The Tartini Bis project has enabled new research activities in the field of musicology, aimed at increasing studies on the works and figure of Giuseppe Tartini, finding and making available new sources, both with regard to the musical production and the scientific output of the great Piranese.

The hundreds of sources mentioned above have been digitised and catalogued in the archival section of the discovertartini.eu website to be immediately available to scholars and researchers.

Five senior researchers, three junior researchers and two expert archivists have been selected by two public calls issued by the “Tartini” Conservatory of Trieste and by the “Benedetto Marcello” Conservatory in Venice.

All the experts worked in a coordinated manner, and the concerted activities between senior and junior experts during the project was found as an added value in the various workshops and in the continuous communication between the project's scientific managers and researchers.

Tangible results of these activities are the reports of the five senior experts published here, which explicit the results of the research work and provide new information and insights into Giuseppe Tartini's artistic and scientific activity, his biography and the circle of his pupils and admirers.

These, in detail, are the titles of the five reports:

Margherita Canale
The violin and ensemble concertos of Giuseppe Tartini.
Insights into violin concertos not included in the Dounias catalogue, with a focus on concertos with authenticity to be ascertained. (link)

Agnese Pavanello
Tartini's music for academies and Giulio Meneghini's Concertoni.  Performances of Tartini's music in Padua in the 18th century (link).

Sergio Durante
Tartini: friends, enemies. Notes for a psycho-biography (link).

Federico Lanzellotti
Giuseppe Tartini's compositions in Venetian music collections (link).

Juan Mariano Porta
Around Giuseppe Tartini's Six concertos in four parts (link).

The five reports published in the archival section of discovertartini.eu fulfil several scientific and popular needs. 

Some of the papers, notably those by Professors Durante and Pavanello, capture Giuseppe Tartini in the everyday life of his action, show a vivid and reliable cross-section of his social relations, his professional and friendship ties, the musical practices in use in 18th-century Paduan salons, and the reception in amateur musical circles with their demand for ad hoc musical compositions. 

The papers by Professor Margherita Canale (Conservatorio Tartini in Trieste) and Professors Federico Lanzellotti (University of Basel) and Juan Mariano Porta (University of Padua) are more focused on pure research and practically demonstrate the procedures and practices of musicological research. It is a fundamental and exciting work, especially since the subject of the research largely concerns musical materials that have come down to us in manuscript.

In the five reports, there is not only news of new musical sources, but also a practical demonstration of the expertise, and above all the passion required by this research work.

New sources in Venice

The research activity took place mainly at the Library of the Conservatorio 'Benedetto Marcello' in Venice, the Biblioteca Marciana and the 'Milner' Library of the Fondazione 'Ugo e Olga Levi' in Venice and involved the material study of over one hundred and thirty musical sources containing ninety of Tartini's compositions and theoretical writings. 

The research involved the analysis of manuscript and printed witnesses, datable between the 18th and 19th centuries, their codicological characteristics and the compositions they contain, as well as their bibliographical and cultural contextualisation. This work was preparatory to the digitisation of the new Tartini sources, which was carried out under the guidance of the 'Benedetto Marcello' Conservatory in collaboration with the 'Ca' Foscari' University.

 View new sources in Venice 

Part of the activity is the drafting of the essay 'Giuseppe Tartini's Compositions in Venetian Music Collections', which includes two tables summarising the musical sources in the lagoon.

The results of the research on Venetian witnesses were also presented in two workshops of the Tartini Bis project with the following presentations:

1. Tartinian sources of the Library of the Conservatory of Venice: from practical study to digitization, study day 'Path breaking lab: working on Tartini, why and how' (Conservatory of Venice, 9 April 2024).
2. “Sonate-pasticcio” and alternative movements in Tartini's sources in Venice: some case studies, conference 'Giuseppe Tartini: new sources, new research perspectives' (Piran, Casa Tartini, 14 October 2024).

New sources in Piran

Part of the research work of the Tartini Bis project was devoted to the revision and digitisation of the Tartini Family Fund, kept in the Piran section of the Regional Archive in Koper, and to the presentation of the digitised material on the Discover Tartini website.

Several activities were carried out to achieve these results.

First, the material already digitised and published on the website discovertartini.eu. was reviewed and some critical issues were identified (difficult access to published documents, incomplete digitisation of the fonds, digitisation errors). A comprehensive analysis of the Tartini Fund located in Piran was then carried out: the Fund comprises 11 archive envelopes (1.1 metre of archive material) and 445 archive items (shorter documents, letters, fragments of mathematical calculations, longer scientific papers, newspaper cuttings, etc.).

All individual documents were examined in detail based on Albert Pucer's inventory. 

This investigation revealed that the Fund was not completely organised and that some documents were missing or had been moved and were not in the marked place. It was therefore necessary to restore the Fund in an appropriate manner (according to Pucer's inventory) and missing documents that are part of the permanent exhibition at Casa Tartini in Piran were filed.

Once the Fund has been reorganised and all missing documents inventoried, the documents were compared with those already digitised. Thus, it was assessed which documents in the Fund had never been digitised and a list of the material to be digitised was drawn up with detailed instructions for the company in charge (Micrografija). Once the material was prepared, Mikrografija employees took it over and digitised it. Finally, the digitised documents were suitably presented for publication on the website discovertartini.eu by the 'Bruno and Michèle Polli' Centre for Tartini Documentation and Studies of the 'Giuseppe Tartini' Conservatory of Trieste.

View new sources in Piran