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

270 11. Tartini to G.B. Martini Obliged by such people to whom I cannot deny anything, I must confidentially and attentively beg Your Reverence for a favour; namely, that you trouble yourself to send here your famous Oratorio, 12 which last year in 1735 was prepared for S. Venanzio in Camerino, 13 and which Signor Don Antonio and I heard while serving in the same service. It must be produced here by the Filippini Fathers in Carnival and sung and served by the best professors we have here, with the certainty that it will be treated well and that no wrong will be done to it. This Oratorio is being chosen in everybody’s best interest, and Signor Don Antonio and I are the proposers of this choice. I hereby give you my word and commit my honour that it will not be copied, but exactly as you will send it, it will be sent back there to you without any expense, as is due. It was wished that I write to you, and submit this entreaty to you, though I blush to ask in all haste. I fully confide in your kindness, and not in my merit, and to this regard I beg you for the favour. Should you grant it to me, it is necessary that you grant it immediately, and send the oratorio by direct post to Padua to Padre Antonio Trevisolo in San Tomaso. 14 This supplication is a little insolent, but the fault is not mine; half of it belongs to Your Reverence, who composes precious things; and the other half belongs to him who has absolutely commanded me to write to you and that I do no less than that, whether the reply be yes or no. May Your Reverence now do as God inspires you to do, while I, humbly kissing your hands, remain, Your Reverence’s most devoted and obliged servant Giuseppe Tartini Padua, 17 January 1737 12 The oratorio in question is probably the Assunzione di Salomone al trono d’Israele (in I-Bc the manuscript: L'assunzione di Salomone al trono d' Israello, oratorio in due parti a 4 voci con istromenti, dell'anno 173 [...] da carte 1 a 79 , coll. HH.65). 13 The church of S. Venanzio in Camerino (Macerata). 14 This is the church, still standing today, of S. Tomaso Becket, formerly an oratory of St Philip Neri, now a parish church. See Grossato, 1993: pp. 213-246.