Giuseppe Tartini,  a leading violinist of the 18th century, was reputed to have made a compact with the Devil in a dream.

The nocturnal visitor played a violin piece more ravishing than anything Tartini had ever heard. When he attempted to recapture it in the morning, he composed a sonata called The Devil's Trill, of truly fiendish difficulty. In Tartini's view it was a mere shadow of the music he heard in his dream. However, his deal with the Devil led to worldly success. The story may have been prompted by indiscretions of his early career, when he was arrested for marrying a protegee of the Archbishop of Padua. His prowess as a violinist may have contributed to the pardon he received from the Archbishop.*

Is the violin the Devil's instrument?

The violin has been associated with Satan in Western culture for generations (think of the rock song "The Devil went down to Georgia"), but the "devil as fiddler" motif has evolved in stages over the past two millennia - religions, folk tales, and literature all merge to produce a central myth. **

The mythological association of the Devil with the fiddle and his reputed skill are part of the American cultural heritage, but the origins of the symbolic link are actually ancient, and appear concurrently in diverse theological and cultural traditions, which may have ultimately cross-pollinated.  In the traditions of the Abrahamic religions we can reach as far back as the Hebrew Tanakh’s Book of Ezekiel (finalized roughly between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D.) and identify the possible connection of the personage of Satan with music, although this passage is variously translated.

You were in Eden, the garden of God;
Every precious stone was your covering:
The sardius, topaz, and diamond,
Beryl, onyx, and jasper,
Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold.
The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes
Was prepared for you on the day you were created.
(Ezekiel 28:13-15 New King James Version)

Although not definitive, the fact that angels were thought to spend eternity singing the praises of God, and the mention of “the workmanship of your timbrels and pipes” seems to suggest that Satan was involved with producing heavenly harmonies, a divine Paul Schaffer to Yahweh’s David Letterman.  Indiana State University musicologist Todd E. Sullivan in his essay “Instrument of the Devil” observed, “Associations between the violin and death or the devil reside deep in the modern Western consciousness. Traditional, popular, and classical music cultures have reinforced this viewpoint many times over. The identity of the ‘Devil as fiddler’ has evolved in stages over the past two millennia or longer as numerous religious beliefs, folk legends, and literary tales merged to produce a central myth.”  Sullivan traces this back to ancient Greek religious cults that associated specific deities with ethical attributes, in particular the Dionysus/Bacchus themes (the pan pipes, dancing, wine, and general debauchery) and the fact that the image of the Satyr blended into the standard caricature for devils.

The specific Western European motif of the fiddling devil seems to have roots in the timing of the modern violin’s early 16th Century appearance (it was a brand new string instrument, supplanting the older vielle, rebec, or lira) in the shadow of the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation, but may very well have earlier associations with the introduction of the first bowed instruments to Europe by conquering Moors who rolled over North Africa and into Western Europe, threatening a still young Christianity in the 8^thCentury A.D., and creating a Spanish Caliphate that was to last for several centuries.  “It is interesting in connection with our subject that very soon after this historical event, the Mussulman conquest of Spain (or rather, after Abderrahman, driven from Persia, founded, in 756, the Caliphate of Cordova in Spain), bow instruments appear for the first time in Spain and Southern Europe, and in response, musical historians have from this fact drawn the not illogical conclusion that that modest escutcheon of peace, the fiddle-bow, came to us from its Eastern home on the wings of war” (Stoeving, 1904, p.30). The introduction of Islam to North and West Africa is thought to correspond to the beginning of a decline of the fiddle and violin like instruments in the Muslim world, and their growing association with evil spirits, independent of similar constructions that emerged in Renaissance Europe.

Although the majority of West African fiddlers identify as Muslim, over time, fiddling diminished in appeal for Muslims.  From the 10th to 11th century, heads of state and rulers of various societies in the region adopted Islam to enhance their trade, while most of the populations maintained indigenous practices.  Between the 14th and 16th centuries, Islam was adopted by the masses for social advancement as people from all over the globe, including Europe and Asia, came to West Africa to teach and study.  In the 18th to 19th centuries, which is also when the faith began to expand exponentially, reformists led jihads to restore more fundamental Islamic worship practices and moral standards.  Many northern Nigerian Muslims view the fiddle negatively because of the wide-spread Islamic perspective that all instruments are forbidden and only unaccompanied chanting of religious poems, religious hymns and the playing of certain types of drums are permitted in mosques.  Not only do Muslims in Hausa land and other parts refer to the melodies produced on the chordophone as the music of the devil, some believe fiddle music led people to engage in various unhealthy practices, such as the drinking of alcohol.  Since the Hausa fiddle is one of the main instruments used to venerate Bori spirits, it is understandable why Muslims did not receive fiddling with much enthusiasm.  These reasons and the instrument’s association with pre-Islamic rites, including spirit possession, made fiddling especially taboo (DjeDje, 2010).

