Despite Italian composer Giuseppe Tartini's important place in musical history, he remains known to most musicians only as the composer of the "Devil's Trill" violin sonata. Born on the Istrian peninsula in 1692, Tartini was the son of a minor government official in the city of Pirano (now Piran, Slovenia). Although his parents had selected a monastic life for Tartini when he was very young, in 1708 he rejected his clerical training to pursue a course of instruction in music. Soon, however, he seems to have enrolled at the University of Padua as a student of law, and was more famed during his younger days as a dueler and swordsman than as a trained musician. Despite still officially being a candidate for the priesthood, Tartini married in 1710, and, having thereby incurred the wrath of the Paduan bishop, found it necessary to hide out in the monastery at Assisi for a time. He put his time to good use: apparently he made a rigorous study of music, and by 1714 he seems to have found employment with the opera orchestra at Ancona. Reunited with his wife in 1715, Tartini spent the next several years trying to perfect his violin technique. The legend is that he heard the virtuoso Francesco Veracini perform and resolved to live in isolation until he could accomplish the same amazing feats of dexterity. By 1720, he was engaged as soloist and leader of the orchestra at St. Anthony's in Padua. Until an arm injury in 1740 seriously limited his career, Tartini fulfilled his duties at St. Anthony's even as he built a widespread reputation as the leading violinist of his day. He made an extended visit to Prague between 1723 and 1726. Officially retiring from St. Anthony's in 1765, Tartini remained active as a teacher until a mild stroke, which he suffered in 1768, incapacitated him even further. Tartini died in 1770, the year ofBeethoven's birth.
Tartini was the founder of an important school of violin playing, subsequently disseminated by such noteworthy pupils as Pietro Nardini and Johann Gottlieb Naumann. Because he did not seek fame as a composer, very little of Tartini's music was published during his lifetime. Some 135 violin concerti and over 200 violin sonatas (some of which, however, are spurious) still survive in manuscript form. A smattering of sacred vocal works (such as the Stabat Mater composed during the final year of his life) and a few sinfonias, trio sonatas, and four-part sonatas round off Tartini's considerable output. In addition to his activities as a violinist and composer, Tartini became increasingly interested in theories of acoustics and harmony as the years went by, and his 1754 theoretical treatise Trattato di musica secondo la vera scienza dell'armonia attempts to account for contemporary harmonic thinking in terms of t
he overtone series and to promote Tartini's own discovery of "sub-tones" in that series. Despite its lofty intentions (or perhaps because of them) the Trattato is not a particularly accurate or informative text; it does, however, provide great insight into the mind of this remarkable musician.He began violin lessons with Salvatore Cicerto at the age of five in his native Palermo. At the age of 12 he appeared as a concerto soloist with the Italian Radio (RAI) Symphony Orchestra in several concerts. At that time, he played modern violin, but in his early teens, he began to take an interest in period instruments and performing styles and began to play Baroque and Classical violin as well as the modern instrument. (The distinction between these types of string instruments is how they are set up -- what kinds of strings, bridges, and bows are used, for instance.)
In the 1970s, when Biondi was polishing his technique, period instrument performance flourished in Europe and America, although Italy was not in the forefront of it. He studied at the Conservatory of Rome with Mauro Lo Guercio, winning first prize in violin in 1981.
By then Biondi had already began establishing himself as a Baroque violinist, having made his first appearance in that capacity in a concert at the Musikverein in Vienna at the age of 16. After graduation, he formed a string quartet, the Stendahl Quartet, which gave concerts from the quartet repertory from the Classical through contemporary times. What set the Stendahl Quartet apart was that any work that it performed was always played on instruments appropriate to the period, and in a stylistically informed manner. Several Italian composers composed for the quartet.
Biondi worked during the 1980s with several of the leading original instruments ensembles of the continent, including Hesperion XX, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Musica Antiqua of Vienna, the Clemencic Consort, the Chapelle Royale, and the Camerata di Lugano. He recorded the earliest of violin concertos, those by such Italian masters as Veracini,Locatelli, and Tartini.
In 1989, he founded La Europa Galante, Italy's first dedicated Baroque original instruments orchestra. Since then, he has served as its conductor and music director, as well as its solo violinist. Where appropriate, he conducts from the violin, as was often done during the era.
Biondi and La Europa Galante have often appeared at major international music festivals, and the ensemble has functioned as the orchestra in several productions of Baroque opera. These include the modern premiere of the opera Poro by Handel, and in the oratorios La Maddelena and Humanità e Lucifero by Alessandro Scarlatti and La Passione di Gèsu Cristoby Caldara. He has led La Europa Galante in opera productions at Monte Carlo, the St. Cecilia Academy in Rome, the Baroque Music Center in Versailles, the Nice Opera, and Wigmore Hall in London.
He often guest conducts with standard orchestras, which include the Radio France Philharmonic, the Montpelier Philharmonic Orchestra, and chamber and period orchestras including the Collegium Orchestra of New York, the Rotterdam Chamber Orchestra, theNetherlands Chamber Orchestra, and the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris.
Biondi has won numerous recording prizes including the Diapason d'Or of the Year, the Priz Cini of Italy, the ffff de Telérama, and Choc de Musique. His widely acclaimed recording with La Europa Galante of Vivaldi's Four Seasons was named Disc of the Year by organizations in Canada, Sweden, France, Spain, and Finland. He is an exclusive artist for Virgin Classics.
