GIUSEPPE TARTINI & THE DEVIL’S TRILL SONATA
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
