Giuseppe Tartini

Lore & Background

Tartini was born on 8 April 1692 in Pirano to Gianantonio – native of Florence – and Caterina Zangrando, a descendant of one of the oldest aristocratic Piranese families. His parents intended him to become a Franciscan friar, and he received basic musical training. He studied violin first at the collegio delle Scuole Pie in Capodistria, then 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 disapproved of because of her poverty, unknown father and greater age (she was 20, he was 18). Elisabetta was a favourite 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. In Assisi he studied under Bohuslav Matěj Černohorský. Legend says when Tartini heard Francesco Maria Veracini's playing in 1716, he was impressed and dissatisfied with his own skill. He fled to Ancona and locked himself away in a room to practice, 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'. In 1721, he was appointed Maestro di Cappella at the Basilica di Sant'Antonio in Padua. Between 1723 and 1725 he was in Prague, where he was master of the chapel of the Count Kinsky. 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 Karol Lipiński: the instrument is known as the Lipinski Stradivarius. In 1726, Tartini started a violin school which attracted students from all over Europe. He died of gangrene on 26 February 1770 in Padua.

Reader's Guide

Giuseppe 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 concertos (at least 135) and violin sonatas (at least 100). His 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. Cataloguing Tartini's compositions is a challenge: he never dated his manuscripts, and revised works that had been completed or even published long before. Scholars Minos Dounias and Paul Brainard have attempted to divide Tartini's works into periods based entirely on stylistic characteristics. Tartini was also a music theorist, credited with the discovery of sum and difference tones, an acoustical phenomenon of particular utility on string instruments (the 'terzo suono'). He published his discoveries in 'Trattato di musica secondo la vera scienza dell'armonia' (Padua, 1754). His treatise on ornamentation was translated into French in 1771 by 'P. Denis', and later published in English translation by Sol Babitz in 1956. Tartini's home town, Piran, has a statue of him in Tartini Square, and his birthday is celebrated by a concert in the main town cathedral.

Did You Know?

• Tartini married Elisabetta Premazore when he was 18 and she was 20; his father disapproved because of her poverty, unknown father, and greater age.
• After his marriage, Cardinal Giorgio Cornaro charged Tartini with abduction, forcing him to flee to the monastery of St. Francis in Assisi.
• Tartini was the first known owner of a 1715 Stradivarius violin, later called the Lipinski Stradivarius after it passed to Karol Lipiński.
• He discovered sum and difference tones (the 'terzo suono'), an acoustical phenomenon useful for tuning double-stops on string instruments.
• Sixty-two manuscripts with compositions by Tartini are housed at the Biblioteca comunale Luciano Benincasa in Ancona.