Composers

Giuseppe Tartini

Violin
String ensemble
Cello
Flute
Voice
Viola
Tenor
Bass
Soprano
Alto
Sonata
Concerto
Sinfonia
Writings
Religious music
Theory
For beginners
Variation
Étude
Pastorale
by alphabet
L'arte del arco2 Trio Sonatas26 Violin SonatasViolin Sonata in G minorTrattato di musicaStudies for ViolinTutorial Letter to Maddalena LombardiniPastorale in A major, B.A16Violin Concerto in D major, D.29Violin Concerto in A major, D.93Célèbres sonates pour violonViolin Concerto in D major, D.16Violin Sonatas, Op.1Solitario bosco ombrosoViolin Sonata in A major, B.A18Violin Sonata in E major, B.E6Violin SonatasViolin Sonata in E-flat major, B.Es1Violin Sonata in G major, B.G3112 Violin Sonatas, Op.2Sinfonia in A major, C.538Violin Sonata in E minor, B.e5Violin Concerto in B-flat major, D.116Violin Sonata in B-flat major, B.B5Stabat MaterViolin Concerto in E minor, D.55Violin Concerto in G minor, D.85Violin Concerto in A major, D.96Violin Sonata in A major, B.A3Violin Concerto in A major, D.89Tantum ergo in D minorViolin Concerto in G minor, D.87Violin Concerto in D minor, D.44Violin Sonata in A major, B.A24Violin Concerto in F major, D.58Sonata Piccola in D major, B.D2Violin Concerto in E major, D.50Tantum ergo in E minorViolin Sonata in D major, B.D15Sinfonia in D majorViolin Sonata in D minorViolin Concerto in G majorSonata Piccola in A minor, B.a2Violin Sonata in A major, B.A16Violin Sonata in B minor, B.h5Violin Concerto in A minor, D.112Violin Concerto in A minor, D.113Sinfonia in B-flat majorSonata Piccola in A majorViolin Sonata in A major, B.a11Violin Sonata in C major, B.C4Violin Concerto in G major, D.76Violin Sonata in G major, B.G216 Violin Sonatas, Op.5Sonata Piccola in B minor, B.h16 Violin Sonatas, Op.4Violin Concerto in D major, D.21Violin Sonata in G major, B.G24Violin Concerto in D major, D.19Sonata Piccola in G major, B.G5Violin Concerto in D major, D.20Violin Concerto in E major, D.48Violin Sonata in F major, B.F6Violin Concerto in B-flat major, D.119Violin Concerto in D major, D.42Violin Concerto in G major, D.73Violin Concerto in F major, D.61Violin Sonata in B-flat major, B.B10Violin Concerto in E major, D.52Sonata Piccola in E minor, B.e2Sonata Piccola in C major, B.C2Violin Sonata in A major, B.A21Violin Concerto in G major, D.77Violin Concerto in D major, D.22Violin Concerto in G major, D.81Violin Concerto in D major, D.24Violin Concerto in D major, D.38Sonata Piccola in D major, B.D4Violin Concerto in A major, D.99Violin Concerto in D major, D.23Violin Concerto in A major, D.108Violin Concerto in D major, D.41Sonata Piccola in D minor, B.d2Violin Concerto in G major, D.79Sonata Piccola in C major, B.C3Violin Concerto in D major, D.26Violin Concerto in A major, D.100Violin Concerto in D major, D.27Violin Concerto in D major, D.31Violin Concerto in F major, D.70Violin Concerto in D major, D.32Violin Concerto in A major, D.110Sonata Piccola in F major, B.F2Violin Concerto in F major, D.69Violin Concerto in A major, D.101Violin Concerto in C major, D.14Violin Concerto in F major, D.64Violin Concerto in C major, D.5Violin Concerto in A major, D.106Violin Concerto in F major, D.65Violin Concerto in A major, D.103Violin Concerto in C major, D.7Violin Concerto in C major, D.8Violin Concerto in F major, D.66Sonata Piccola in E major, B.E26 Violin Sonatas, Op.7Violin Sonata in A major, B.A5Trio Sonata in B-flat major12 Trio Sonatas3 Violin Concertos, Libro 16 Trio Sonatas, Op.86 Violin Concertos, Op.16 Violin Concertos, Op.26 Violin Sonatas, Op.66 Violin Sonatas, Op.9CapricesCello Concerto in D majorFlute Concerto in G majorSinfonia in D major, C.551/78Sinfonia pastorale in D majorSonata Piccola for Violin and Cello in D major, B.D3Thematische Verzeichnisse der Konzerte und Sonaten Giuseppe TartinisTraité des agrémens de la musiqueTrio Sonata in D minor, B.d2Violin Concerto in B-flat major, D.120Violin Concerto in B-flat major, D.Anh.3Violin Concerto in C majorViolin Concerto