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

88 this delay, together with the widespread opposition to the bold use of dissonances, that limited the impact of the Paduan school. 120 A letter from Vallotti to Riccati on 30 June 1738 highlights the regard enjoyed by the discovery of the third sound within the Paduan circle of scholars and musicians. In the letter, the rissonanza (resonance) discovered by Tartini is not only mentioned, but described in detail; 121 Vallotti had been informed, probably by the violinist himself, of the phenomenon and of its implications long before the drafting of the Trattato . In any case, Tartini’s theoretical system disappears from the letters after the first exchange with Martini, only to reappear roughly a decade later. Theoretical questions are discussed again on 14 April 1741, in a letter addressed to Paolo Battista Balbi. 122 Tartini, who was very aware of his limits in matters concerning acoustic physics and mathematics, wished to confer with experts in those subjects before making his ideas public. It is during this phase, that prior to printing, that Tartini strongly seeks confir- mation from mathematicians and physicists rather than from musicians, thereby hoping to find support for a “system” of which he was clearly not entirely certain. In these cir- cumstances Martini plays the role of intermediary between the two parties. One month later, Tartini was waiting for a reply from Balbi and asked Martini to clarify the reasons for the long wait: [Padua, 12 May 1741] I sent you some time ago an enclosed letter for Signor Dottor Balbi. I have had no reply to this either from Your Reverence or from the aforementioned. As in the letter I dealt with a most important matter, one in which Your Reverence shall one day, after being informed thereof, find much enjoyment, I thus beg you now to tell me if the letter was delivered, and if so, the reason why Signor Dottor Balbi is not answering me. [...] As we learn from the letter to Balbi, in the decade that had passed since the first letters to Martini the violinist’s theories had evolved and also broadened, including also aspects of the Tartini system that he had not mentioned in the early 1730s: [Padua, 14 April 1741] [...] I have discovered many phenomena and much physical proof; enlightened by these and led from music into universal physical nature, I have clearly seen the solution to all those difficulties that have hitherto been unsolvable for mathematicians; and these are all the immeasurables made measurable by means of a common measure, be it the diagonals, be it the squaring of the circle, the law of falling bodies, forces, resistance, etc. The nature of the too late to give it to us completed, having published but the first book of his science of music, and only in 1779.” See also Barbieri, 1987: pp. 173-209. 120 Barbieri, 1990: p. 199. 121 I-UDc, Ms. 1027, p. 27. Facsimile in Barbieri, 1990: p. 210. 122 Paolo Battista Balbi (1693-1772) was a mathematician from Bologna. Cf. Belvisi, 1791: pp. 71-108.