Devil’s Trill

Giuseppe Tartini claimed the Devil’s Trill Sonata came to him in a dream after hearing the devil perform a work of impossible brilliance. This arrangement for violin, viola, and cello approaches the sonata through the logic of that dream rather than through a conventional transcription of the original violin and continuo.

The violin follows Tartini’s familiar path, while the viola and cello move around it in displaced time. Fragments of material appear out of sequence, interrupted, foreshadowed, and recombined. Passages surface earlier than expected, dissolve mid phrase, or return altered, creating a musical space where continuity gives way to association. Familiar gestures remain recognizable, but their relationships shift as the music moves between clarity and distortion.  Rather than altering the sonata itself, the arrangement reframes it as an encounter that cannot be fully reconstructed in linear time.

This arrangement of Devil’s Trill was commissioned by and dedicated with gratitude to the distinguished violinist and pedagogue Almita Vamos, whose teaching has shaped generations of performers internationally