.

The Devil’s Trill

I.    

A heavy meal and three glasses of port
Weighed down Tartini when at length he rose
From supper to retire. “Ah, there he goes—
Tartini, feted at each royal court
He visits,” said one of the guests. “Who knows,
He may be finished,” came a sharp retort
From nearby. Drawled Tartini, “Please escort
That guest away. He’s plastered, and it shows.”

In silence, he fumed: That oaf’s estimation
Of artistry in ignorance is shrouded.
Has he traversed the continent and scouted 
The talents of each European nation?
He’ll be embarrassed that he ever doubted
Tartini! He will taste my irritation
With all his kind—cretinous aggregation—   
And with the arrant nonsense that he spouted.

In private, he began a practice session.
At first the master’s form was in the pink,
His execution bound to make one blink;
But soon eavesdroppers gained the clear impression
That all his skills were dulled by food and drink.
A sigh escaped him then, a self–confession:
His flame had faded, swamped by a progression
Downward toward sloppiness that raised a stink.

Laying aside his bow and violin
He thought, I shall recover all my powers 
By resting undisturbed for seven hours—
The simplest and the sweetest medicine.
Those critics will soon see—there will be flowers
About my feet, and an enormous din                                                                      
From listeners’ cheering shouts. And I shall win    
For years to come such praise and floral showers.   

.

II.

Another line of thought began to creep
Into the exhausted virtuoso’s mind:
As consciousness proceeded to unwind
He fought, against a new self–doubt, to keep
His confidence that he surpassed in kind
Those wizards known to make admirers weep
At their staccato scales, or at some leap
Of startling amplitude they’d just designed.

In dream he faced a trial: could he outclass
All rivals, or would they do just as well
As he, or better still? A clarion bell
Rang for the daunting test he’d have to pass.
Vivaldi, Locatelli, Pisendel …
The pot for bets here—not to be too crass—
Would far outstrip the sum I might amass,
He thought, if each one’s fiddles I could sell.

The contest started. Chord drawn after chord
Rang out from tautened strings on left and right,
Arpeggios wild escaped into the night.
The smallest lapse no one there could afford.
None present threw the others any slight,
But deemed himself the finest of that horde,
Throughout the world destined to be adored—
Euterpe’s child, the brightest of the bright.

Hearing all this, one would not know to whom
Among them to accord the most attention.
Through both technique and genius of invention
Their powers showed themselves in ripest bloom,
So that the ear’s belief was in suspension:
No sounds produced in any other room
Could stand compare: ecstatic joy matched gloom
Unfathomed—it defied all comprehension.

.

III.

This summit of the virtuoso’s art
Could never last. Into their midst there came
A figure grim of face and gaunt of frame,
Insisting he knew all they’d heard by heart.
His playing, he avowed, had garnered fame
For its expressive breadth: it could be tart,
Or else ardiente, chantant, mesto, zart;
But firmly he refused to give his name.

None present were impressed: who’d not contend
That range of style and mood was common cause
Among musicians? Yet there stole a pause
Into Tartini’s mind: why recommend
Oneself in several tongues? To seek applause    
In such a manner no one can defend.   
His ways suggest a fiend more than a friend.
This boor delights to flout decorum’s laws.           

Like the dispersal of a sun-warmed cloud,
The company faded and disappeared—
All save the last, who calmly stroked his beard
And smiled, as if to mock the vanished crowd.
This brash intruder’s air Tartini feared
More than the awesome presence of the proud
Contenders so artistically endowed,
Now gone. The scene was eerie, it was weird.

And then the stranger made a bold request,
To test Tartini’s precious instrument!
“You will soon see the significant extent
To which, in all truth, I outclass the rest.
Trust me,” he added, growing eloquent,
“There’s no denying I should be addressed
As colleague … no, as teacher of the best
Of all who’ve ever to our calling bent.”

.

IV.

“Impossible!” replied the astonished host.
“Baltzar you can’t have known.” “Just like a son!
For years I taught him in the tone well spun;
Corelli, Biber also, not to boast.
They learned from my example, to a one,
And many others, living or now ghost,
From Barcelona to the Baltic coast.
Superior to me, though, there is none.”

Even as he spoke, out shot a lean left hand
And snatched up violin and bow together.
Detachedly he, with touch light as a feather,
Got open strings to sing upon command.
Golden those fifths, aglow like burnished leather.
Deliberately he let the sound expand
And wash the ear like waves upon the sand,
Evocative as vales abloom with heather.

