at I had made a compact with
the devil, who promised to be at my service on all occasions. Everything
succeeded according to my mind; my wishes were anticipated and desires
always surpassed by the assistance of my new servant. At last I thought
I would offer my violin to the devil, in order to discover what kind of
a musician he was, when, to my great astonishment, I heard him play
a solo, so singularly beautiful and with such superior taste and
precision, that it surpassed all the music I had ever heard or conceived
in the whole course of my life. I was so overcome with surprise and
delight that I lost my power of breathing, and the violence of this
sensation awoke me. Instantly I seized my violin in the hopes of
remembering some portion of what I had just heard, but in vain! The work
which this dream suggested, and which I wrote at the time, is doubtless
the best of all my compositions, and I still call it the 'Sonata del
Diavolo'; but it sinks so much into insignificance compared with what
I heard, that I would have broken my instrument and abandoned music
altogether, had I possessed any other means of subsistence."

Tartini died at Padua in 1770, and so much was he revered and admired
in the city where he had spent nearly fifty years of his life, that his
death was regarded as a public calamity. He used to say of himself that
he never made any real progress in music till he was more than thirty
years old; and it is curious that he should have made a great change
in the nature of his performance at the age of fifty-two. Instead of
displaying his skill in difficulties of execution, he learned to prefer
grace and expression. His method of playing an adagio was regarded as
inimitable by his contemporaries; and he transmitted this gift to his
pupil Nardini, who was afterward called the greatest adagio player in
the world. Another of Tartini's great _eleves_ was Pugnani, who before
coming to him had been instructed by Lorenzo Somis, the pupil of
Corelli. So it may be said that Pugnani united in himself the schools of
Corelli and Tartini, and was thus admirably fitted to be the instructor
of that grand player, who was the first in date of the violin virtuosos
of modern times, Viotti.

Both as composer and performer, Pugnani was held in great esteem
throughout Europe. His first meeting with Tartini was an incident of
considerable interest. He made the journey from Paris to Padua expressly
to see Tartini, and on reaching hi