The Devil's Trill Sonata: An Analysis (Part 4 - The Third Movement)
- cdlawrieofficial
- Jun 3, 2021
- 4 min read
This is the 4th part in a five-part series thoroughly analyzing Giuseppe’s Tartini’s The Devil’s Trill Sonata. If you want to learn about the history of Tartini and the fascinating story behind the piece, click here for Part 1, here for Part 2 in which I broke down my favourite 1st movement, and here for Part 3 for the humorous 2nd movement!
No, I’m sorry, I unfortunately haven’t come up with a witty name for this 3rd movement. But there’s no need because the piece speaks for itself. In fact, let’s first take a listen all the way through before picking it apart (7:17 – 8:36 in the video linked here).
These 7 bars consist of the whole movement. Written in cut time, interestingly, it appears to be a swift piece, but is played quite melancholy. What adds to that sentiment, I feel, are the many same notes played subsequently, yet broken into rhythm. If that didn’t make any sense, look at the first bar, and those first three notes (all G). They could’ve easily been combined as one long, drawn out note, but that would take away from the motion that drives it, the sense of movement that rhythm automatically brings to any melody. With a stringed instrument like the violin, I love hearing this because it begins to sound like a human voice to me. And that’s exactly what I imagine when I hear this 3rd movement: a human voice crying out in resignation.
It all moves in a grandeur fashion, very elegantly and with the feel that it’s larger than life. The dramatics, the trills, the ties and swooping slurs…It’s a brief movement, but a powerful one, and I think another notable feature that makes it so is the tone. The Devil’s Trill is written in G Minor, and I’d like to break that down for a second. I’ve only really gotten technical with the rhythm, the time signature, etc. but haven’t at all acknowledged its principal key. I’ll admit that I’m not really sure if there’s ever even a specific reason why a composer chooses a particular key for their piece, and if there some rationale behind it, then it’s a secret to me. The ridiculous amount in which modulation occurs in some pieces anyway just makes me wonder, “Why even choose one key if we can choose them all?” Regardless, minor keys are sad, so they automatically get a check mark in my book, and the more sharps and flats in any key, the better. It’s just more fun! Semitone steps carry so much tension, and you can see this happen a couple times in the sheet music above. In the first bar, the F has been modified to become an F # so the transition from that note to the natural G just carries so much more. Then, when a full step, or many steps, are actually made, it becomes this huge dramatic leap made with purpose. But I digress…
I’ve provided the sheet music below as well as a short video linked here (0:05 – 0:18) so you can hear and see the G Minor scale simply:
Again, I’m not exactly sure why particular keys are chosen for pieces, or any song in general. But in this case, I want to gush about the B flat as much as is appropriate for any normal human to fawn over any one note. I’ve always loved A (for some reason) and the transition from the A to B flat is just so…smooth? I’m not sure how to describe it, but there’s an elegance to it that I love, and an emotional weight to it. As a whole, when looking at the scale, I think there’s a lot to play with when thinking about creating tensions in semitones and with the two flats. A scale is a scale, at the end of the day, but you can think of tones as the colour to the white line art that is rhythm. And that’s what I think shines in this particular movement: the actual tones. As a whole, this movement is a solitary note of surrender and sadness to me, and the specific pitches and how they move together are what bring that out. It’s actually refreshing when thinking about the previous two movements, both long-winded and ranging in great emotions. The first movement tells a broad story of struggle, touching on sorrow and anger and despair, and the second one holds a certain amount of humour and irony that takes a second to unpack. This one, though, is simple. A bit of simplicity, not so much in execution but in concept, is appreciated, and overall just makes for a pretty piece.
In the fifth and final part to this series, we’ll attempt to unpack the climactic and wildly unstable fourth movement, and we will conclude with my final thoughts on the piece as a whole as well as the impact I feel it holds in both the classical and modern world.
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