Image from Futurama, episode 9 “Hell Is Other Robots”
The Violin has always been associated with the Devil. Where this connection was first made, and why it continues to remain is something of a mystery. Though, throughout the history of the violin, the devil continues to make appearance after appearance.
If I had to take a stab, based on no facts whatsoever, around the time the violin was born, music in the western world was largely non-secular. Sure there were folk songs and reels, and the Romany wandered the land playing exotic sounding tunes passed down from generation to generation, but music was largely church-oriented. So much of the music written was for the purpose of worship. Many composers earned their coin by composing music for church services, and for performing in them alongside their usual little concerts. However, the violin was a standout coming from music in the styles of Klezmer or Romany. Both styles of music utilized the dreaded “Tri-tone”. The tri-tone cuts the scale precisely in half, and is the most discordant of all relationships between two notes. It therefore was also known as the Devil’s Chord.
Pull up a clip of Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre, preferably one for violin and piano. The piano plays a few notes, but listen to the violin’s entrance; it’s disturbing. Our ears long for consonance, and to hear not only the discordance of the notes, but also the chaos that the bow-on-strings provides in sound waves…the music could become deeply unsettling. Perhaps this led to some notion that the violin, being able to so easily make and sustain that noise, started to lean towards the “Devil’s Instrument.”
Camille St. Saens’ Danse Macabre
Another push towards the association came during the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. The violin was often used as accompaniment for peasant dances (many reels, garamonds, pavanes, jigs, etc, are written for violin). During the Protestant Reformation (And the subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation), dances were denounced for being entirely too carnal. Many writers blamed the Devil for the very existence of dance. The violin, while loosely affiliated, became much more so during the Renaissance. The devil, as agent of death and creator of dance, became linked to the violin, depicted in paintings such as Pieter Brueghel’s “The Triumph of Death” and Hendrik Goltzius’s “Couple Playing, with Death Behind.”
A composer named Giuseppe Tartini once lay down to sleep, wherein he had a dream involving the Devil and the violin. Recounted here:
Le Songe de Tartini par Louis-Léopold Boilly 1824
“One night, in the year 1713 I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul. Everything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted: my breath failed me, and – I awoke. I immediately grasped my violin in order to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream. In vain! The music which I at this time composed is indeed the best that I ever wrote, and I still call it the “Devil’s Trill”, but the difference between it and that which so moved me is so great that I would have destroyed my instrument and have said farewell to music forever if it had been possible for me to live without the enjoyment it affords me.”
~Lalande’s Voyage d’un François en Italie
This is the very same piece I’m playing in Flying V Fights: Heroes and Monsters.
One of the more famous associations with the Devil and the Violin comes from the great violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini.
Paganini’s Caprice 24 – Played by Hilary Hahn
Paganini was so adept at violin, and so beyond any of his contemporaries, that somewhere along the line, the rumor developed that he had sold his soul to the devil for the ability to play. This predated the rumor that guitarist Robert Johnson met Satan at the Crossroads and sold his soul there by about 200 years. There is some speculation that Paganini himself started the rumours. If a violinist is a dancer, then Paganini was an acrobat. His fingers were so long and agile that he could play in a way that almost no other violinists could match in his day. Listen to his “Caprice No. 24”, and the sheer acrobatics of the playing. It sounded very unlikely anything else being written in his day, though he was merely borrowing techniques and putting them together in new and exciting ways. It was said that Paginini was not “further development” of violin playing, but simply a “phenomenon.” Who else incurs such phenomena musically? Clearly only the Devil, who inspired dance, and played so passionately in the dreams of Tartini.
The last example, and perhaps the one that solidified the image in the modern day, is none other than Charlie Daniels’ “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”.
Charlie Daniels Band’s Devil Comes Back to Georgia
If you’re unfamiliar with the song (you charlatan) the Devil challenges a young fiddler named Johnny to a fiddling contest. If the Devil wins, he gets Johnny’s soul. Because the Devil likes souls. If Johnny wins, he gets a gold fiddle. While probably worth a decent sum of money, a gold violin would actually sound really crappy. Like really crappy. The Devil is clearly a master of “Deals with the Devil”. But, much to his chagrin, he is out-fiddled, and must hand over the fiddle. Lesser known is the Charlie Daniels’ song “The Devil Comes Back to Georgia”, wherein he goes after Johnny once again. In both songs, the Devil’s violin part is virtually inhuman. In fact, most of the sheet music referencing the Devil’s part basically just says: “Improvise something here.” Devil violin is inhuman and infernal, and it probably continues to be the easiest instrument to make such unholy noises upon. (Seriously, just ask the parent of any child learning violin; you’re going to be hearing a lot of screeches for a few years).
Image from Stratton Violin www.strattonviolin.com/
So, as I mentioned in my last post about the timelessness of the violin, the Devil is an equally timeless entity. Both appear to exist in and outside of time, which perhaps adds to the supernatural element of the violin. The feats of Tartini, Paganini, and Daniels have been replicated since, but that has done nothing to dispel the magic surrounding the association of violin and ultimate master of the underworld. I’m glad to continue on in the proud tradition of Devil-Violinists, and glad to be bringing a little piece of that deep-seated history and sorcery onto the Flying V Stage.
-Jon Jon Johnson
Flying V Fights: Heroes & Monsters
July 11-28
The Writer’s Center, Bethesda
