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

266 a flaw in the tuning of the harpsichord. If, then, you want to submit my objections, my observations to the aforementioned Signori Maestri , not as mine but as yours, you are in charge, nor must I nor can I stop you from doing so. but what I cannot allow is that you make me appear amongst such learned and distinguished men, as a man of conceit, of new discoveries, of improvements to the modern school, and similar things. May God free me from this, I am absolutely far from giving this impression, indeed I only seek to learn from others. May this serve you as a rule, and as a most vivid supplication that you never allow people to think of me what is in fact not true and never shall be. Meanwhile I submit to you my most humble respects, and I assert myself as ever Your Most Reverend Father’s most devoted obliged and humble servant Giuseppe Tartini Padua, 31 March 1731 7. G.B. Martini to Tartini The fact that Your Extreme Illustriousness has done us the favour of answering our questions, gives us the opportunity to put before the replies another (and in my opinion important) preliminary question, which will arouse other reflections on your part. You must know, there is no doubt about it, that our physicists are in complete agreement not only on sound in general, but on tones in particular, with regard to establishing what they consist in; that is to say, what change should be looked for in the sounding body, and therefore in the air, in such a way that both can help to awaken the soul to the feeling of the sound and tones. There is no discrepancy between them. They say that in the sounding body what is required is a very frequent vibration of the smallest (albeit elastic) parts of which it is composed, which, making the air vibrate with equal energy and frequency, equally shake its minimal elastic particles and communicate equal vibrations to them. The number of these vibrations within a determined space of time is necessarily itself determined and can therefore be expressed with a known number. They furthermore observe that this number of vibrations generated in the sounding bodies and in the air, corresponds precisely in the strings themselves, especially metal ones, given the same thickness and tension, corresponds in some inverse ratio to their length, the ratio of which is determined by means of experiments, by reducing it to geometry and the rigour of laws. They see, therefore, that two strings equal in everything, except in length, if they are placed in such a way that one is twice as long as the other, these shall give two sounds of a different tone, the shorter will give the octave higher above the