The Tartini Lineage: Mobility, Networks, and Relation Orders of Knowledge

The lecture paper presents the idea of a “Tartini lineage” as a methodological problem rather than as a self-evident historical object. It asks how relations of teaching, imitation, correspondence, travel, institutional affiliation, and print circulation can be described without reducing them to a linear genealogy. Mobility and networks are central to this problem because they produce connections that differ in duration, intensity, direction, and historical visibility. A musician may have studied directly with Tartini, encountered him only briefly, learned from one of his pupils, circulated elements of his technique elsewhere, or become associated with him through later processes of attribution. The methodological challenge is therefore to develop forms of representation capable of preserving these different kinds of relation. It is at this point that the online version of the Dizionario Enciclopedico Universale della Musica e dei Musicisti (DEUMM) becomes particularly relevant. Rather than functioning merely as a lexicographical repository, DEUMM Online and its node-based technology offer a way of connecting persons, places, institutions, sources, and forms of transmission within a relational structure. Such a model makes it possible to move beyond the logic of a linear teacher-pupil genealogy and to represent the Tartini lineage as a constellation of differently constituted connections. Mobility is thus not something that has to be reduced in order to produce historical coherence. It can itself become an organizing principle of the knowledge structure. Methodologically, the paper brings together prosopography, source-critical network analysis, and the relational possibilities offered by DEUMM Online. The Tartini case thereby serves as a testing ground for a broader methodological question: how can music history construct relational orders of knowledge that make movement, mediation, and multiple forms of connection and networks visible without translating them back into a single genealogical narrative?

Antonio Baldassarre is Vice Dean, Professor and Head of Research and Development of Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, School of Music, and Editor-in-Chief of the online version of the Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti (DEUMM Online, since 2022). He holds a PhD from the University of Zurich, and has held research and teaching positions as Research Fellow, Lecturer, and Visiting Professor, at the Research Center for Music Iconography at The City University of New York, the Universities of Basel and Zurich, the Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade, the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, the Facultad de Música of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and The University of Tasmania. He is a board member of numerous national and international scientific and learned societies, including his role as President of Association Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale RIdIM (since 2011), Member of the Directorium of the International Musicological Society (2012-22), and Member of the Specialised Committee Careers of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF, 2024-25) and of the SNSF Research Council (from April 2025). In 2022 he was awarded the Cátedra Jesús C. Romero of the Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical “Carlos Chávez” (Cenidim), bestowed annually on a renowned researcher in a subject related to Mexican or Latin American music.