Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV IN my early years in Boston, foreign artists, singers, and players, came to the United States pretty much as they come now, but relatively in smaller numbers. Boston was even then quite a Mecca for instrumentalists. Among those who made the greatest impression on me were three genuine artists who formed a little company,—Sivori, violinist, Knoop, violoncellist, Henry Herz, pianist. The latter was spoken of with great acclaim by the newspapers as the composer of variations on Home, Sweet Home. His position was thereby fixed at the top round of the art ladder. He did play his own compositions quite neatly, also those of Rosellen and kindred composers, and I was present when he took part in a piano trio by Haydn; but I fear his playing would not pass muster in these days. The 'cellist, Knoop, was of the regulation pattern of well- trained virtuosi, who could play the elder Romberg's compositions. But Sivori was really a master violinist—an advance Wieniawski, without the latter's ability to compose violin music. Sivori had a marvellous technique. He had been the only pupil and pro- te'ge' of Paganini, and he played on the latter's famous Stradivarius, left by will to him. In the summer of '88, I spent a part of the season in Paris. Sivori was still alive, and, like the majority of artists who lead the lives of virtuosi, had made Paris his home. I determined to do myself the honor of calling on him, and had an opportunity to do so in company with a Boston friend who knew him well. Sivori was living on the fourth or fifth story of a very modest hotel, having a single room, with space for an upright piano and an alcove for his bed. It was a charming, cosy little room, just such a one as the majority of bachelor artists occupy in Paris, no matter how ample their incom...