in C major, D.1Violin Concerto in D minor, D.45Violin Concerto in E major, D.53Violin Concerto in G major, D.78Violin Concerto in G major, S-Uu Gimo 294Violin Sonata in A major, B.A14Violin Sonata in A minor, B.a10Violin Sonata in A minor, B.a12Violin Sonata in A minor, B.a7Violin Sonata in B minor, B.h2Violin Sonata in B minor, B.h6Violin Sonata in C major, B.C12Violin Sonata in C minor, B.c2Violin Sonata in C minor, B.c5Violin Sonata in D major, B.D12Violin Sonata in D major, B.D13Violin Sonata in D minor, B.d4Violin Sonata in E minor, B.e6Violin Sonata in F major, B.F4Violin Sonata in F major, B.F9Violin Sonata in G major, B.G17Violin Sonata in G major, B.G19Violin Sonata in G major, B.G6Violin Sonata in G major, B.G9Violin Sonata in G minor, B.g10 'Didone abbandonata'Violin Sonata in G minor, B.g4
Wikipedia
Giuseppe Tartini (8 April 1692 – 26 February 1770) was an Italian Baroque composer and violinist born in the Republic of Venice.
Tartini was born in Piran (now part of Slovenia), a town on the peninsula of Istria, in the Republic of Venice to Gianantonio – native of Florence – and Caterina Zangrando, a descendant of one of the oldest aristocratic Piranese families.
It appears Tartini's parents intended him to become a Franciscan friarand, in this way, he received basic musical training. He studied law at the University of Padua, where he became skilled at fencing. After his father's death in 1710, he married Elisabetta Premazore, a woman his father would have disapproved of because of her lower social class and age difference. Unfortunately, Elisabetta was a favorite of the powerful Cardinal Giorgio Cornaro, who promptly charged Tartini with abduction. Tartini fled Padua to go to the monastery of St. Francis in Assisi, where he could escape prosecution. While there, Tartini took up playing the violin.
Legend says when Tartini heard Francesco Maria Veracini's playing in 1716, he was impressed by it and dissatisfied with his own skill. He fled to Ancona and locked himself away in a room to practise, according to Charles Burney, "in order to study the use of the bow in more tranquility, and with more convenience than at Venice, as he had a place assigned him in the opera orchestra of that city".
Tartini's skill improved tremendously and, in 1721, he was appointed Maestro di Cappella at the Basilica di Sant'Antonio in Padua, with a contract that allowed him to play for other institutions if he wished. In Padua he met and befriended fellow composer and theorist Francesco Antonio Vallotti.
Tartini was the first known owner of a violin made by Antonio Stradivari in 1715, which Tartini bestowed upon his student Salvini, who in turn gave it to the Polish composer and virtuoso violinist Karol Lipiński upon hearing him perform: the instrument is thus known as the Lipinski Stradivarius. Tartini also owned and played the Antonio Stradivarius violin ex-Vogelweith from 1711.
In 1726, Tartini started a violin school which attracted students from all over Europe. Gradually, Tartini became more interested in the theory of harmony and acoustics, and from 1750 to the end of his life he published various treatises. He died in Padua.
Tartini's home town, Piran (Slovenia), now has a statue of him in the square, which was the old harbour, originally Roman, named Tartini Square (Slovene: Tartinijev trg, Italian: Piazza Tartini). Silted up and obsolete, the port was cleared of debris, filled, and redeveloped. One of the old stone warehouses is now the Hotel Giuseppe Tartini. His birthday is celebrated by a concert in the main town cathedral.
Today, Tartini's most famous work is the "Devil's Trill Sonata", a solo violin sonata that requires a number of technically demanding double stop trills and is difficult even by modern standards. According to a legend embroidered upon by Madame Blavatsky, Tartini was inspired to write the sonata by a dream in which the Devil appeared at the foot of his bed playing the violin.
