Tartini: Sonate a violino solo & Aria del Tasso (Alpha Collection)

Although Giuseppe Tartini was taught the first rudiments of music at the College of the Padri dell Scuole Pie in Capodistria, and may have received lessons in counterpoint from the Franciscan Bohuslav Cernohorsky in Assisi, many elements give the impression that the boy had an education that was anything but ‘academic,’ and that the future ‘maestro delle nazioni’ largely taught himself. However, there does exist a declared model for the music of Tartini, at least for a certain period: that of Corelli. His output seems dominated initially by the influence of his great predecessor in terms of both language and structure. The reference to folk music in his music is also obvious. Another interesting element in the sonatas presented on this release is the presence of mottoes of varying length placed next to the incipits of certain movements, and often written in a ciphered cuneiform alphabet invented by the composer. These are poetic quotations, mostly drawn from the works of Metastasio, although not all of them have been identified. At the end of this recording is one of Tartini’s very rare vocal pieces, the last composition copied into MS 1888/1. The poem Solitario bosco ombroso, based on a clearly Petrarchan model and on the classical antecedents of Tibullus and Propertius, was published for the first time by the poet Paolo Rolli in London in 1727, in a musical setting by Rolli himself.