Cloudy but temperate weather in Ljubljana welcomed Tartinian scholars from different countries and continents to one of the most intriguing conferences organized to celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Giuseppe Tartini's death . . . That should have been the beginning of this report but, on account of the pandemic, the conference was held online and so, like all attendees, I participated from my home base (Bologna), where the weather was also wet and cloudy, but clearing up: a good omen, which did not let me down.
Organized by University of Ljubljana's Department of Musicology and the Slovenian Musicological Society, in cooperation with the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Institute of Musicology and the Comunità degli Italiani di Pirano ‘Giuseppe Tartini’, the conference comprised five sessions, two keynote addresses from Sergio Durante (Università di Padova) and Pierpaolo Polzonetti (University of California Davis), a concert, a special radio broadcast and the presentation of a new two-volume book edited by Giorgia Malagò containing a new edition and translation of Tartini's letters, Giuseppe Tartini, lettere e documenti (Trieste: EUT, 2020).
After a speech of welcome, Durante introduced the conference by covering many facets of Tartini – the man, the composer, the intellectual – and focused attention on several aspects of the framework within which he operated, with particular reference to the connection between ‘Il Maestro delle Nazioni’ (Joseph-Jérôme de Lalande, Voyage d'un françois en Italie, fait dans les années 1765 et 1766, eight volumes (Paris: Desaint, 1769), volume 8, 292) and the Enlightenment. Polzonetti's paper offered an extensive contextualization of Tartini and his music in eighteenth-century Europe, illuminating the subtle relationship between the Piranese and J. S. Bach.
The five sessions dealt with specific aspects of Tartini and his music in space and time. The first of these reflected on his musical language. Particularly innovative and effective was the paper of Tommaso Luison (Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Bologna), which showed a possible connection between poetical mottos employed by the composer and the metrical structure of his music.
The second session emphasized Tartini's influence, his legacy and the dissemination of his output. Lucija Konfic (Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti) explained how the Piranese inspired his pupil Giuseppe Michele Stratico's theoretical thinking as it can be inferred from the several versions of Stratico's unpublished ‘Trattato di musica’. Juan Mariano Porta (Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice) gave a wide-ranging, philologically strong account, supported by impressive graphics, of the sources of Tartini's Sonate a tre currently held at the University of California Berkeley Library. Ana Lombardía (Universidad de Salamanca) concluded the session with an intriguing paper on the reception of Tartini's violin sonatas in Madrid during the second half of the eighteenth century. Just as Miguel Ángel Marín's extensive research on Corelli's reception in Spain has opened new perspectives on the composer (‘La recepción de Corelli en Madrid, ca. 1680–ca. 1810’, in Arcangelo Corelli fra mito e realtà storica: nuove prospettive d'indagine musicologica e interdisciplinare nel 350° anniversario della nascita, ed. Gregory Barnett, Antonella D'Ovidio and Stefano La Via (Florence: Olschki, 2007), 573–637), so Lombardía's study of Tartinian manuscript and printed sources that reached or were produced in Spain revealed an amazing chapter in the story of the widespread dissemination of his music in the Iberian world.
The third session drew attention to the theoretical and cultural background that informed Tartini's thought and interests. Nejc Sukljan (Univerza v Ljubljani) investigated references to ancient music theory in the Tartini–Martini correspondence, while Richard Parncutt (Universität Graz) and Roberta Vidic (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg) explored the composer's harmonic theory from two different points of view, the psychological and the epistemological. The fourth session opened a window onto the Istrian region, Tartini's native land. The importance of local musical traditions for the Piranese's melodic invention and compositional thinking, and reflections on the continuing neglect of Tartini's place in Slovenian cultural history were the main topics.
The fifth session dealt with performing, editing and translating Tartini's works. From the perspective of historical music editing, Luisa Antoni (independent researcher) talked about the piano realizations of thoroughbass figures in the editions of Tartini's violin sonatas by Emilio Pente and Maffeo Zanon (1911) and Gian Francesco Malipiero (1918–1921). The hypotheses presented by Domen Marinčič (independent researcher) about performing Tartini's music without chordal continuo recalled the paper presented by Margherita Canale (Conservatorio di Trieste) in the first session, in which she discussed the accompaniment of violin concertos and performance practice more broadly at the Basilica di Sant'Antonio in Padua. Neal Zaslaw (Cornell University), chair of this session, passionately led the debate and added several important points about chordal continuo practices.
