[3] The complete story is told by Tartini himself in Lalande's Voyage d'un François en Italie: One night, in the year 1713 I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul.

However, despite having said that the sonata was his favorite, Tartini later wrote that it was "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.

[10] A crisp, quick, highly decorated bravura follows, preceding a brief cantabile slow movement, said to signify Tartini's dream state.

[3] The last movement, technically difficult, begins fast, before dissolving into repeated, modular violin melody over an intensifying accompaniment.

[11] The Devil's Trill Sonata is the only musical composition that Dylan Dog, the main character of the Italian comic of the same name, can play on the clarinet.

The Devil's Trill is directly referenced in the horror film Nocturne (2020) about a girl who finds a book with instructions to sell her soul to Satan to excel as a pianist.

‘The Devil’s Trill’ performance, by central character Anna Rolfe, is referenced as a focal point in the popular 2002 thriller ‘The English Assassin’, by Daniel Silva.

The Devil's Trill Sonata is featured in the novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party by M.T.