Giuseppe Tartini

As Tartini’s wife was favored by the Cardinal Giorgio Cornaro, their marriage prompted his spite and forced Tartini to flee to Padua to avoid trumped-up prosecution charges; while in exile, he learned to play the violin.

He died, on Feb. 26, 1770, in Padua, at the age of 77.

Giuseppe Tartini was born on 8 April 1692, born in Pirano, a village in Istria on the Adriatic Sea, which was formerly part of the Republic of Venice, but now belongs to Slovenia.

His parents, Gianantonio and Caterina Zangrando, were from Florence and Pirano, respectively; Tartini’s mother’s family was among the oldest aristocrats from the region.

Tartini parents wanted him to become a Franciscan friar and he was therefore given a basic level of musical education.

He studied law at the University of Padua, against his parents’ wishes, where he also learned to fence with great skill.

According to the legend surrounding Tartini’s life, in 1716, he heard Francesco Maria Veracini playing violin and was inspired to hone his own violin playing skills. He locked himself in a room, in a town far away from his home, to devote himself solely to violin practice.

By 1721, Tartini had sufficiently improved his violin playing skills to gain the seat of Maestro di Cappella at Padua’s Basilica di Sant’Antonio, a position with a contract that left him fairly free to play elsewhere, as well.

In 1728, he founded his own violin school at Padua, named, ‘Scuola di Nazioni’, which succeeded in attracting ambitious musicians from throughout Europe.

In 1750, he began focusing more intently on theoretical works, a pursuit that he would remain faithful to until his final years.

Tartini retired from his position at Basilica di Sant’Antonio in 1765.

The ‘Devil’s Trill Sonata’ is Tartini’s most famous composition. It’s a solo violin sonata that requires a number of technically demanding double stop trills .

Tartini’s sacred work, ‘Miserere’, is one of the few pieces with a composition date that can be loosely approximated; he wrote it between 1739 and 1741, at Pope Clement XII’s request.

In 1754, he published a treatise entitled ‘Trattato di musica secondo la vera scienza dell’armonia’, which explained his discoveries related to sum and difference tones.

In 1769, Tartini wrote another sacred work, a ‘Stabat Mater’.