The new edition of Tartini's letters, edited by Giorgia Malagò (Università di Padova), with translations into English and Slovenian by Hugh Ward-Perkins (Conservatorio di Verona) and Jerneja Umer Kljun (Univerza v Ljubljani), was presented immediately before the end of the conference. It has been conceived as a double-format publication: printed book and open-access digital edition. The latter (free to consult and download on the website Discover Tartini, at the link www.discovertartini.eu/archives/detail/2) can be considered a fundamental support for research on and beyond Tartini, and an invaluable addition to the study of eighteenth-century music and musical thought altogether. The dynamic discussion that formed part of this presentation focused on the problems the editor and the translators faced when working on the letters, and emphasized the strong potential of the material. Durante revealed also that the first idea for an edition of Tartini's letters – conceived by Pierluigi Pietrobelli, but never realized – became a project in 2014 when six partners (both from within and from outside the academy) undertook a co-funded Interreg project focused on the composer and the places where he lived entitled ‘tARTini: Cultural Tourism under the Banner of Giuseppe Tartini’.
Two further activities completed the conference: a concert by the ensemble Musica Cubicularis and a radio programme, ‘Slovenia in Song and Lyrics: The Fringes of Tradition’, which focused on the relationship between folk music and the art music of the time. The concert, entitled ‘Tartini's Music throughout Europe’, offered two rarely performed flute concertos, two trios and a solo sonata from manuscripts and prints in Italy, England, Holland, Denmark and Sweden.
I can attest that, overcoming a difficult situation, the organizers managed to offer a stimulating and enjoyable conference. The new mode of attendance brought various unavoidable disadvantages, but also offered some benefits. Apart from the obvious opportunity to reach a wider public and facilitate the attendance of many people from all over the world, the innovative mode of presentation made possible a deep insight into the papers presented, aided by the chance to watch the papers many times in advance, promoted substantial debate and sparked very specific and sometimes witty questions and arguments. The registered panels were posted as free content: a great opportunity for anyone who could not watch the live streaming, and even more so for students, who were thus allowed more time to understand some very complicated material. Unfortunately, the communication with unregistered external attendees did not work very well. To prevent any hacker intrusion, the organizers decided to make the digital meeting room on Zoom available only for participants and those who had registered. Whoever was outside the room had the opportunity to participate using the livestream on Facebook and typing in questions as comments below the video. However, various queries remained ignored and unanswered. Furthermore, inevitably, the lonely coffee breaks at home made impossible the usual informal discussion and creation of new contacts and projects, and prevented young and more senior scholars from meeting and getting to know each other.
Last but not least, the symposium in Ljubljana had an eminent ‘sister conference’ organized by the Tartini research group of the University of Padua that was scheduled for 22 to 24 October in the same city, Tartini's ‘quasi patria’ (Francesco Fanzago, Orazione . . . delle lodi di Giuseppe Tartini recitata nell[a] Chiesa de’ RR. PP. Serviti in Padova li 31 di marzo l'anno 1770, con varie note illustrata e con un breve compendio della vita del medesimo (Padua: Conzatti, 1770), 16). Unfortunately, the Paduan meeting was abruptly moved online because of a new government restriction connected to the Covid pandemic, while a third important event scheduled for Cremona in the following days, and focused on organology, had to be called off.
The link between the conferences in Ljubljana and Padua was very strong, and the papers from both of them will be published together in three volumes that will revitalize and update Tartini scholarship. Scholars of the ‘Maestro delle Nazioni’ currently working in Padua, Cremona, Piran and Ljubljana have run several connected projects on Tartini. Two important outcomes are already evident: the open-access edition of the letters and the great digital thematic catalogue, edited by Guido Viverit (Università di Padova) as part of the project ‘Tartini 2020: Padova – L'Europa’ (open access at www.discovertartini.eu/archives/detail/5). Still ongoing, however, is the most prestigious and strategic task: the opera omnia critical edition of Tartini's works, the opening volumes of which are forthcoming from Bärenreiter in Kassel.
Open access
