Giuseppe Tartini Research Articles

Going down to the crossroads: popular music and transformative magic

If there is a single narrative that captures the modern understanding of transformative crossroads magic it is the spurious fable of the selling of Robert Johnson's soul. When, in the palaeoanthropology of 20thcentury rock and roll music, the biographers of the short-lived blues legend claimed that he had been down to the Dockery Plantation crossroads at midnight to sell his soul to the Devil in exchange for guitar skills, they were perhaps unwitting witnesses to the deep history of myth and ritual that has long been associated with the transformative space of the crossroads. They were not lacking in foresight, however, about the way in which such a claim would enhance their subject's credibility. The value of such a sulphurous reputation for a musician is not merely a recent phenomenon but also has historical precedents. A hundred years before Johnson (who lived 1911–1938), the guitarist and violinist Niccolo Paganini (1782–1840) was considered such a suspiciously devilish virtuoso that his audiences were reputed to cross themselves before his concerts in hope of protection from subtle demonic influence. One audience member even fled a concert after reporting seeing the Devil himself aiding Paganini's performance. Going a little further back, Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770) explained of his best-known sonata,The Devil's Trill(1713), that he had ‘written down the piece after waking from a particularly vivid dream of the Devil playing a violin with ferocious virtuosity’, and claimed that it was ‘but a shadow of what he had witnessed in the dream, for he was unable to capture on the page the Devil's full intensity’. His long career was certainly not harmed by this youthful excursion into Hell.

The Main Aspects of Giuseppe Tartini’s Influence on the Violin Sonatas by Ivan Khandoshkin

The outstanding Russian violinist Ivan Khandoshkin has comprehended profoundly the traditional Italian musicians who exerted an influence on his music and performance. The greatest amount of interest was demonstrated by him in the achievements of Giuseppe Tartini. The author of the article, examining Khandoshkin’s sonatas, demonstrates their closeness to Tartini’s aesthetics and compositional techniques. Along with the general tendencies of the bow technique, interpretations of the timbre of the violin, expansion in the range of the instrument, the more essential aspects of Tartini’s influenced are accentuated: gravitation towards the Italian style of сoncitato (in particular, the usage of dissonant instruments); a reliance on the peculiarities of the operatic recitative; manifestation of the specificity of the operatic style of lamento; transmission of the vocal nature of folk melodicism; balancing between concise structural organization (with profound contrasts between the respective sections) and a through type of development; expansion of the technical possibilities of the right hand (the enrichment of the strokes). Special attention is given by the author of the article to Khandoshkin’s cadences, perceiving an adherence to the methods of Tartini in this sphere as well. Thus, Khadoshkin’s indication of the fermata (or a sustained note) at the end of a musical phrase or section presumes the improvisation by the performer, carrying out both a decorative and a formgenerating function. Deepening the violin’s expressive capabilities and bringing in new performance techniques, Khandoshkin was the first to develop the genre of the violin sonata in Russia. This became possible as the result of his unique talent of unifying his own practical habits with Western European performance innovations. Keywords: Ivan Khandoshkin, Giuseppe Tartini, the Russian violin school, the Italian violin school, the solo violin sonata, technique of violin playing.

