the story behind the composer, giuseppe tartini's 1692–1770, "devil trill" starts with a dream where the devil is said to have appeared to tartini and asked him to be his servant - after their lessons, tartini handed the devil his violin to test his skill—the devil immediately began to play with such virtuosity that tartini felt his breath taken away - when the tartini awoke he immediately jotted down the sonata, desperately trying to recapture what he had heard in the dream - despite the sonata being successful with his audiences, tartini lamented that the piece was still far from what he had heard in his dream - what he had written was, in his own words: "so inferior to what i had heard, that if i could have subsisted on other means, i would have broken my violin and abandoned music forever."
