Starting from the 1720s, Giuseppe Tartini's compositional activity and performances are inextricably linked to the events of the orchestra of the Basilica of San Antonio in Padua. In 1721 he was hired as a First Violin / capo di concerto of the Basilica Antoniana Musical Chapel by virtue of his clear fame and without interview, with a job description coined specifically for him, which probably involved the programming and direction of the instrumental music performed during functions.

The interest and importance given in those years by the Veneranda Arca del Santo (the chapel's management body) to the figure of the first violin was directly linked to the objective of the renewal and extension of the chapel and was supported by the year-on-year increases in the annual budget for the musical chapel which took place in the second decade of the 18th-century.

These musical needs, related to the liturgical calendar over the course of the entire year, together with the “obligations of the musicians” were established by the various Capitularies published from the 17th-century onwards. Among them, the Capitulary approved by the Presidency of the Veneranda Arca on 19th June 1721 lists the Obligations in Organs with Instruments and Concerts, in which the full orchestra was engaged in the following functions:

“The Compline on Sundays, and all the Feasts of Advent, as well as on the Sundays in Lent, and Feasts of Holy Monday and Holy Tuesday. In being available for the Tantum ergo. On all the Fridays of Lent, and the Friday between the Octave of the Saint, a solemn Compline with Transition.”

While the Obligations for Organs with Instruments the following feasts feature:

Mass on Sundays throughout the year, except for holidays. On Tuesdays throughout the year the Mass, except as above, and after the Mass the Si quaeris Miracula to the Glorious St. Anthony.

The word ‘concert’ does not appear in the Capitulars in the meaning of musical genre that we accord the term today. Rather, it is likely that it indicates the presence of solo parts (including vocal ones). A resolution of 1726 states that “in the Masses, all in concert, you perform your Symphony after the Creed”. Certainly most of Tartini's concerts and sonatas were created with these functions in mind and were linked to the degree of solemnity of the feast in question. It is probable that they were performed divided into individual movements with the first movement at the Offertory, the second at the Elevation of the Eucharist and the third at Communion or at the conclusion of the service. The manuscript dates found on the parts for individual instruments, although relating to a period shortly after Tartini, would confirm this practice. On the occasion of particularly solemn and prolonged feasts, the performance of more than one concert during the ceremony was possible.

The music historian Charles Burney, visiting Padua in the summer of 1770, describes one of these concert masses:

“I went to the church of S. Antonio, where, attending the Day of Forgiveness, a mass was celebrated with solo parts, composed by Father Vallotti, who was present beating time [...]. Although it was not an important holiday, the orchestra was larger than usual. I was very keen to hear the famous oboeist Matteo Bissoli and the famous old cellist, Antonio Vandini who, as the Italians say, plays in such a way as to make his instrument speak. [...] The choir of this church is immense; the basses are all placed to one side; violins, oboes, horns and violas on the other sides. The voices are divided between the two galleries.”

(translated back into English from Italian)

The choir, where instrumentalists and singers were placed, was placed at the top, on three sides of the presbytery around the altar. The orchestra was positioned throughout the gallery, with instrumentalists dressed in cottas and hidden from the view of the faithful by a curtain.

Other illustrious characters and talented musicians were involved in the Santo, the Basilica Antoniana Musical Chapel, around the same time as Tartini, making the Basilica an exceptional musical pole and creating a veritable artistic circuit, with exchanges and influences between the personalities of the various performers, virtuosos and composers, as emerges from a letter dated 1751 to which Father Vallotti (the maestro di cappella) writes to Count Giordano Riccati:

I spoke with Mr. Tartini, with Mr. Matteo [Bissoli], and with Mr. D. Antonio [Vandini] for the well-known Ottavario, and having understood that I will be booked to carry out the functions all three have undertaken a commitment to play not only the Concerts, but also the full function, as they do here in this Church of the Saint, and this, to tell the truth, is no little thing, because three subjects of this calibre make the entire Orchestra stand out.

Margherita Canale