VIOLIN MUSIC IN MID-18TH-CENTURY MADRID: CONTEXTS, GENRES, STYLE

The 18th century was key for the dissemination and consolidation of a new way of playing and composing for the violin all over Europe. To date, research on specific composers and genres have been carried out, but global studies on the use of this instrument in specific cities are scarce. In the case of Madrid, some investigations in Spanish pay attention to the increase of violin compositions that took place around the 1750s, and some modern music editions exist. Nevertheless, neither the style of this music nor the process that led to its composition and consumption have been studied in depth. In addition, this repertoire is virtually invisible in the international literature. This study offers for the first time a global view of the violin repertoire composed and performed in Madrid between ca. 1730 and ca. 1776, discussing its relative importance in national and international contexts. Departing from over 170 musical sources, of which over forty were virtually unknown to date, three main lines of research are combined: the composition and performance contexts, the shaping of musical genres and the analysis of the style. The study is completed with three appendices that include descriptions of the located musical sources, the critical edition of eight unpublished works and a video showing the recuperation of one of them for performance nowadays. In the period studied here, the most popular violin genres in Madrid were the violin sonata and the trio for two violins and accompaniment. There was also demand for violin duets, small ensemble overtures, solo concertos and ensemble concertos. The located works, which amount to 163 in total, were composed by twenty different composers. This includes roughly the same number of Italians (such as Mauro D'Alay and Francesco Montali) and Spaniards (such as Jose Herrando), among other nationalities. These musicians worked for prestigious institutions (e.g. the Royal Chapel) and private patrons, including members of the royal family (e.g. Elisabetta Farnese), other members of the royal court (e.g. Farinelli), aristocrats (e.g. the XII Duke of Alba) and foreign diplomats (e.g. the Swedish Baron Carl Leuhusen). The systematic analysis of these 163 works (which contain over 400 movements in total) shows the assimilation in Madrid of pan-European compositional trends, such as the use of standardized multi-movement cycles, dance topics, an idiomatic instrumental technique and a melodic writing in the galant style. The main models for these compositions seem to have been Italian, as was usual in other European capitals. Parallels are detected not only with Arcangelo Corelli, whose reception in Spain was already known to some extent, but also with other composers whose impact in this country had not been researched before, such as Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Tartini, Pietro Antonio Locatelli and Giovanni Battista Sammartini. This stylistic similarity confirms that the repertoire that was in fashion internationally was introduced in Madrid shortly after its composition, as the inventories of local private libraries show since the 1730s. The dance music that was performed on the violin in mid-18th-century Madrid is also studied. Its models were mainly French: minuets and contredanses predominate. This repertoire, normally left in a secondary position in the studies on instrumental music, had, however, a great social importance at the time. In fact, dance music was very demanded both in public and private contexts, and it was central for the dissemination of violin performance among the middle classes. In 1760, the buyers of violin publications in the city were around 200 people that consumed not only dance pieces, but also didactic treatises and chamber works. Before 1776 fifteen collections of sonatas, duets and trios for violins were published in Madrid, despite the scarce printing of instrumental music in Spain. Moreover, some collections of violin music by composers based in the Spanish capital were published in London and Paris. This intense assimilation of new styles, genres and music-consumption practices paved the way for a deeper integration of the Spanish capital in the European music market, which was intensified from 1770 onwards. Thus, violin music played a central role in the updating of the instrumental music cultivated in Spain during the so-called 'central 18th century', and portrays Madrid as a dynamic musical centre, aware of the latest international trends. In addition, this study sheds new light on the circulation of violin repertoire between Spain and other European countries, especially Italy, but also Germany or Sweden, further away from its scope of political-cultural influence. The violin music composed in Madrid also relatively quickly reached some countries of Latin America, such as Bolivia and Mexico; this opens up new avenues of research.

Tartini and the Tongue of Saint Anthony

This article explores the nexus between Giuseppe Tartini's concertos for violin and orchestra, written for the Franciscan Basilica of Saint Anthony in Padua, and the devotion to this Saint's tongue, still preserved as a relic. Anthony's tongue, hagiographers write, was the instrument of a rhetoric that transcended verbal signification, able to move people of different languages and even animals. Soon, the tongue of Saint Anthony became a powerful symbol of universal language. In the eighteenth century, the Catholic Church, and especially the followers of Saint Anthony, revitalized their global mission to overcome cultural and linguistic barriers. Commissioning orchestral church music was part of this strategy. Like Anthony's preaching, Tartini's music was informed by the utopian goal to reach out to a pluralist community. His music and ideas attracted the attention of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Charles Burney, both engaged in contemporary debates on the quest for universality of music in a multicultural world. Newly discovered evidence sheds light on the liturgical context of Tartini's violin concertos, as well as on religious rituals of music making and listening that left long-lasting traces of sacrality in the secular rites of production and consumption of instrumental music.

La disseminazione della musica di Giuseppe Tartini in Francia. Le edizioni settecentesche di sonate per violino e basso

This article examines eighteenth-century French editions of sonatas for violin and bass by Giuseppe Tartini. Through the announcements in the Parisian journals and the catalogues of music publishers, it has been possible to establish the years of issue for op. 4 to op. 9 to the period 1747–1750. The comparison with the manuscript sources of Tartini sonatas allows to evaluate the reliability of these editions, of whom op. 6 and 7 result those with greater number of concordances, even if we have no knowledge of relations between Tartini and the French publishers.

Giuseppe Tartini e la proprietà intellettuale della musica nel settecento

This paper examines various aspects pertaining to the concept of intellectual property of music developed by Giuseppe Tartini, not only concerning his own compositions, but also the works of other musicians (including his own students).

