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

98 accompanying them with two letters of mine, one for Your Reverence, the other for the Most Illustrious Balbi, to whom Your Reverence should show this letter of mine, so that he is fore- warned and knows beforehand who they are and why they are being recommended. [...] 161 In the same way, Martini took care to accompany his own students with letters of rec- ommendation addressed to Padua, as in the case of the tenor Giuseppe Tibaldi. 162 [...] I have received Your Reverence’s most kind letter from Signor Giuseppe Tibaldi, recom- mending him to me. You should imagine something which is absolutely true, and it is that I had wished to meet this most worthy virtuoso long before Your Reverence’s letter. Then, just imagine that I met him for the first time as Your Reverence’s student, and with a letter of yours recommending him to me. So, Your Reverence shall more or less be able to form a true idea of my pleasure in having met him, and of the warm interest and care I shall have for him. He is such that, wherever he goes, he recommends himself. [...] 163 Besides being a composer and an authority on harmony and counterpoint, Martini was also a learned historian. The publication in 1757 of the first volume of his Storia della musica presents itself as an expression of the enlightened encyclopaedic spirit that laid the foundations of the birth of music historiography, 164 a spirit that in other respects he could never have embodied, as he was a religious man inclined towards a certain conser- vatism. 165 In the Martini correspondence it is not unusual to find the Franciscan looking for information or tracking sources for the writing of his Storia della musica , a work that is mentioned in various Tartini letters. In the letter dated 11 December 1761, Tartini replies to a request for information on Johannes Ciconia, 166 who was active in Padua in the 14th century, providing an interesting report on the state of the archive: [...] I give you in advance the information that in the archive of the Lord Canons no record whatsoever of the subject indicated to me by Your Reverence can be found. Here the noble Cicogna family still exists, and it is easy to believe that De Cyconijs was from this family. But the above-mentioned archive is in a remarkable state of disorder, and only since 1517 161 Letter 119. 162 Tibaldi, Giuseppe Luigi (1729-1790). He was a tenor and composer. He studied singing with Domenico Zanardi and counterpoint with Padre Martini. He was a member of the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna from 1747 and maestro di cappella at S. Giovanni in Monte in the same city from 1751, though after one year of service he decided to devote himself to a career in opera. 163 Letter 150. 164 In 1767, the Dictionnaire de musique by Jean-Jacques Rousseau was printed in Geneva, while the first volume of Charles Burney’s A General History of Music was published in 1776, as was the General History of the Science and Practice of Music by John Hawkins. 165 See Mioli, 2006: pp. 57-63. 166 Flemish composer and theorist. M. Bent - D. Fallows - G. Di Bacco - J. N das, “Ciconia, Johannes”, in Ng.