Giuseppe, the founder of a celebrated violin-school in Italy, was born at Pirano, on the coast of Istria, on the 12th of April 1692. When very young, he was sent to college at Capo d'Istria, where he received lessons in music, in violin-playing, and in fencing. His parents intended him for a monastic life, but his dislike to that condition was so insuperable that they were induced to send him to study law at the University of Padua. He made great progress in his studies, and at the same time acquired extraordinary skill in fencing, which rendered him quarrelsome, and led him into several duels. While meditating on abandonment of the law, and on the adoption of the profession of a fencing-master at Naples or at Paris, he fell in love with a young lady of Padua, a relative of Cardinal Cornaro, bishop of that city. Tartini married her privately, but the marriage being soon discovered by his father and by the bishop, the former withdrew his support from Tartini, and the bishop let loose the emissaries of the law against him. Tartini was obliged to fly, leaving his wife at Padua. At Assisi Tartini found refuge in a convent, of which one of his relatives was sacristan. There for two years Tartini remained concealed, and devoted himself to the study of the violin, while at the same time he received lessons in composition from Father Boemo, the organist of the convent. After this long seclusion, he was one day performing a solo in the church, when a gust of wind blew aside the curtain that concealed him, and he was recognised by a native of Padua, who immediately communicated the discovery to Tartini's parents. By that time the Bishop Cornaro had laid aside his enmity, and Tartini was permitted to return to Padua and rejoin his wife. Soon afterwards he went to Venice with his wife, and there heard the celebrated Florentine violinist, Veracini, whose new and bold style of playing astonished him, and suggested to him new resources for his instrument. He left Venice immediately, and retiring to Ancona recommenced the study of the violin with indefatigable perseverance. From that period, 1714, he began to form a new style of his own, and by constant practice and observation established those rules for the management of the bow which, since then, have been adopted in all the violin-schools of Italy and France. During his studies at that time, he observed the phenomenon of the third sound generated by two sounds (bearing certain harmonic proportions to each other), when sustained strongly and uniformly on a violin, or by two violins, &c. He afterwards, but unsuccessfully, attempted to found a new system of harmony upon that phenomenon. He supposed, erroneously, that the third sound was represented by $\frac{3}{2}$ instead of by $1$, in relation to the other two generating sounds. This phenomenon, in which two simultaneous sounds produce a third sound graver than either, has been termed the sub-multiple resonance. It is precisely the reverse of that phenomenon called the multiple resonance, in which a grave sound produces several acuter sounds called its harmonies, in the ratios of $1, \frac{3}{2}, \frac{5}{3}, \frac{7}{5}, \frac{9}{7}, \frac{11}{9}, \frac{13}{11}, \&c.$, and which the French musician Rameau took for the basis of his system of harmony. In what has been called the theory of music, we must distinguish between two very different things. 1st. The physico-mathematical theory of sounds considered in themselves, without reference to their combinations in melody or in harmony. In that branch of natural philosophy considerable progress has been made. 2d. The aesthetic theory of the pleasing or displeasing effects produced on the human auditory organs by certain combinations of sounds in melody or in harmony. In this last theory we have made very little progress. The rules of practical harmony are merely the results of experiment, and were discovered empirically ages before any one dreamed of assigning them to physico-mathematical principles. That certain chords in succession require to be treated in a particular manner, is merely a fact derived from experiments made upon the organs of hearing. The rules laid down for such chords are merely general expressions of the facts observed; and to say that these rules depend upon certain musical “affinities,” &c., is not the forming of a true theory, but only a mode of stating unexplained phenomena. Neither Rameau’s nor Tartini’s system of the “fundamental bass” is comprehensive enough to include many of those combination of harmony employed by Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini, and Beethoven. Aesthetics—i.e., the science of the beautiful, or the philosophy of the fine arts—has been applied to music with little success; and aesthetical speculations, physico-psychological as they are, have certainly contributed nothing to the advancement of the art of musical composition. J. A. Serre of Geneva has shown, in his Essais, the errors of Tartini’s system of harmony, and its inapplicability to musical composition. In 1721 Tartini was appointed chief violinist of the Chapel of St Anthony at Padua. In 1743 he and his friend Vandini, the violoncellist, were called to Prague by the emperor Charles VI, where they remained for three years in the service of the Count of Kinsky. After his return to Padua in 1726, Tartini refused all the advantageous offers of employment made to him by foreign potentates. In 1728 he had established at Padua a violin-school of great celebrity, and which produced many excellent violinists. Among these were Nardini, Bini, Alberghi, Ferrari, Carminati, Capuzzi, Madame Sirmen (née Lombardini), Pagin, and Laboussaye. He held his appointment at Padua till his death, which took place on 16th February 1770, from an attack of scurvy. He was buried in the Church of St Catherine. His compositions for the violin are original in style, and show both genius and skill in composition. He was a very voluminous composer, having left in manuscript 48 violin-sonatas, 1 trio, and 127 concertos, exclusive of his published works, which consisted of several sets of sonatas and concertos. After his death there were published his Lettera, &c. to his pupil Signora Lombardini on violin-playing; L’Arte dell’Arco, consisting of 50 variations upon the theme of the Gavotta in Corelli’s 10th violin-sonata; Trattato delle appoggiature, &c., being a treatise on the ornaments used in violin-playing; and his famous Sonata del Diavolo. With regard to this curious and difficult Devil’s Sonata, he told the astronomer Lalande, that one night in 1713, he dreamed the devil had entered into his service, and that all his wishes and expectations were far outstripped by the zeal and ability of this new domestic. That he thought he would ask the devil to play some airs on the violin, when the devil performed a sonata so singular and so beautiful, and executed with such amazing skill, that Tartini became breathless with delight and astonishment. Awakened by the violence of his sensations, Tartini seized his violin and endeavoured, but in vain, to recall some part of the sonata that he had just heard. However, the sonata which he then composed and named The Devil’s Sonata, he considered to be his best composition.

(T.G.F.G.)