Violinism in the Territory of Present-Day Slovenia in Tartini's Time

In view of the fact that Giuseppe Tartini was born on the territory of present-day Slovenia, the article focuses on violinistic activity in the context of the secular and sacred circles existing in Tartini’s time in the Slovenian Lands. The violin compositions and didactic works that can be linked with the Slovenian ethnic territory are discussed as well.

Natura e alterità. Ancora sull'Aria del Tasso di Giuseppe Tartini

Giuseppe Tartini based four movements of his violin sonatas on the popular theme Aria del Tasso. The term popolare in Tartini’s writings is equivalent to simple, and simplicity is the main feature of nature. Tartini defines harmony as a phenomenon of nature imbued with a universal value, on which both traditional and art music are founded. He accepts the diversity of cultural forms coexisting within the framework of a parallel second nature, thus recognizing alterity as an emerging category. This dualism implies a clash between ratio and sensus, turning their opposition almost into one of nature and nurture.

Six String Quartets, op. 3, and: Konzert fur Violine und Orchestra, op. 3 Nr. 6, C-Dur (1772/73) (review)

Madalena Lombardini-Syrmen. Six String Quartets, op. 3, I-III. Sally Didrickson, editor. Bryn Mawr, PA: Hildegard Publishing Company (T. Presser), c2002. [Introd., 1 p.; editor's notes, 1 p.; score, 29 p.; and 4 parts. Pub. no. 494026640. $55.] Madalena Lombardini-Syrmen. Six String Quartets, op. 3, IV-VI. Sally Didrickson, editor. Bryn Mawr, PA: Hildegard Publishing Company (T. Presser), c2003. [Introd., 1 p.; editor's notes, 1 p.; score, 27 p.; and 4 parts. Pub. no. 494-02i670. $55.] Maddalena Laura Lombardini Sirmen. Konzert fur Violine und Orchester, op. 3 Nr. 6 C-Dur (1772/73). Edited by Barbara Gabler. Kassel: Furore Verlag, c2003. [Pref. in Ger., Eng., 3 p.; score, p. 1-28; ISMN M-50012-461-0; Furore-Edition 2544. [euro]15.] While Maddalena Laura Sirmen (nee Lombardini, 1745-1818) is well enough known for her eminence as a performer--she was just about the only professional female violinist of her time, and a highly successful one, before embarking upon a less illustrious career as an opera singer--her compositions are certainly less familiar. In fact, the string quartets that appear here in two volumes edited by Sally Didrickson have not been published in the modern era. Like other works, they were written relatively early in her life. Published by Madame Berault, the quartets appeared in Paris in 1769 (and subsequently in London in 1773 by William Napier), under the joint authorship of Maddalena (as Madelena Laura Syrmen) and her husband Lodovico. There are differing views on this apparent collaboration: for Elsie Arnold, stylistic evidence points to the quartets being Maddalena's work alone (Sirmen, Maddalena Laura, Grove Music Online, http://www.grovemusic.com [accessed 22 February 2006]), while Ian Woodfield has recently suggested that the balance might have been the other way around, with Maddalena's name being added to the publication to boost sales through name recognition (review of Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen: Eighteenth-Century Composer, Violinist, and Businesswoman by Elsie Arnold and Jane Baldauf-Berdes [Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2002], in Eighteenth-Century Music 1, no. 1 [March 2004]: 92). While the question of the quartets' authorship raises some fascinating issues, one should signal here the still stronger fascination provided by Sirmen's music (complete recordings are available by the Allegri String Quartet, Cala CACD1019 [1994], CD; and the Accademia della Magnifica Comunita, Tactus TC 731201 [1999], CD). The predominant topic, one that accounts for many of the music's stylistic and textural characteristics, is the serenade; the quartets are full of passages that feature two or more players crooning in parallel intervals against a steady accompaniment. This wooing of the listener reminds me of Luigi Boccherini, but the resemblances are more pronounced than that. Sirmen is also given to textural loops in which the parts exchange short units, creating a hovering, hypnotic character. This coexists and often overlaps with a tendency for parts to move in various permutations of parallel and contrary motion, normally involving sinuous stepwise lines, the crossing of parts, and light touches of chromaticism. Another related tendency reminiscent of Boccherini is the preference for very close spacing, the four independent parts often moving within the range of no more than half an octave. One should bear in mind that Boccherini's first set of quartets (op. 2) was written in 1761 and published in 1767 (as op. 1) in Paris by Venier. This need not imply any direct influence, but both Boccherini and Sirmen were students of Giuseppe Tartini, and the resemblances may provide evidence of a shared Italianate approach to the genre in its early years. Certainly the ethos of almost idyllic interaction provides a contrast with the harder-edged conversational models that have become entrenched in the reception of the genre. A number of harmonic features collaborate with the textural attributes outlined above to create a more definitively Sirmenesque flavor. …

