through close work on Paganini’s Caprices (1817–20), in dialogue with earlier repertoire—particularly Pietro Antonio Locatelli’s 24 Capricci (1733)—in order to trace continuities in embodied approaches to virtuosity.
My recording of Paganini’s 24 Caprices (Passacaille, 2022), performed with gut strings and historical bows, forms an integral part of the research process, functioning as a space for testing and refining technical hypotheses.
By situating Paganini’s practice within a broader historical and material context, the project contributes to a renewed understanding of nineteenth-century violin playing, foregrounding the role of the body and the instrument as a coupled, dynamic system.
