About this Piece

For Italian musicians of the Baroque era, the violin was the paramount solo instrument, with distinctive schools of violin playing and composition established by Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713) in Rome and Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) in Venice. A generation later in Padua, Tartini founded his own school, which produced or influenced a number of famous violinists.

Tartini composed well over 100 concertos and over 200 sonatas, most of which are difficult to date accurately. Even publication makes a poor guide—five different volumes were published in Amsterdam between 1728 and 1734 as Tartini’s “Op. 1.” The sonata we know as the “Devil’s Trill” did not see print until 1798. It comes with a story, however, that was current during Tartini’s lifetime, attributing the work to 1713 (most scholars believe it dates to the 1740s). Tartini had a dream in which he imagined a deal with the Devil, who proceeded to demonstrate the best solo Tartini had ever heard. Upon waking, Tartini wrote down this sonata, despite feeling that it was so inferior to what he had heard in his dream that he should have broken his violin and abandoned music, if only he had any other way to earn a living.

The violin is emphatically the lead instrument in this sonata, supported only by a bass line with coded indications for harmonies. This continuo part would have been played by a bass instrument (such as the cello) and a chordal instrument (keyboard or lute) during Tartini’s time. The opening movement is a lilting lullaby, its gentle insistence hinting at darker things to come. A crisp bravura movement follows before a slow passage that is supposed to represent Tartini’s dream state. This slow music alternates with another Allegro (a loose variant of the second movement) that includes the actual “Devil’s Trill” passage: a rising sequence of double stops with the trill on the upper string.

—John Henken