Tartinians in Europe. The School of Nations and its Networks

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Gesa zur Nieden
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 544499167

Although research on Giuseppe Tartini has grown recently, it focuses primarily on him as violinist composer/performer, music theorist, and public intellectual. This slights his European-wide influence as a teacher. More than 100 pupils from all corners of the Continent traveled to Padua to be trained in his Scuola delle Nazioni. Our understanding of this phenomenon is hampered by lack of proper contextualisation of the philosophy and mechanics of Tartini's pedagogy in 18th-century Europe — a contextualisation necessary to reveal the relationships between teacher, pupils, patronage, and professional environments in numerous geographical areas. The project is based on the hypothesis that Tartini's 'school' represents a pioneering model for a modern concept of musical training, where pupils experienced a comprehensive learning environment offering ideal preparation for them to achieve suitable professional placements. How the Scuola defined itself, and how rest of the World saw it, can be answered only against this background. By studying the pan-European networks among Tartini's pupils, their professional integration into the music market, and the dissemination of their musical compositions and treatises, the ramifications of this didactic tradition and an understanding of its profound impact on the public and private music-making of the time, will emerge. The team will work in three principal fields: reconstruction of the Scuola in the context of patronage; use and reception of Tartini’s didactic materials; and music transmission through printers and copyists. The three will be integrated by a digital prosopographical resource combining biographical data from archival research, the music corpora of the pupils, and the digital editions of Tartini’s compositions and pedagogical writings. Enhanced by linked open data, this resource will enable the analysis of pupil’s careers, allowing for comparisons between music genres and musical compositional patterns, while the analysis of social networks will map the transmission of musical knowledge and the reach and impact of the Scuola. This will be the first open-access resource that enables searching for musicians of a single ‘school’ (or coming from a particular musical tradition). Mapping Tartini’s cosmopolitan network will serve to overcome historiographies based on nationalistic perspectives, particularly the histories of Italian and German music, which have often been played off against each other by scholarly narratives. Besides future selected collaborators, six female professors and researchers active in five different countries (Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia, Italy) are involved in the project, complementing each other’s expertise. Their cooperation will lead to the organisation of international workshops, historically- informed concerts, two English-language publications, and a joint academic course.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria, Switzerland
• Partner Organisation: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Agnese Pavanello; Privatdozentin Dr. Cristina Scuderi