Giuseppe Tartini - Guida

Tartini wrote the majority of his works for the services at the Antonine chapel in Padua, and they include about 150 concertos for violin and orchestra, two cello concertos, and almost 200 sonatas for violin, with and without accompaniment. Completing the catalogue of compositions are some sacred pieces and a group of trio sonatas and sonatas a 4. Some of the works were published in the 18 th century by Dutch firms, but for the most part they remained unpublished in various manuscript sources. The greatness of Tartini, whose personality was shaped by his constant research, undoubtedly lies in his music; in the originality of his construction of the musical phrase, which he conceived as a discourse and often modelled on poetic texts; in the technical innovations he brought to the shape of the bow; and also in the widespread influence his musical thinking had on the following generations, from Haydn and Mozart onwards. A fundamental event in his artistic career was the discovery of the so-called “third sound” (or combination tone), which is produced as a low sound that acts as a harmonic foundation of a precisely tuned two-note chord on the violin, as he himself states in a letter: I must let you know that in 1714, as a young man, I discovered [the third sound], and from 1721 onwards I communicated it to the musical professions in general; that from 1742 I began to adopt it as a rule and make a general use of it for my students of the violin and counterpoint... The studies on the third sound were the starting point for his physical-acoustical demonstration of the rules of musical harmony: studies that were extensively discussed in his two theoretical treatises published in 1754 and 1767 and also expounded in his abundant correspondence, which brought him into contact with a number musicians, scholars, mathematicians and intellectuals of the period.