MUSICAL SUGGESTIONS

30 - The Tartinian sources in Venice

Venetian libraries hold valuable musical treasures, including many printed and manuscript sources of Giuseppe Tartini's compositions.

The library of the Conservatory of Music 'Benedetto Marcello' holds the most conspicuous part: over one hundred works, including sonatas and concertos for violin, sonatas for three, symphonies for four, sacred music and theoretical-didactic treatises.

Among the collections, the Fondo Correr stands out, consisting largely of the music archive of the Ospedale della Pietà, which includes 18th-century copies of five violin concertos. Among the most important pieces is the so-called 'Quaderno di Anna Maria' (Annemary’s Handbook), the famous virtuoso dedicatee of three of Tartini's violin concertos; a copy of the first Neapolitan edition of the Arte dell'arco (1788); and a manuscript copy of the Metodo per ben suonare il violino, a precious testimony of the teaching practice and of the violinism of Giuseppe Tartini (the source includes a section that is missing from the other four surviving copies).

A second copy of this important pedagogical work in Venice is preserved in the 'Gianni Milner' Library of the Foundation 'Ugo and Olga Levi'. Valuable Tartini musical sources, which belonged to collectors, are kept both at the 'Levi' and at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana.

Thanks to the Tartini BIS project, the exhibition materials of 'Tartini in Venice' is now a permanent part of the visit itinerary of the Music Museum of the Conservatory of Venice.