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One day, during the service, a gust of wind blew aside the curtain behind which Tartini was playing, and a Paduan, who remembered the archbishop's wrath and recognised the object of it, carried the news of his discovery to the worthy prelate.
"In short, he is rich in claims and rich in the future; but how did he get himself made a knight of one of the French king's orders?" "You're joking. That is the blue ribbon of the Order of St. Michael, of which the late Elector of Cologne was grand master. As you know, my lord plays exquisitely on the violin, and when he was at Bonn he played the Elector a concerto by Tartini.
It may be that accident determined the future career of Tartini, for, had he remained at the university, the whole bent of his life might have been different. Eros exerted his potent sway over the young student, and he entered into a secret marriage, that being the lowest price at which he could win his bourgeois sweetheart.
Among these, the most celebrated is the "Trille del Dia-volo," or "Devil's Sonata," composed under the following circumstances, as related by Tartini himself to his pupil Lalande: "One night in 1713," he says, "I dreamed that I had made a compact with the devil, who promised to be at my service on all occasions.
Giarnovichi shall never cross my doorstep again. There's a stupid coxcomb for you! A fellow who has the effrontery to turn up his nose at the grand Tartini master of all masters and despises my lessons. What I should like to know is, what that boy Rhode will turn out after he has had lessons from me? He promises well, and I have an idea that he will master my bow.
Philidor spent his years chiefly in the intrigues of chess-playing. The great Tartini, whom the devil visited in the dream he immortalised in his famous Sonata del Diavolo, had a checkerboard career. As a young university student he fell in love with a niece of Cardinal Cornaro, and married her in secret. Like Romeo, his romance brought him separation and exile.
Tartini died at Padua in 1770, and so much was he revered and admired in the city where he had spent nearly fifty years of his life, that his death was regarded as a public calamity.
Time had, however, mollified him, and instead of still further persecuting the refugee, he gave his consent to the union of the young couple, and Tartini and his wife went to Venice, where he intended to follow the profession of a violinist.
Tartini's father, who was an elected Nobile of Parenzo, being a pious Church benefactor, intended his son for the Church, and sent him to an ecclesiastical school at Capo d'Istria, where he received his first instruction in music. Finding himself very much averse to an ecclesiastical career, Tartini entered the University of Padua to study law, but this also proved distasteful to him.
In the midst of this ineffable concert of impossible voices and instruments, I tried to imagine the voice of Guadagni, the soprano for whom Gluck had written Che faru senza Euridice, and the fiddle of Tartini, that Tartini with whom the devil had once come and made music.
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