So far, there are two known concerts for cello written by Tartini: one in A major and the other in D major, both preserved in self-written scores.

The concert in A major is in the musical collection of the Antoniana Library in Padua.

The concert in D major is kept in Vienna by the Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. This second autographed score also contains two parts for hunting horns (the only case for a self-written score by Tartini himself) and has two ‘caprices’ at the end of the first and third movement and a cadenza at the end of the second movement, written in full by the author himself, an interesting element explicable as being written for a performer other than Tartini himself. There is a faithful copy of this concert at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

In both manuscripts of the concerto in D major a header has been added by Giulio Meneghini (Tartini's pupil and his successor as first violin of the Cappella antoniana): “Concerto for Viola Original Tartini.”

The term Viola paved the way for the most disparate observations on the use of the viol or viola da gamba for these concerts. In reality, as Vanscheeuwijck notes, the two concerts were probably not designed for the viol or for the standardized baroque cello used today, but for a small cello, with 4 or 5 strings (very suitable, especially for the concert in D major in a D-G-d-a-d'/e' tuning, which the lexical use around Tartini predominantly termed Viola. Antonio Vandini, a friend of Tartini and distinguished cellist, is defined as a player of either viola, or violoto, or violoncello. The first of these instruments, smaller, could be the one he used for solo pieces, while the so-called violoncello might have been the instrument used for the accompaniment role. This hypothesis is reflected in the terminology used in the manuscripts and prints associated with Tartini, where the orchestra part played by the actual viola is never defined as only viola, but is almost always referred to as Violetta or Alto Viola, while the violoncello part (a bass accompaniment) is termed Violoncello.

Margherita Canale