Giuseppe Tartini - Lettere e documenti / Pisma in dokumenti / Letters and Documents - Volume / Knjiga / Volume I

74 the copies of the letters written in his own hand, Riccati gives us the opportunity to follow a discussion without the difficulties caused by loss of information. The thor- oughness shown by Riccati in preserving the material clearly shows his awareness of the importance of the documents as sources for the history of the arts and sciences. In this respect it is interesting to draw attention to a detail, highlighted by Del Fra, concerning the transmission of the epistolary sources: From the content of the correspondence, there emerge references to at least seven letters miss- ing today […]. The punctilious precision with which Count Giordano ordered and kept his correspondence makes it seem unlikely that they were lost. Instead it is plausible that these were letters deliberately excluded from the correspondence by Riccati himself: for the most part, they are texts written by the Count which he deemed superfluous or uninteresting. 38 The Tartini-Riccati correspondence stands out with regard to completeness and order, and for this reason the publication of a dedicated volume proved to be both appropriate and necessary. The work already carried out on this material thus makes its inclusion in the present collection of letters unnecessary. References to the letters in their chronolog- ical order will, however, be added to the General Index of the Tartini correspondence to enable scholars to verify the whole sequence of letters written by Tartini and his correspondents. 1.2 References to lost letters in Ms. DXVII of the Biblioteca del Seminario of Padua and in Fanzago’s Orazione Ms. DXVII, preserved in the library of the Seminary of Padua, is a combination of three different manuscripts: an anonymous biography of Tartini, a letter from Tartini to G.B. Martini copied by Padre Giuseppe Paolucci, 39 and the booklet Illustrazione di Giuseppe Tartini delle scoperte da lui fatte nella vera scienza dell’Armonia . 40 The biography consists of a main text, arranged on the four sides of a single sheet of paper, enhanced by additions both in the same hand, from a later period, and in a second hand, the same that copied the letter to Padre Martini. From an examination of 38 Ibidem: p. XXXV. 39 Paolucci, Giuseppe (Giuseppe Maria Bernardino Baldassarre Andrea) (1726-1776). A Franciscan of Sienese origin, he studied counterpoint in Bologna under the guidance of Padre Martini. He began to serve loco depositi in the Venetian church of S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, remaining in the city until 1769. He published the Arte pratica di contrappunto in 1765. He was maestro di cappella and organist in Senigallia (1770) and then maestro di cappella at the Sacred Convent of Assisi (1771), where he remained until his death. Cf. E. Pasquini, “Paolucci, Giuseppe”, in Dbi. The letter copied is no. 164. 40 The booklet constitutes one of the many writings of a music-theoretical nature drawn up by Tartini in the last decades of his life.