Tartinians in Europe. The School of Nations and its Networks

While Giuseppe Tartini is already well researched as a virtuoso violinist, composer and music theorist, his innovative contributions to instrumental pedagogy remain largely in the dark. In this project, his "Scuola delle Nazioni" from Padua in the 18th century, with over 100 students from all over Europe, will be systematically analysed for the first time. By enabling musicians to successfully integrate into different cultural and professional contexts throughout Europe, Tartini's training model characterised numerous musical exchange processes of the time.

Tartini's "Scuola" will be analysed in the project on the basis of the European patronage systems between Tartini, his pupils and their patrons, through an analysis of his didactic materials and their reception, and on the basis of the dissemination of the music composed by his pupils through copyists and the publishing industry in the second half of the 18th century.

The project will create a digital platform that links biographical data, archival finds and digital editions of Tartini's pedagogical materials in a structured way in the sense of a network-like exchange structure of 18th-century musical Europe. In this way, the careers of Tartini's students and the musical genres that they spread and promoted throughout Europe based on their training in Padua can be visualised.

The international team of researchers from Austria, Germany and Switzerland as well as numerous international cooperation partners will organise workshops, historically informed concerts and joint courses. This will result in several English-language academic publications. By highlighting Tartini's cosmopolitan legacy, the research challenges nationalist music-historical narratives about the institutionalisation of musical education at the end of the 18th century and highlights his "Scuola" as a significant and lasting example that also influenced subsequent generations.