A Crystal‐Chemical Study of Remains found in the Tomb of Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770)

We describe a crystal‐chemical investigation on extremely altered skeletal material and a greatly altered ring found in the tomb of the musician and composer Giuseppe Tartini. X‐ray powder diffraction and electron probe microanalysis show the presence of brushite and a small amount of hydroxyapatite in the skeletal remains. The brass ring is composed of an inner core part of cuprite (Cu2O) surrounded by parascholzite (CaZn2(PO4)2??2H2O in the outer part. This indicates that Tartini's body underwent chemical attack by a strong acid, probably sulphuric acid, as an intentional technique of mortuary hygiene in the second half of the 18th century.

ジュゼッペ・タルティーニの装飾論における演奏行為の位置(第 52 回美学会全国大会発表要旨)

ジュゼッペ・タルティーニの装飾論における演奏行為の位置(第 52 回美学会全国大会発表要旨)

Intorno a Locatelli: Studi in occasione del tricentenario della nascita di Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695-1764)

Intorno a Locatelli: Studi in occasione del tricentenario della nascita di Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695-1764). Edited by Albert Dunning. (Speculum musicae, I. 1.) Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1995. [2 vols. (xiv, 1250 p.) ISBN 88-7096-143-5. L250.000.00.] This massive two-volume collection of twenty substantial essays on subjects concerned directly or obliquely with Pietro Antonio Locatelli constitutes the proceedings of a congress held in 1995, presumably at Cremona, to commemorate the three-hundredth anniversary of the composer's birth. Most of the contributors were young Italian scholars. Many were students of the volume's editor, Albert Dunning, at the University of Pavia. Three of the essays by non-Italians have been translated into Italian in order to create a unified work. The boxed set has been lavishly produced under the sponsorship of the Fondazione Pietro Antonio Locatelli of Amsterdam and Cremona, which is also underwriting the Locatelli complete works edition beaded by Dunning, the leading Locatelli specialist of our time. Among the essays tangential to Locatelli is the very long one (128 pages) that opens the collection, on musical patronage in Venice during the early eighteenth century, by Alessandra Bernardi, essentially a revision of her 1990 dissertation at the University of Pavia completed under Dunning's direction. It includes a comprehensive overview of musical activity in that city, set within the context of its political, social, cultural, religious, and economic institutions. It draws upon unpublished diaries, travelers' accounts, administrative records, archives of public bodies, and literary and musical sources. Much of it is organized according to category of patron, and contains new information relating to the careers of Antonio Vivaldi, Tomaso Albinoni, Francesco and Michele Gasparini, Giovanni De Porta, Giuseppe Boniventi, Carlo Tessarini, Giorgio Gentili, and Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello. Similar to this essay in originality and scope is Franco Piperno's account of musical events, patronage, and institutions during the first half of the eighteenth century. Piperno, an associate professor of musicology at the University of Florence, concludes with a precise chronological table listing known performances of operas, oratorios, cantatas, serenades, and other items of musical spectacle in Rome from 1710 to 1725, with citations of primary and secondary sources. Likewise tangential to Locatelli but of undoubted value are Margherita Canale Degrassi's essay on the purposes and performance practices of Giuseppe Tartini's violin concertos, Galliano Ciliberti's study of the Christmas concerto in the eighteenth century, Stefano La Via's exposition of new documents relating to the musical patronage of Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome (1700-1740), Paola Pozzi's catalogue of Italian concertos from the first half of the eighteenth century preserved in the elector's library in Dresden, and Giovanni Sgaria's life and works of the estimable Roman composer Giovanni Mossi (ca. 1680-1742), this one, too, a Pavia dissertation supervised by Dunning. Giacomo Fornari's discussion of the decline of instrumental music in Italy during the eighteenth century confronts a very large and fascinating problem, probably beyond the reach of such a young scholar. His essay relies heavily on quotations from travel accounts, treatises, and music journals of the eighteenth century to establish, basically, that opera overwhelmed Italian musical culture of that period and that, given the abysmal condition of the Italian economy under foreign domination, many aspiring musicians migrated to Northern Europe, where there was a market for instrumental music that did not exist in their homeland. Consequently. Italian instrumental music, although extremely influential during the first half of the century, was essentially an aspect of emigrant culture. as Carl Dablhaus called it. Left unexplored is exactly why economic hardship in Italy favored opera production over instrumental music and why, in some parts of the peninsula, instrumental music flourished nonetheless. …

