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

265 LETTERS 6. Tartini to G.B. Martini Your Reverence will have been surprised not to have received a reply to your last most courteous letter, which I received before Lent. I have not replied to you because I have been and am currently busy writing in order to put into print twelve solo sonatas, 8 not because I wish to, but because forced by an annoying action taken against me by a Dutch printer. 9 This though has nothing to do with our matters and I am only telling you the reason for my delay, so that you never believe that I am forgetting my obligation. Now, in order not to waste the precious opportunity of the return of Padre Maestro Azzoguidi, for which we all thank God from the bottom of our hearts for allowing us to hear him speak from the pulpit, and for which we would be most severely responsible towards God if we didn’t specifically make the most of his sermons, I am indeed writing to you in haste, but to explain myself well, and tell you that I am infinitely sorry to hear that Your Reverence has spoken to Signor Maestro Perti and the others that you mentioned to me, about my trifles. If I could, I would come there to be schooled by them, and God knows if I mean to say that from the bottom of my heart, and no observation which I have made on theoretical matters makes me more learned or learned enough for that practice which I need so much, and which I would learn as a beginner from the people you have mentioned to me. Therefore, to talk about me with them is to make me look absolutely ridiculous, and if I have the courage to put up with someone laughing at me, because it is right, and I deserve it, I do not have the courage, however, to be held up as a virtuous man, because I am not, and he who believes me to be so is mistaken. I therefore do ask Your Reverence to spare me this mortification of causing me to give such people an impression of myself that I find so unfortunate. What I have been telling you from the start I shall tell you again. If in my observations there is or shall be something which is of value to Your Reverence and for that sort of study which you make, you are entitled to use it as much as you like. If there is not, or will not be anything good, may my trifles at least remain buried in your chamber and I wish them never to leave it. On these conditions, I am ready to continue what I started with you, to answer all the objections which you will bring to my attention, and again to show you what the practice of the two consonant intervals, as they are currently dealt with in our practical music, consists of, for they are neither more nor new, but I say that they are not known as consonant nor known in the strength of their just intonation because of 8 Sonate a Violino e violoncello o cimbalo. Dedicate a Sua Eccellenza il Signor Girolamo Ascanio Giustiniani da Giuseppe Tartini. Opera prima. Amsterdam. Spesa di Michele Carlo Le Cène . See Brainard, 1975: pp. 35-36. 9 Reference is here made to the six sonatas published without the composer’s consent by Witvogel in Amsterdam in 1732. On this episode, see Durante, 2007: pp. 181-182 and Viverit, 2004: p. 22. The “Dutch printer” is Michel-Charles Le Cène.