“Signor Tartini, hear these glistening trills,
Delightful false harmonics, ricochet.
I practice such tricks faithfully each day,
Assign myself the most demanding drills.
Vast is the repertory that I play.
“Over-elaborate,” scribble critics’ quills.
Lacking completely are their pliers’ skills—
Obnoxious Philistines, I have to say!”

The uninvited guest prolonged his speech,
And all the while continued in the vein
Of bold bravura. “Sir, should I restrain
My pace, that you can learn all I might teach?
But no—it’s for the future to explain
Such matters. Paganini’s craft may reach …
Well, near my own; and others’—for each
New protégé will tread unmapped terrain.

.

V.

At length, both lecture and recital ceased.
Tartini, lying in his bed, awoke,
His ghostly visitor transparent smoke,
His frenzied brain on fire, to say the least.
How vivid that nightmare! To him it spoke
Of future trials and triumphs. It increased
His zeal for study: dream that phantom priest
Of pyrotechnics was, but not a joke.

Practice became composing on the spot.
A new sonata gradually emerged,
One that through its duration seethed and surged
With devilish passion, overcome and fraught.
The public’s untried ears would soon be scourged,
Their souls by incandescent playing wrought.
Agreeable diversion this was not;
Upon the supernatural it verged.

Bedazzled as the somnolent Tartini
Had been by things revealed to him through dream,
He thought his age would find them too extreme:
They fit some future rage (that Paganini?),
But on those trills he’d shine the brightest beam;
Of them he’d prove himself a potent genie,
To be admired by such as Veracini,
Making them glitter to effect supreme.

God planted in the violinist’s mind
The sonic seed His gardener would raise
And bring to harvest (likewise reaping praise).
Regarding the work’s title—God is kind
To treat it as a joke. As some sage says,
“In case you are to priggishness inclined,
No skin off the Almighty’s nose we find:
It’s called ‘The Devil’s Trill’; the label stays!”

.

.

Poet’s Note

“The Devil’s Trill” (“Il trillo del diavolo”) is the familiar title of the Sonata in G Minor for Violin and Continuo, GT 2.g05; B.g5, the most famous work by Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770), important eighteenth–century violinist. Tartini claimed to have written down the sonata after the devil dictated it to him in a dream. Tartini’s account claims that he wrote the work in 1713 (a date that has been challenged by scholars), and gives no details about the devil’s appearance nor mentions any violinists besides himself.

The following figures are mentioned in the poem: Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), Pietro Locatelli (1695-1764), Johann Georg Pisendel (1688-1755), Thomas Baltzar (c. 1630–1663), Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713), Heinrich Biber (1644-1704), Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840), Francesco Veracini (1690-1768).

The initial letters of the octet IV.2 represent the unfingered strings of the violin in its standard tuning. In tuning an instrument the player will sound each of the adjacent pairs of strings (the fifths referred to) simultaneously. The “S” at the start of octet IV.3 stands for “Signor” in the acrostic.

.

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Julian D. Woodruff, who contributes poetry frequently to the Society of Classical Poets, writes poetry and short fiction for children and adults. He recently finished 2020-2021, a poetry collection. A selection of his work can be read at Parody Poetry, Lighten Up Online, Carmina Magazine, and Reedsy.

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The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.


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21 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    This is distinctively in all aspects a singularly entrancing and entertaining classical poem of the highest order replete with outstanding rhyme and rhythm, supreme attention to detail regarding the art and passion of playing the violin by those greats who long ago composed and performed, and words that dance across the tongue. I tip my hat to you as a maestro composer.

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Thanks for your kind remarks. It is a fascinating story, and could be elaborated many ways. I was especially interested in suggesting the competitiveness of playing at the highest levels, and the guarding of reputations with zeal and sometimes a little fear and trembling! Also another take on the idea of the Devil lurking in displays of virtuosity.

      Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    Wow — what an amazing piece of work! Five solid sections of narrative (sometimes straightforward, sometimes meditative), a dream vision, a visit and lesson from the Devil, and finally the creation of a brilliant new sonata.

    Going over this poem is like turning the pages of a medieval illuminated manuscript — there’s always something new to see, something that suggests a welter of ideas and thoughts and references. Every corner has its little vignette or curlicue.

