Aria in G Major (Adagio cantabile, Violin Sonata in G Major, B G19)

Giuseppe Tartini (8 April 1692 – 26 February 1770) was a Venetian Baroque composer and violinist. He was born in Piran, a town on the peninsula of Istria, into one of the oldest aristocratic Piranese families.

It appears Tartini's parents intended him to become a Franciscan friar and, in this way, he received basic musical training. He studied law at the University of Padua, where he became skilled at fencing. After his father's death in 1710, he married Elisabetta Premazore, a woman his father would have disapproved of because of her lower social class and age difference. Unfortunately, Elisabetta was a favorite of the powerful Cardinal Giorgio Cornaro, who promptly charged Tartini with abduction. Tartini fled Padua to go to the monastery of St. Francis in Assisi, where he could escape prosecution. While there, Tartini took up playing the violin.

Legend says when Tartini heard Francesco Maria Veracini's playing in 1716, he was impressed by it and dissatisfied with his own skill. He fled to Ancona and locked himself away in a room to practice.

Tartini's skill improved tremendously and, in 1721, he was appointed Maestro di Cappella at the Basilica di Sant'Antonio in Padua, with a contract that allowed him to play for other institutions if he wished.

In 1726, Tartini started a violin school which attracted students from all over Europe. Gradually, Tartini became more interested in the theory of harmony and acoustics, and from 1750 to the end of his life he published various treatises.

He died in Padua.

This refined and elegant transcription was done by J. Stuart Archer (1886-1954) and published by Paxton in 1926. (You can read about him in the First Comment.)

"Aria in G Major" is the first movement of the Violin Sonata in G, and is actually titled, "Adagio cantabile."

It's long-spun lines are exquisitely "cloaked" by Archer into a work that "combines" Baroque with English romantic.

The score is attached below, as well as photos of Tartini and Archer.