“If Viotti is the father of modern violin playing, surely Tartini is its godfather.”
History is replete with figures who sold their souls to the Devil for favors. Just like Dr Faustus who exchanged his soul for a kiss from Helen of Troy (the face that launched ships, read war), Tartini allegedly dreamt that the Devil appeared to him and asked him to sell his soul in exchange of excellent violin playing classes and skills. At the end of their lessons Tartini handed the devil his violin to test Satan’s skill—the devil immediately began to play with such virtuosity (skill) that Tartini was left wordless, speechless, dumbfounded and tongue-tied.
The Devil’s trill (Il Trillo del Diavolo) by Tartini Giuseppe is the greatest violin piece ever produced in Italy. Legend has it that it took more than Tartini to write it. That the Devil’s inspiration was central.
When the composer awoke he immediately wrote down the sonata, desperately trying to recapture every single note and stroke the Devil had played in the dream. Though successful with people, Tartini lamented that the piece was still far from what he had heard in his dream. What he had written was, in his own words: “so inferior to what I had heard, that if I could have subsisted on other means, I would have broken my violin and abandoned music forever.”
The standard Baroque violin sonata is usually in 4 movements: slow-fast-slow-fast. Tartini surprises us with a 3 movement sonata. Rather than having a movement of predictable tempo, the violin oscillates between swiftly alternating slow and quick notes. Fans of word-painting have construed this to illustrate a conversation between a pleading, almost despairing Tartini; with a proud Devil who expertly and cleverly plays quick beautiful dazzlingly notes. No doubt a highly involving dialogue between the two characters. Tartini’s use of the words: “the Devil at the foot of the bed ” in the first of the fast sections, at the moment where Tartini calls upon the performer to execute the so-called “Devil’s Trill,” validates this legend. In performing the diabolically sweet Devil’s trill the violinist plays a trill with two fingers on one string while simultaneously executing arpeggios with the other two fingers on an adjacent string. (all violinists know that stopping is no joke)
-See Tartini to J.J. Lalande. Voyage d'un Francais en Italie (1765-6).
Whether the Devil truly visited Tartini we shall never tell, that we shall always enjoy the Devil’s Trill is a Hometruth Number 1... Perhaps Tartini’s dream wasn’t a dream after all!
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