    It is steeped in the world of the violin, and its eighteenth-century masters. This is a subject that the poet clearly knows well and loves. But it isn’t just a rattling-off of references and musical terminology. He creates a sequence of fictive scenes: Tartini at the end of dinner, a sneering comment, Tartini’s anger, his unsatisfactory practice session, a dream of a competition among stellar violinists, and the appearance, lesson, and prophecy of the Devil. This is totally unexpected! And all of it is done in octets composed of linked ABBA BCCB quatrains with diction that is polished and certainly not grade-school level.

    The demonic visitor is the catalyst that impels Tartini to compose “The Devil’s Trill,” and this is written in the initials of sections IV.3 and V.4 — S[ignor] DIAVOLO and G[iuseppe] TARTINI. What a slick touch! It’s as if the poem were put together of carefully designed and arranged parquetry or mosaic.

    This is a great poem, and it brings to mind the discussion that was held here last August about the viability of lengthy poems today. Woodruff has shown here in 160 complex and well-crafted lines that if the poet has a subject he loves, and is unafraid to use all the tools of narrative, mimesis, diction, and imagination, there is no limit to how long his poem should be.

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Your enthusiasm is very gratifying, Joseph, especially your appreciation of the acrostics, of which you don’t always approve. Here I thought they might be a way to reflect the technical bravado of the playing I was dealing with. (It occurred to me that if I could have avoided the quotation in the last stanza, then the acrostics both there and the “tuning” stanza would have had perfect left-margin alignment, leaving the S[.]DIAVOLO acrostic with a more noticeably crooked appearance in comparison.) In the structure of the poem I tried to suggest the clarity of organization into phrases and periods that characterizes the music of the galant period to which Tartini belongs (partly in reaction to the Baroque–much of the music of Bach, Handel et al.

      Reply
  3. Margaret Coats

    Ah, Julian, a horror story dreamily combined with a virtuoso musicale! All starting with overindulgence–uncomfortable enough, but less and less so as clues emerge about the diabolic impresario’s identity. A boaster he is, claiming credit for much of musical greatness. It’s amusing that the awakened Tartini decides not to include in his masterpiece all the extremities he hears in the dream, but leaves some rage for Paganini (and maybe the modernists). Quite a feat of your own in this five-part extravaganza! Thanks for the story.

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      I’m glad you enjoyed it, Margaret. Making Il Diavolo the master of all tricks of the trade and acquainted with the music of the present, past, and future I hope gives him a bit of that creepiness I was aiming for. (You might be interested: Roald Dahl wrote a short story about a fellow who on waking one morning goes downstairs, seats himself at the piano–which he’s never played previously–and rattles off the Goldberg Variations. The next morning it’s something by Mozart, the next Beethoven. By the story’s end he’s playing the music of the future.)

      Reply
  4. Mike Bryant

    Julian, I quit music when I graduated from high school, but I knew that I would have to check out The Devil’s Trill before I read your tremendous poem, so I found this on YouTube that gives a tasty two-minute (or so) sample of the sonata.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUDNe2KnsFI

    The music is beautiful and I suppose it’s way beyond most violinist’s capabilities. It starts quicklyly and then enters a crazy crescendo filled with dissonance that then settles into a beautiful angelic melody…. From there the sample continues into even more beauty and pyrotechnics.

    Your poem captures the story and the sonata beautifully, except without the dissonance! You have included all the bells and whistles in perfect meter and form. You have filled this work with your extensive experience in and knowledge of classical music. I love it.

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Thank you for your kind words, Mike, and for supplying the link here. My intention of furnishing one got lost in the shuffle–my apologies. Ray Chen’s approach has an appropriate and uncanny in-your-face quality to it. For a performance of the whole, more or less as Tartini imagined it, some readers may want to try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl9FTlKK1e0 (This Sonata, believe it or not, would probably be playable by any violinist in a major orchestra today.)
      A shout out is also due Evan, who found in James Marshall’s painting a great visual representation of the moment.

      Reply
  5. Mary Gardner

    Julian, this is outstanding. You held my attention through all five sections with your vivid, well-paced narrative and skillful prosody.
    ABBABAAB rhyme is new to me.

    Reply
  6. Julian D. Woodruff

    Thank you, Mary. I’ve never used that rhyme scheme before, nor seen it, as far as I can remember. I guess I took to it as a reflection of the visual symmetry of the violin’s design–especially as it would have appeared before roughly 1825, without a chin rest.

    Reply
  7. Cynthia Erlandson

    This is truly an amazing bit of verbal gymnastics! A fascinating story, extremely well-woven by the poet.

