Niccolò Paganini

Air and water take four of his ten planets each, with two in fire and not one in earth. The element that would hold a thing to a fixed shape is missing from the chart entirely. The record says Paganini played so far beyond anybody else that audiences seriously discussed whether he had sold his soul, that he refused a priest at the end, and that the Church would not bury him for years.

The Sun sits on the fifth degree of Scorpio with Mercury near the end of the same sign at twenty seven, and the Moon answers from Cancer at twelve. Scorpio commits totally and will not be known on anybody else's schedule; a Cancer Moon feels at full strength and withdraws rather than confronting. Venus, Mars and Neptune sit inside nine degrees of Libra. For a player the record says was discussed as possibly diabolical, a Scorpio Sun that declines to explain itself is the plainest reading available.

Mercury is in four of the six closest contacts in this chart, which is unusual and is the fact to build on. It sits in mild friction with Mars at six hundredths of a degree, thought and drive colliding; in quiet contact with Saturn at seven hundredths, organisation and long concentration; in hard contact with the Moon at just under a fifth; and in quiet contact with Jupiter at four fifths, learning that comes easily. Jupiter sits conjunct Saturn at just under nine tenths of a degree. Uranus alone was retrograde. In a musician whose playing the record says was discussed as supernatural, a speech planet wired to four separate contacts is the nearest thing a chart offers to an explanation.

He died at Nice on 27 May 1840, at fifty seven. Pluto rules his Scorpio Sun, and that day the transiting Sun stood in easy contact with that natal Pluto at fourteen hundredths of a degree, the closest thing in the sky. The Moon stood directly opposite his natal Mars at just over two thirds and square its own natal place at just under a degree. It was at its last quarter and twenty per cent lit, which is the phase that rethinks the whole premise rather than the details, which for a man the record has refusing a priest is a fitting sky to go out under.