Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770) was born in Piran (now part of Slovenia). He studied law at the University of Padua, where he became skilled at fencing. After his father’s death in 1710, he married Elisabetta Premazore, a woman his father would have disapproved of because of her lower social class and age difference. Unfortunately, Elisabetta was a favorite of the powerful Cardinal Giorgio Cornaro, who promptly charged Tartini with abduction. Tartini fled Padua to go to the monastery of St. Francis in Assisi, where he could escape prosecution. In Assisi he studied under Bohuslav Matěj Černohorský.
Legend says when Tartini heard Francesco Maria Veracini’s playing in 1716, he was impressed by it and dissatisfied with his own skill. He fled to Ancona and locked himself away in a room to practice, according to Charles Burney, “in order to study the use of the bow in more tranquility, and with more convenience than at Venice, as he had a place assigned him in the opera orchestra of that city”.
Tartini’s skill improved tremendously and, in 1721, he was appointed Maestro di Cappella at the Basilica di Sant’Antonio in Padua, with a contract that allowed him to play for other institutions if he wished. In Padua he met and befriended fellow composer and theorist Francesco Antonio Vallotti. Between 1723 and 1725 he was in Prague, where he was master of the chapel of the Count Kinsky.
Tartini was the first known owner of a violin made by Antonio Stradivari in 1715, which Tartini bestowed upon his student Salvini, who in turn gave it to the Polish composer and virtuoso violinist Karol Lipiński upon hearing him perform: the instrument is thus known as the Lipinski Stradivarius. Tartini also owned and played the Antonio Stradivarius violin ex-Vogelweith from 1711.
In 1726, Tartini started a violin school, which attracted students from all over Europe. Gradually, Tartini became more interested in the theory of harmony and acoustics and from 1750 to the end of his life he published various treatises, in which he also treated problems of music theory on a mathematical basis. He died of gangrene on February 26, 1770 in Padua.
Almost all of Tartini’s works are violin concerti (at least 135) and violin sonatas. Tartini’s compositions include some sacred works such as a Miserere, composed between 1739 and 1741 at the request of Pope Clement XII, and a Stabat Mater, composed in 1769. He also composed trio sonatas and a sinfonia in A. Today, Tartini’s most famous work is the “Devil’s Trill Sonata“, a solo violin sonata that requires a number of technically demanding double stop trills and is difficult even by modern standards. According to a legend, he was inspired to write the sonata by a dream in which the Devil appeared at the foot of his bed playing the violin.