The Violin Sonata in

G minor G minor is a minor scale based on G, consisting of the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Its key signature has two flats. Its relative major is B-flat major and its parallel major is G major. According to Paolo Pietropaolo, it is the ...

, B.g5, more familiarly known as the ''Devil's Trill Sonata'' ( Italian: ''Il trillo del diavolo''), is a work for solo

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

(with

figured bass Figured bass is musical notation in which numerals and symbols appear above or below (or next to) a bass note. The numerals and symbols (often accidentals) indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones that a musician playing piano, harpsi ...

accompaniment) by

Giuseppe Tartini Giuseppe Tartini (8 April 1692 – 26 February 1770) was an Italian composer and violinist of the Baroque era born in the Republic of Venice. Tartini was a prolific composer, composing over a hundred of pieces for the violin with the majority of ...

(1692–1770). It is the composer's best-known composition, notable for its technically difficult passages. A typical performance lasts 15 minutes.

Background

Tartini allegedly told the French astronomer

Jérôme Lalande Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande (; 11 July 1732 – 4 April 1807) was a French astronomer, freemason and writer. Biography Lalande was born at Bourg-en-Bresse (now in the département of Ain) to Pierre Lefrançois and Marie‐Anne‐ ...

that he had dreamed that the

devil A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of ...

had appeared to him and had asked to be Tartini's servant and teacher. At the end of the

music lesson Music lessons are a type of formal instruction in playing a musical instrument or singing. Typically, a student taking music lessons meets a music teacher for one-to-one training sessions ranging from 30 minutes to one hour in length over a pe ...

, Tartini handed the devil his violin to test his skill, which the devil began to play with virtuosity, delivering an intense and magnificent performance. So singularly beautiful and executed with such superior taste and precision was the Devil's performance, that the composer felt his breath taken away. The complete story is told by Tartini himself in Lalande's ''Voyage d'un François en Italie'':

One night, in the year 1713 I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul. Everything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted: my breath failed me, and I awoke. I immediately grasped my violin in order to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream. In vain! The music which I at this time composed is indeed the best that I ever wrote, and I still call it the "Devil's Trill", but the difference between it and that which so moved me is so great that I would have destroyed my instrument and have said farewell to music forever if it had been possible for me to live without the enjoyment it affords me.

Mesmerized by the devil's brilliant and awe-inspiring playing, Tartini attempted to recreate what he had heard. However, despite having said that the

sonata Sonata (; Italian: , pl. ''sonate''; from Latin and Italian: ''sonare'' rchaic Italian; replaced in the modern language by ''suonare'' "to sound"), in music, literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cant ...

was his favorite, Tartini later wrote that it 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." While he claimed he composed the sonata in 1713, scholars think it was likely composed as late as the 1740s, due to its stylistic maturity – the music is

galant The galant style was an 18th-century movement in music, visual arts and literature. In Germany a closely related style was called the ''empfindsamer Stil'' (sensitive style). Another close relative is rococo style. The galant style was drawn in o ...

in idiom, that is, transitional between the Baroque and Classical periods. It was not published until 1798 or 1799, almost thirty years after the composer's death. The sonata would become the basis for

Cesare Pugni Cesare Pugni (; russian: Цезарь Пуни, Cezar' Puni; 31 May 1802 in Genoa – ) was an Italian composer of ballet music, a pianist and a violinist. In his early career he composed operas, symphonies, and various other forms of orche ...

's 1849 ballet ''Le Violon du diable'', as well as Chopin's Prelude No. 27.

Structure

The sonata, written for violin with basso continuo (

), is written in four movements: #Larghetto ma non troppo #Allegro moderato #Andante #Allegro assai — Andante — Allegro assai The first movement, in time, begins gently and reflectively, with languid

double stop In music, a double stop is the technique of playing two notes simultaneously on a stringed instrument such as a violin, a viola, a cello, or a double bass. On instruments such as the Hardanger fiddle it is common and often employed. In perform ...

s and a flowing violin melody line filled with tasteful embellishments. The melody, which moves from the tonic to the mediant key in the middle of the movement includes several deceptive cadences, before returning once again to a tonic theme similar to the beginning. A crisp, quick, highly decorated bravura follows, preceding a brief cantabile slow movement, said to signify Tartini's dream state. The last movement, technically difficult, begins fast, before dissolving into repeated, modular violin melody over an intensifying accompaniment. This leads to a slow chromatic theme, followed by more sequences of the two themes. The source of the sonata's nickname is a passage where the violinist trills while simultaneously playing arpeggiated triads. The bravura cadenza that is frequently played was composed by Fritz Kreisler. The accompaniment joins the violin again for the last few dramatic measures. The trill in the last movement is one of the earliest examples of a trill illustrating a musical theme. Tartini-Trillo-del-diavolo

In popular culture

The ''Devil's Trill Sonata'' is the only musical composition that Dylan Dog, the main character of the Italian comic of the same name, can play on the clarinet. The sonata also has an important role in the plot of "Sonata macabre" (English: "The Macabre Sonata"), the issue #235 of the comic. The ''Devil's Trill'' also features prominently in a story arc of the supernatural horror manga ''

Descendants of Darkness is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yoko Matsushita. The story revolves around shinigami. These Guardians of Death work for '' Enma Daiō'', the king of the dead, sorting out the expected and unexpected arrivals to the Under ...

''. A gifted music student accidentally contacts a demon while playing the Sonata. The Devil's Trill is directly referenced in the horror film ''

Nocturne A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night. History The term ''nocturne'' (from French '' nocturne'' 'of the night') was first applied to musical pieces in the 18th century, when it indicated an ensemb ...

'' about a girl who finds a book with instructions to sell her soul to

Satan Satan,, ; grc, ὁ σατανᾶς or , ; ar, شيطانالخَنَّاس , also known as the Devil, and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity, is an entity in the Abrahamic religions that seduces humans into sin or falsehoo ...

to excel as a pianist.

Sources

Auer, Leopold, 1925, ''Violin Master Works and Their Interpretation'', Carl Fischer, New York, repub. Dover, 2012

References

External links

*
Performance of the Devil's Trill Sonata
by Caroline Goulding (violin) and Shuai Wang (harpsichord) from the

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, which houses significant examples of European, Asian, and American art. Its collection includes paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts. It was foun ...

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...

format
Review of the Devil's Trill CD released on the Naim Label
by Yuval Yaron (violin) and

Jeremy Denk Jeremy Denk (born May 16, 1970 in Durham, North Carolina) is an American classical pianist. Early life Denk did not come from a musical family. After several years in New Jersey, his family settled in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he grew up. H ...

(piano) {{Authority control Compositions by Giuseppe Tartini

Tartini Giuseppe Tartini (8 April 1692 – 26 February 1770) was an Italian composer and violinist of the Baroque era born in the Republic of Venice. Tartini was a prolific composer, composing over a hundred of pieces for the violin with the majority of ...