Devil's Trill Sonata

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Giuseppe Tartini

The Violin Sonata in G minor, more famously known as the Devil's Trill Sonata is a famous work for solo violin (with figured bass accompaniment) by Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770), famous for being extremely technically demanding, even today.

The story behind "Devil's Trill" starts with a dream. Tartini allegedly told the French astronomer Jérôme Lalande that he dreamed that The Devil appeared to him and asked to be his servant. At the end of their lessons Tartini handed the devil his violin to test his skill—the devil immediately began to play with such virtuosity that Tartini felt his breath taken away. When the composer awoke he immediately jotted down the sonata, desperately trying to recapture what he had heard in the dream. It was successful with his audience; however, Tartini lamented that the piece was still far from what he had heard in his dream. What he had written was in his own words "so inferior to what [he] had heard, that if [he] could have subsisted on other means, [he] would have broken [his] violin and abandoned music forever."