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

353 LETTERS which means from the discrete geometric duple 12, 9, 8, 6. If Your Reverence transports the third figure into the Csolfaut tone, the resulting third sounds shall be 12, 9, 8. It is therefore impossible for the phenomenon to be more ordered. I have said since the be- ginning that in the present matter one must explore with specific intentions. This need shall be found to be more and more true. In my reply to the first explanations sought, I said that it is not believed that the third sound is perceptible in metallic string instruments, etc. Now you reply telling me that this proposition is destroyed by means of experience. If it wasn’t for the felt in the harpsichords, there would be a great confusion with regard to previously played resonant sounds. The experience of bells proves it much more. Even more, in another sense, the sounds of the organ and of wind instruments, from which no third sound emerges: something which deserves to be pondered, as it brings with it difficulties which are out of the ordinary. With regard to the sounds of metallic strings and bells, the continuous oscillations of the metallic strings, the continuous tremor of the bells do not have, nor ever shall have, the force of the first percussion given by the lever to the string of the harpsichord, by the clapper to the bell. As a consequence I shall say again, and confirm, that having supposed the capacity for a third sound in those instruments, it shall not be heard. With regard to the organ and wind instruments, I have clearly answered that I have not carried out any experiment whatsoever. Now I shall add furthermore, that I do not care about such an experiment in any case, confirming what I replied then; and that is: either there will be, in the aforementioned instruments and in those which can be newly invented, this third sound, or there won’t. If there is not, it is nothing to me or to my proposition. It shall be up to the physical philosopher to give a reason about why it is present in bowed instruments and not present in wind instruments. Then, if it is there, and that is the case, I would be quite curious to know what difficulties may occur, because certainly not only do I not find them, but I am not even able to imagine them. And here I have finished, for the moment, replying to the objections proposed, until new ones are proposed. Considering the nature of the difficulties here proposed to me (with the exception of the first one, which is truly substantial) it seems impossible to me that they have been proposed by the worthiest Signor Dottor Balbi. I know him to be a profound man, who immediately goes to the main point. My treatise is not for publication, nor for practical music; it is to prove the squaring of the circle by means of the third sound, and if my assumption is true, I intend to give my treatise up to learned men in a written form, so that they can make of it whatever use they believe to be convenient for them. This is the substance, and one hundred other things placed in it (believed by me to be useful to clarify the subject, and not as a necessity of proof) can be separated from the treatise. If this was read and considered by Signor Dottor Balbi from the beginning until the end, he is such a man that must infallibly