Almost all of Tartini's works are violin concerti (at least 135) and violin sonatas. Tartini's compositions include some sacred works such as a Miserere, composed between 1739 and 1741 at the request of Pope Clement XII, and a Stabat Mater, composed in 1769. He also composed trio sonatas and a sinfonia in A. Tartini's music is problematic to scholars and editors because Tartini never dated his manuscripts, and he also revised works that had been published or even finished years before, making it difficult to determine when a work was written, when it was revised and what the extent of those revisions were. The scholars Minos Dounias and Paul Brainard have attempted to divide Tartini's works into periods based entirely on the stylistic characteristics of the music.
Sixty-two manuscripts with compositions of Tartini are housed at the Biblioteca comunale Luciano Benincasa in Ancona.
Luigi Dallapiccola wrote a piece called Tartiniana based on various themes by Tartini.
In addition to his work as a composer, Tartini was a music theorist, of a very practical bent. He is credited with the discovery of sum and difference tones, an acoustical phenomenon of particular utility on string instruments (intonation of double-stops can be judged by careful listening to the difference tone, the "terzo suono"). He published his discoveries in a treatise "Trattato di musica secondo la vera scienza dell'armonia" (Padua, 1754). His treatise on ornamentation was eventually translated into French — though when its influence was rapidly waning, in 1771 — by a certain "P. Denis", whose introduction called it "unique"; indeed, it was the first published text devoted entirely to ornament and, though it was all but forgotten, as only the printed edition survived, has provided first-hand information on violin technique for modern historically informed performances, once it was published in English translation by Sol Babitz in 1956. Of greater assistance to such performance was Erwin Jacobi's published edition. In 1961, Jacobi published a tri-lingual edition consisting of the French (basis of the following two), English (translation by Cuthbert Girdlestone), plus Jacobi's own translation into German (Giuseppe Tartini. "Traite des agréments de la musique", trans. and ed. Erwin Jacobi. Celle: Hermann Moeck Verlag, 1961). Of significant import, Jacobi's edition also includes a facsimile of the original Italian found in Venice in 1957, copied in the hand of Giovanni Nicolai (one of Tartini's best known students) and including an opening section on bowing and a closing section on how to compose cadenzas not previously known. Another copy (though less complete) of the Italian original was found among manuscripts purchased by the University of California, Berkeley in 1958, a collection that also included numerous ornamented versions of slow movements of concertos and sonatas, written in Tartini's hand. Minnie Elmer analyzed these ornamented versions in her master's thesis at UC, Berkeley in 1959 (Minnie Elmer. "The Improvised Ornamentation of Giuseppe Tartini". Unpublished M.A. thesis. Berkeley, 1959).
Tartini is mentioned in Madame Blavatsky’s "The Ensouled Violin", a short story included in the collection Nightmare Tales.
Tartini, the great composer and violinist of the XVIIIth century, was denounced as one who got his best inspirations from the Evil One, with whom he was, it was said, in regular league. This accusation was, of course, due to the almost magical impression he produced upon his audiences. His inspired performance on the violin secured for him in his native country the title of "Master of Nations". The Sonate du Diable, also called "Tartini's Dream" — as every one who has heard it will be ready to testify — is the most weird melody ever heard or invented: hence, the marvellous composition has become the source of endless legends. Nor were they entirely baseless, since it was he, himself; who was shown to have originated them. Tartini confessed to having written it on awakening from a dream, in which he had heard his sonata performed by Satan, for his benefit, and in consequence of a bargain made with his infernal majesty.
The folklore of the "Devil's violin", classically exemplified by a similar story told of Niccolò Paganini, is widespread; it is an instance of the deal with the devil. Modern variants are Roland Bowman's The Devil's Violin and the country song The Devil Went Down to Georgia; the PBS segment on violin in its series "Art" was titled "Art of violin: the devil's instrument".
Tartini's The Devil's Trill is the signature work of a central character in Daniel Silva's The English Assassin. Anna Rolfe, the daughter of a Swiss banker, is a famous violinist and the sonata features prominently in the novel. The story of Tartini's inspirational dream is told.
Tartini's "The Devil's Trill" is also featured in the Japanese anime Descendants of Darkness (Yami no Matsuei). The three part story is also named after the composition.