Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday — John Shaqi
Famous Violinists of To-day and YesterdayLahee, Henry Charles
History
Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday
Lahee, Henry Charles
Bull, Ole, 1810-1880; Joachim, Joseph, 1831-1907; Paganini, Nicolò, 1782-1840; Violinists
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. He was a youth of highly
impulsive temperament, and became so much enamoured of the art of
fencing that he, at one time, seriously contemplated adopting it as a
profession. This very impulsive nature caused him to fall in love with a
niece of the Archbishop of Padua, to whom he was secretly married before
he was twenty years of age.
The news of this marriage caused Tartini's parents to withdraw their
support from him, and it so enraged the archbishop that the bridegroom
was obliged to fly from Padua. After some wanderings he was received
into a monastery at Assisi, of which a relative was an inmate. Here he
resumed his musical studies, but though he learned composition of Padre
Boemo, the organist of the monastery, he was his own teacher on the
violin. The influence of the quiet monastic life caused a complete
change in his character, and he acquired the modesty of manner and
serenity of mind for which he was noted later in life.
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. 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.
Here he met and heard Francesco Maria Veracini, who was some seven years
his senior, and whose style of playing made such a deep impression on
him that he at once withdrew to Ancona, to correct the errors of his own
technique, which, as he was self-taught, were not a few.
After some years of study and retirement, he reappeared at Padua, where
he was appointed solo violinist in the chapel of San Antonio, the choir
and orchestra of which already enjoyed a high reputation. It is said
that the performance of Veracini had an effect upon Tartini beyond that
of causing him to quit Venice. It made him dream, and the dream as told
by Tartini himself to M. de Lalande is as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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