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Scan 316
Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1928
14 lines. Read by computer on 12 September 2026. Printed page 270. See the scan on archive.org.
1declining years prevented him from playing, he continued composing. (Some of these works are preserved in the Cappella del Santo at Padua.) In 1768 his health began to fail him. He wrote to his friend Riccati in that year, telling him that he had suffered from an attack of convulsive paralysis, and it had confined him to the house for nearly six months. This was the beginning of the end. A month later he was moved from his bed to a sofa, and became more hopeful of recovery, but instead of this he grew worse. A cancerous growth formed in his foot, and caused him terrible suffering until his death. Tartini's last moments were soothed by the presence of his affectionate pupil Nardini, who came expressly from Leghorn to be with his master, and followed his remains to the grave. The great violinist was buried in the church of St. Catherine of Padua. A Requiem composed by his friend Vallotti was sung in the church of the Santo, and the Abbé Fanzago delivered a laudatory oration which was published at Padua in the same year.
3Character of Tartini.—Tartini practically divided his personal property, which consisted of certain investments, amongst his family during his lifetime, so that, as he states in a letter to his people dated 1769,
5'there is nothing to leave you at my death except my furniture and my money. That may pass to my legitimate heirs at Pirano. In the absence of such (I mean males) the inheritance may pass to the Tartinis of Florence.'
7Some of his manuscripts and other articles he left to his pupil Giulio Meneghini of Padua, and some to the Postmaster-General, Count Thurn and Taxis. To his friend Professor Colombo he entrusted his literary work Delle ragioni e delle proporzioni (six books), that he might superintend its publication. Colombo unfortunately died shortly after, and the manuscripts were apparently all lost except those portions of the materials which served for the work now preserved in the Archives of Pirano.
9As a man Tartini was universally beloved and respected by his fellows. He was of a pious nature, and frequently told his friends that his happiness consisted in his submission to the will of the Almighty, and not to his own. He devoted his life to the highest forms of art and science, although his practical knowledge was not always sufficiently sound to place the result of his researches upon a solid basis. An instance of this is found in his Trattato di musica secondo la vera scienza dell' armonia, and in his De' principii dell' armonia musicale, wherein he attempted to fathom some difficult acoustical problems, and raised some literary controversy on the subject, but entirely failed to come to a clear conclusion. Briefly, his observations led to the discovery of the generating sound which proceeds from two notes vibrated together, and this he employed as an excellent guide to perfect intonation in double-stopping. 'If you do not hear the bass,' he told his pupils, 'your thirds and sixths are not in tune'; but neither he nor his pupils could explain the phenomenon of this 'third sound,' since explained by Helmholtz under the title of 'differential tones.' His humble nature imbued him with a serene content, which was perhaps detrimental to his fame as a solo-player, for there is no doubt that he was the greatest scientific as well as practical violinist of his day. In spite of Quantz's oft-quoted but improbable statement that Tartini resorted to tricks, we have ample proof in his music, and in his Arte del arco, that he was a magnificent cantabile player. Indeed, so sensible were the Italians of this exquisite quality in the great violinist that Mainwaring 1 tells us that his contemporaries often said of him: 'Non suona, ma canta sul violino.' Yet it was his success as a teacher, rather than as a player, that made him world-famous. Such pupils as Nardini, Pasqualino, Bini, Alberghi, Manfredi, Ferrari, Graun, Carminato, Maddalena Lombardini (Madame Sirmen), to whom he addressed the oft-quoted Letter of Instruction, Pagin, Lahoussaye and others were living proofs of his ability as a teacher, which attracted all the talent of the day to the 'School of Nations' in Padua. As a composer he combined the serenity and dignity of Corelli with an added grace and passion all his own, and his writing for the violin was technically more advanced and complicated than that of his predecessors. He contrived to infuse a variety of expression into his music lacking in the works of Corelli, and this is stated to have been due to his custom of selecting some phrase from Petrarch before he began to compose, and keeping the sense mirrored on his mind while at work. He not only thought of the chosen lines, but inscribed them in a cipher known only to himself and a chosen few, at the top of his MSS. A certain Melchior Babbi of Padua possessed the key to this cipher, and according to his account Tartini inscribed on one sonata the words 'Ombra sacra' ('Sacred shade'). On another 'Volge il riso in pianto o miei pupille' ('Turn laughter into tears, oh my eyes'). Tebaldini confirms this statement and says that many of the MSS. preserved in the Cappella del Santo at Padua bear such inscriptions. There is a story that when Lipinski visited Trieste in 1818 he met one of Tartini's oldest pupils in the person of the lawyer Constantino Massarana, who placed one of his master's MSS. before the violinist. Lipinski failed to play it to the satisfaction of his listener, who said, 'Read the inscription, and that will inspire you to play it with the right spirit,' which it is said he did.
11Summary of Works.—A complete and com-
131 Memoirs of the Life of Handel, 1760.
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