Koncert za violino in orkester v d-molu G. Tartinija (D. 45) - poizkus analize v času in prostoru

Koncert za violino in orkester v d-molu G. Tartinija (D. 45) - poizkus analize v času in prostoru

Giuseppe Tartini i Josip Mihovil Stratico

Giuseppe Tartini i Josip Mihovil Stratico

Demonstration of a Hydraulic Model of the Cochlea having a Soft Partition Lengthwise

I introduce fundamental facts requiring explanation: First: Giuseppe Tartini in 1704 discovered that, when two musical tones were presented to it, the sense organ not only gave him the musical interval but added one or more bass tones, which he named terbi suoni. In 1954, Max F. Meyer extended this discovery over nonmusical intervals and also showed that the terzi suoni failed to deserve the Helmholtzian term “difference” tones. Example: For the interval 19:13, the terzi suoni are the frequencies 7 and 3, by no means 6. Second: About 1830, Rudolf Koenig made known the remarkable fact that in all mistuned consonances the beats of the higher and those of the lower pitch were never heard at random times: they always strictly alternated. Third: To this, Carl Stumpy in 1895 added the discovery that the beats of 1:2 and 3:2 (because odd:even) mistuned by “d” came at the rate of “2d,” i.e., were doubled.—The demonstrated model prescribes the fruitless place theory and offers a mechanism by which all those facts of audition are explainable as heard frequencies.

Tartini and the Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin

mHE NAME OF GIUSEPPE TARTINI has never, to my knowledge, been linked by musical scholarship to the tradition composition and performance music for violin alone. And yet for a number years now we have been in possession evidence showing that such a connection does actually exist. chief clue is contained in a letter written by Tartini in February 1750 to his friend and countryman, the poetaesthete Francesco Algarotti, who occupied a position as chamberlain at the court Frederick the Great at Berlin. One Frederick's special favorites, Algarotti had recently intervened with the Prussian monarch on behalf one Tartini's pupils who sought a position in the court orchestra. As it happened, the application was unsuccessful, there being no vacancies for violinists at that time. To Tartini himself, however, a very definite advantage did accrue as a result the negotiations. He was commissioned to submit an unnamed number compositions for the inspection and criticism, as he writes, of that wondrous monarch. These events may be followed in Tartini's correspondence with Algarotti in the years 1749 and 175o, a but significant part which has come down to us.' letter with which we are presently concerned is dated Padua, February 24, 175o, and announces the forthcoming arrival in Berlin the compositions Frederick had commissioned through Algarotti. Tartini describes the works as small (piccole sonate) and makes the following remark about their manner performance: The sonatas mine which have been sent to you are notated with a bass part for the sake convention [per ceremonia].... I play them without the bass, and this is my true intention. Interestingly enough, this letter, first published in 1884, has reappeared in print as late as 1945 without any commentary on the passage quoted.2

A Study of the Theories of Giuseppe Tartini

Before beginning a systematic study of the theories of Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770), it is necessary to examine briefly his positionand his goals as a theorist and to give a summary of the contents of the works to be discussed. Of all the theorists of his time no one was more singlemindedly concerned with throwing light upon the most basic principles of harmony; in consequence, anything that in his opinion did not serve this purpose was not brought into consideration [T, cf. letter to Count Decio Agostino Trento, without page number, at the beginning of the book]. Thus we find little or nothing said about practical rules for chord progression or about the structural or affective uses of harmony. To him, the basic principles of harmony are an exact science, derived from nature to be sure, but from a nature rigidly ruled by mathematical proportions in a Cartesian sense. In his work, mathematical relation and proportion take priority, and he derides those who think that the principles of harmony may depend upon feeling or artistry. He is quite aware of the difficulties into which other theorists have been led in attempting to explain consonant minor harmony and dissonance, and he tries throughout his work to relate the three apparently different foundations of major, minor, and dissonant harmony to an a priori principle which will account for all three. This universal principle, he believes, is to be found in the relationship of the circumference of a circle to its diameter projected as the side of a circumscribed square (Figure 1).