In 1765, Italian Composer & Violinist Giuseppe Tartini had a fateful dream which not only changed his outlook on music for the remaining 5 years of his life, but also created his most famous and remembered piece of music. His Violin Sonata in G Minor would live on as the Devil’s Trill Sonata, as it was apparently composed by the Devil himself.
According to the French astronomer Jerome Lalande, whom was one of the first Tartini recollected his dream too, Tartini was approached by the Devil in a dream, who asked if Tartini would teach him the ways of the Violin. Tartini accepted, and taught the Devil a series of lessons. At the end of his teaching, he handed the Devil his violin, and was amazed when the Devil proceeded to play a sonata with an astounding level of skill & virtuosity. Upon waking, Tartini immediately wrote down the piece of music as best as his memory could do.
The sonata was an huge success, but Tartini felt that he hadn’t done the Devil justice, saying that the version he transcribed was:
“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 piece itself is very challenging and technically advanced to play, including series of double-stop trills, playing two notes at the same time while also rapidly alternating between two adjacent notes a tone apart. It’s similar to a guitar player today bending two strings while hitting the two notes higher than them on the neck.
It’s very hard to pull off, which resulted in two 19th century myths being created: that Tartini had six digits on his left hand in order to pull off the sonata so precisely, and that if you played the sonata, your soul would belong to the Devil forever. Apparently It is believed that the song was banished from the kingdom of heaven because of it’s “negativity against God”.
Tartini’s Violin Sonata in G Minor: Part I & the more technical Part II
@2 years ago with 12 notes
Sightings of Kangaroos in the United States has been a continuing phenomena in the last 100 years, with most of the cases being in the Midwest. Many times the creatures exhibit unusual behavior, from extreme aggressiveness to apparition-like qualities, including disappearing in front of a large group of people or simply hopping thru a wall. Kangaroos & wallabies are obviously not an aboriginal animal, so why are and what are people seeing?
Wisconsin was the first state to have phantom kangaroo sightings in the late 1800’s, but they were soon apparently all over the mid-west and beyond. The most famous out-of-place-kanagroo story is probably the 1934 Tenneesee Killer Kangaroo tale, where the ghostly, lightning-fast creature was not only hostile around humans but allegedly attacked and devoured a couple geese, rabbits and police dogs.
The creature(s) seemed especially found of Chicago in the 1970’s, with multiple sightings in the years of 1974 and 1975. The beginning of the Chicago sightings occurred in the early morning of October 18, 1974, when two police officers were called by a local man who claimed a kangaroo was sitting on his front porch. When they arrived and nothing could be found, the police laughed the whole matter off, and headed back on patrol. A few hours later, the police actually found the 5-foot tall kangaroo in question in an alley, downtown. When one the officers decided it would be wise to handcuff the cornered animal, the kangaroo proceeded to punch, kick and scream at the officers until they were knocked down, then escaped and seemed to simply vanish.
Chicago sightings continued until the summer of July 1975, but in that short time kangaroos were seen in Oak Park, Schiller Woods, Cook County, hopping down Belmont street downtown, and as far south as Decatur. Kangaroo “flaps” continued throughout Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Iowa, and Tennessee. Some investigators have even went as far to say that phantom kangaroos may be responsible for the New Jersey Devil and Chupacabra legends.
In these cases, the first thing authorities are driven to do is call all the surrounding zoos, circuses and collectors to take any “missing or escaped kangaroos” into consideration. They are almost always told that all local kangaroos & wallabies are accounted for, so the phantom marsupial sightings are just filed under the always popular “mass hysteria” group.
As for myself, I’m pretty sure Charles Fort could sum all this up in one word, perhaps.
Teleportation?
@2 years ago with 5 notes
The German U-boat U-28 was patrolling the waters off the coast of County Cork, Ireland, when it encountered and torpedoed the British steamer Iberian. The incident and the strangeness that followed was detailed by Commander Freiherr George G von Forstner in his captain’s log:
“On July 30, 1915, our U-28 torpedoed the British steamer Iberian, which was carrying a rich cargo across the North Atlantic. The steamer sank so swiftly that its bow stuck up almost vertically into the air. Moments later the hull of the Iberian disappeared. The wreckage remained beneath the water for approximately twenty-five seconds, at a depth that was clearly impossible to assess, when suddenly there was a violent explosion, which shot pieces of debris - among them a gigantic aquatic animal - out of the water to a height of approximately 80-feet.”
“At that moment I had with me in the conning tower six of my officers of the watch, including the chief engineer, the navigator, and the helmsman. Simultaneously we all drew one another’s attention to this wonder of the seas, which was writhing and struggling among the debris. We were unable to identify the creature, but all of us agreed that it resembled an aquatic crocodile, which was about 60-feet long, with four limbs resembling large webbed feet, a long, pointed tail and a head which also tapered to a point. Unfortunately we were not able to take a photograph, for the animal sank out of sight after ten or fifteen seconds.”
The creature described most closely resembles both the prehistoric sea reptiles known as mososaurs, and the Thalattosuchians, ocean-dwelling, slender-nosed crocodiles. However, both of these species become extinct at least 90 million years ago. Mososaurs could have reached the 60-foot length described by the Captain, but Thalattosuchians topped off around 35 feet.
On September 2nd, 1917, the U-28 was sunk by the British Steamer SS Olive Branch, killing most eye-witnesses to the sighting. The men who survived continued to stand behind their tale of the gigantic sea creature they catapulted into the sky above the North Atlantic, but no evidence proving their story was ever found.
@2 years ago with 1 note
