The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College - Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: Violin Celebration - Bach to Beethoven - Sonata in G minor for Violin and Continuo, “Devil’s Trill”

Sonata in G minor for Violin and Continuo, “Devil’s Trill”

Giuseppe Tartini

- Born April 8, 1692, in Pirano, Istria (now Piran, Slovenia)
- Died February 26, 1770, in Padua
- Composed before 1756
- Duration: 17 minutes

Giuseppe Tartini was a Baroque violinist, pedagogue, and theorist. He is said to have believed his research and teaching to be duties directly assigned to him by God. It is ironic, then, that his most famous composition, the Sonata in G minor for Violin and Continuo, boasts one of music history’s most supernatural origin stories: a dream about a deal with the devil (hence the sonata’s nickname “Devil’s Trill”). In this dream, Tartini allegedly handed his violin to the devil, who proceeded to play the most exquisite sonata the composer had ever heard. The overwhelming beauty of the music jolted him out of his slumber, at which point he reached for his instrument and tried to recreate what the devil had played. The result was the piece you’ll hear today—full of polished melodies and wickedly challenging technical passages. Tartini referred to it as his best sonata, but was also adamant that it did not live up to the arresting beauty of the devil’s original. Given how popular Tartini’s version is, one can only speculate what the devil played for him in that fateful dream.

The sonata’s opening movement is restrained, almost surprisingly so in light of its nickname. The compound time signature and long-short rhythms give a gentle lilt to the main theme. Even in its sunniest major-key iterations, this melody retains a faintly ominous quality; throughout the movement, subtle chromaticism and pointed accents build tension. The declarative violin entrance to the Allegro gives way rather quickly to breathless sixteenth-notes. The technical demands and increased ornamentation hint at the virtuosic whirlwind that is to come in the final movement. Following a brief and meditative Andante, the finale launches into a fast opening featuring the eponymous devil’s trill. Using the double-stop technique (playing on two adjacent strings simultaneously), the soloist maintains a trill on one of the strings while executing a melodic line on the other. Quasi-funereal slow passages alternate with frenzied ones in this polarized movement, ultimately culminating in a diabolical—pun intended—cadenza.