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

297 LETTERS in general, to serve your peers, and much more in particular, whomsoever belongs to this Most Illustrious Family. I then tell you, that as I know nothing, if not in a confused way, of my sonatas freshly issued in print, I have taken pains, through the Lord Consul of Holland, who is in Venice, to find out about the whole matter. It is quite true then, that six of my solo sonatas 28 have seen the light, but it is also true that this fact has caught me by surprise, and that I have no dealings whatsoever with the printer of the sonatas, who is Dutch. Therefore, not even I am in possession of them, and if the printer does not sent copies to Italy for sale, I shall never have them. Then, if he does send them, I too shall have to buy my own things. But in the meantime Your Most Illustrious Lordship, who can have means wherever and whenever he wishes, would do me a great favour if he could arrange to have six copies of the said sonatas sent to him from Amsterdam, where they are printed by the heirs of Michiel Charle Le Cène. Four or five would be on my account, and I would reimburse Your Most Illustrious Lordship of the expense with all due punctuality. Here, then, is the outcome, only back to front. Your Most Illustrious Lordship gave me orders that I should obtain them for you; and now I entreat you to obtain them for me. Meanwhile, if in another matter I am able to obey and serve you, be entirely assured that you shall find in me prompt and exact obedience, as I indeed know the honour that comes to me from being, as I humbly declare myself, Your Most Illustrious Lordship’s most humble, devoted and obliged servant Giuseppe Tartini Padua, 19 March 1744 42. G.V. Vannetti to the heirs of Michel Charles Le Cène Sirs, having been informed, through the Lord Consul of Holland, who resides in Venice, as well as through the Utrecht gazette, that you gentlemen have printed the opera seconda of Monsieur Tartini from Padua, which contains six sonatas for violin and bass, selling the copy for the price of four florins, I disturb you with this letter, although we do not know each other, strongly asking you to have the kindness to send me in haste, by means of the gentlemen Raymonde and Theodore de Smeth and Hurter of Amsterdam, the reply with six or eight bars of each sonata, which shall serve me 28 Tartini, VI Sonate a Violino e Violoncello , Le Cène, 1743. See Felici, 2015: pp. 57-59.