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Thank you, Cynthia. Probably the only time I’ll be credited with gymnastics, of any kind.

      Reply
  8. Sally Cook

    Dear Julian —
    After 12 years of piano studies I was beginning to have opinions, and I tired of hearing my mother and grandmother’s conflicting differences on technique,(Aunt Maud, too young to be a grandmother – see my bio “on this site Gypsy At The Carnival Of Life – I fired them both and went my own way.
    That way led to Tartini being one of my favorites. I found each of these composers had flavor; like subtle sherbets; never knew of your interest in Tartini, which led to this marvelous poem.
    I thank you for it!

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Interesting comment, Sally. And glad you liked the poem. I came to Tartini in a round-about way: in grad school at UC Davis, I enrolled in a course, ostensibly on Handel oratorio; it turned out to be devoted to Tartini’s extensive comments on ornamentation as they might be applied to Handel’s airs and ensembles, and even his choruses. (I did manage to learn more about Handel’s oratorios in that course than about Tartini’s ornamentation, but that was no fault of the instructor.)

      Reply
  9. jd

    I am so impressed. And you should know, Julian, that I am one of those lazy people who is put off by long poems. This is a beautiful one with so many skillful extras pointed out by previous erudite readers. Thank you, also, to Mike Bryant for providing the beautiful snippet.

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Thank you, DJ. I think Prof. Salemi hit the nail on the head when he suggested that success in long narrative poetry is more likely when the poem is hitched to a clear, compelling (and in this case also a distinctly segmented) story line.
      I think maybe the rhyme scheme I came up with (see Mary Garner’s comment above) helped sustain the thing, too.

      Reply
      • Julian D. Woodruff

        DJ?? Did auto-correct do that? Apologies, jd!

  10. James A. Tweedie

    Julian, I keep thinking that you can’t outdo yourself, but you never fail to surprise me with something more beautiful, inspired, and impressive than before. Not to mention that, despite the elegant sophistication of your work (or perhaps because of it), your poetry manages to be both meaningful and accessible as well. I cannot speak as eloquently as Dr. S but I can affirm his comment as well as all the others who have complimented you on this “masterpiece.”

    Of those you mentioned, only Paganini was not a contemporary of Tartini. I suppose that exception might have opened the door for Sarasate except for the lack of words that rhyme with his name!

    It has been many years since I listened to a recording of the “Trill,” so I thank you also for giving us all a gentle nudge to listen again or for the first time.

    PS. I would have loved to have taken that course on Handel/Tartini. I grew up with Handel being sung without embellishment but the ’70s and ’80s led to his arias being so over-embellished as to bury the melodic line entirely. I’m glad that such excrescences have since been pruned back to more sober levels!

    Both Tartini and Sarasate) thrive on melody, of course, but their devilish embellishments do give those who perform their works a chance to show off–and leave us wondering how they do it!

    Reply
  11. Julian D. Woodruff

    James, what a delightful response. Glad to know you’re familiar with T. He, like many of his contemporaries and later near-contemporaries (e.g., Hasse, Leclair, CPE Bach, Jommelli) remain shadow figures, the province of specialists, leaving the public with a slightly depleted sense of the accomplishments of Haydn and Mozart. (Incidently, Thomas Baltzar died nearly 20 years before T’s birth, and the career of the great Corelli, d. 1713, would barely have overlapped T’s.)
    T did advocate extensive gracing of simple melodic frameworks (as did Corelli, apparently, and no doubt others); Handel was known to beg restraint: who knows what he would have thought of T’s approach encroaching on his material?)
    Sarasate? That luminous name would have required another for an approximate rhyme: Francescatti.

    Reply
  12. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Julian, what a magnificent poem that has excited my imagination and swept me up in skillfully composed, melodious stanzas that tell an amazing tale. It is obvious you have put an awful lot of effort into this laudable literary achievement, and it was most certainly worth it. I will be returning to this exquisite piece for inspiration when my Muse is dragging her feet. Julian, thank you very much indeed!

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Thank you, Susan. It’s so gratifying to see the enthusiasm of poets as skilled and inspired as you and those above.
      And you’re right–it was a lot of work I hope I can follow your suggestion and refer to it for a lift, and an idea or 2, when my muse is sleeping.
      (BTW, I loved your Shakespeare cavalcade, but got to it a bit late for the comments. I even did a little verse response, but it turned out embarrassingly below the level you set.)

      Reply

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