Giuseppe Tartini was a violinist and composer of the 18th century; a Venetian by birth, primarily noted now for being one of the students of a well-known master of the violin. In Tartini's case, he encountered this august personage in a dream, one worth recounting in his own words:
One night I dreamt that I had made a bargain with the Devil for my soul. Everything went at my command—my novel servant anticipated every one of my wishes. Then the idea struck me to hand him my fiddle and to see what he could do with it. But how great was my astonishment when I heard him play with consummate skill a sonata of such exquisite beauty as surpassed the boldest flight of my imagination. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted; my breath was taken away; and I awoke. Seizing my violin I tried to retain the sounds that I had heard. But it was in vain. The piece I then composed, the Devil’s Sonata, although the best I ever wrote, how far below the one I heard in my dream!
The mundane name of this piece is »Violin Sonata in G Minor«; it not only remains Tartini's most popular work, it is in fact one of only two pieces of his which retain any durability at all in the conventional repertoire. This more than anything might induce us to believe Tartini's story, for the combination of circumstances is well known to those who study such things: the single immortal work, the crushing inferiority to the master, the sense of failure even as the masterpiece is created, are familiar traits of that bargain.
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