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

256 5. Tartini to Giovanni Battista Martini I am answering in great haste to your objections. I am, and shall still be, very busy for a few days; this is the reason why I have not fulfilled my promise. But let Your Reverence be assured that in a few days I shall be entirely disentangled and shall do what I said I would. And in the meantime, receive from me what I can give you for now, promising to make it up to you. Study and have it studied as much as you can to find new and more important difficulties for me, because through these the truth emerges better. But I assure you that the greatest objections that could be opposed to my system, I know them all quite well, but I do not believe that others will be able to raise them. I shall do it myself in due time, and from them you shall see my sincerity, and at the same time the truth. I meanwhile confirm myself, as ever, your most humble, devoted and obliged servant Giuseppe Tartini Padua, 10 December 1730 To the first objection That in said instruments, namely the trumpet, tromba marina and hunting horn, it is nature, not art, which operates, is such a self-evident thing that it cannot be contested. It is true that art must adapt the instrument to the capacity of the operation of nature, that is to say by lengthening the wind trumpets and the hunting horns so that the lowest undulation of the air, which is the lowest note of the instrument, is expanded throughout the whole sounding body. Once art has done this, all that remains is a natural necessity of that physical sounding body, and this is as true as the fact that there is not, nor ever was, nor ever will be anyone capable of finding in those instruments other notes than those alone which come of necessity. Nor is it an obstacle that the beginning of this operation happens in art, as in fact it is called art by me more inappropriately than truly. If one lengthens or if one shortens one of those instruments, there will be no difference but in the lowness and highness of the first note, so art in this has no other influence than that of the first intonation. The rest remains what it is, immutable and necessary, as it is always thus. But this fact is more evident in the tromba marina , as it is capable of a better examination. If another shape is given to the sounding body, be it round, be it oval, be it square or pyramidal as it is, it shall always be one and the same thing, and the effect will always be the same. Furthermore, turn the marine trumpet upside down and start to pluck the string on the part of the bridge, while resting the neck of the instrument on the ground, and the effect will be the same. Moreover, take a violone : and on its highest string if you lay your finger laterally as one does on the tromba marina (and not press down on the