With the emergence of the violin in mid-16^th Century Europe it rapidly became the chosen instrument, particularly among peasant performers for dances, weddings, and other exuberant entertainments, enormously popular due to its portability, loud tone, and tunability.  The Protestant Reformation likely had the largest impact on the translation of the violin/fiddle to the instrument of the devil, with a general degradation of worldly pleasures as sinful.

Viols had by this time [1670’s] crept out of the cloister and joined hands with the frivolous Rebek, used at fairs and pothouses. At all events, in Cromwell’s time and the ‘Barebones-praise-God period,’ everything that savoured of festivity was tabooed, and the fury against art seemed part and parcel of all sincere religion, according to the masses at least. To Cromwell’s honour be it set down that he was personally no such extremist, and that he, moreover, saved for us Raffael’s cartoons; but still music in any of its secular forms was mightily discouraged by the Puritans, whilst in its higher religious form it was associated with Prelacy and Papacy, and we have to wait for that reaction in favour of the world, the flesh, and the devil, which marked the Restoration, and which also made provision for the more innocent as well as the more perilous delights of music in the home, the concert room, the theatre, and the sanctuary (Haweis, 19–, p120).

The Golden Age of the Devil as Fiddler/Violinist was certainly the 17^th, 18^th, and 19 ^th Centuries.  A robust literature emerges examples of which include Anthony Woods biography describing the German violinist Thomas Baltazar’s performances as demonically inspired, the 18th Century claims of violinist Giuseppe Tartini to having made a pact with the Devil , the Opera Un Violon du Diable (1849), Benjamin Webster’s “The Devil’s Violin” (1849), and most notably, the rumor and widespread belief that the only explanation for Nicolo Paganini’s otherworldly violin abilities and technique were a Faustian bargain (incidentally a popular, contemporary story), which Paganini capitalized on for publicity.

Condemnation of the violin as an instrument of the Devil spread during the nineteenth century to other parts of Europe and North America. Churches in Sweden and Norway outlawed the violin and created a substitute string instrument, the psalmodikon, to accompany hymn singing. Scandinavian settlers transported this “bowed zither” to the Upper Midwest region of the United States. Calvinist adherents in the British Isles denounced the violin because of its evil associations with dance. Such prejudices also traveled with some Scots-Irish immigrants to the U.S. Numerous British folk ballads and fiddle tunes, transplanted to Appalachia and other parts of the country, make reference to the Devil (Sullivan, Essay: ‘Instrument of the Devil” on www.rachelbartonpine.com)

Simultaneously, missionaries among African-American slaves in the United States encountered the fiddle utilized in both secular and sacred contexts throughout the 18^th and 19^th Centuries, particularly with respect to folk traditions that were imported from West Africa and syncretized with Christian overlays, and did their best to eradicate fiddle music, which nonetheless persisted into the development of a robust tradition of blues music depictions of a musical Mephistopheles, translating to a primary motif of blues musicians developing extraordinary skill through deals with the devil at the crossroads, the most famous instance being the renowned Faustian legend of blues guitar great Robert Leroy Johnson.

In retrospect, the Devil may have gone down to Georgia, but he arrived via ancient Judea, North Africa, Spain, West Africa, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, the British Isles, and with visits to countless other countries on the way to his destination, hanging out with Nero as he fiddled, making deals with famous artists, and otherwise maintaining his symbolic presence in the world of the musical arts.  Rock ‘N Roll is only the latest incarnation of “The Devil’s Music”, and the modern, “Satanic” Heavy Metal bands that have adopted the mythos are simply recapitulating Paganini and Tartini, reveling in demonic signification that both attracts and repels.  Ambrose Bierce famously defined the violin as “an instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse’s tail on the entrails of a cat.”  No wonder the Devil prefers to fiddle.  On the other hand, an anonymous commenter on a fiddler’s resource website may have been on to something when he quipped, “Don’t know the connection between Satan and the fiddle? You’ve obviously never listened to a child taking violin lessons.” ***

Sources:

* Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time, Vol. 7, pg. 779

**http://music.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/0010_halloween/violin.shtml

***https://esoterx.com/2012/12/01/the-devils-fiddle-mephistopheles-the-music-man/