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

355 LETTERS my defect, which is a certain natural ardour in all of my actions. With this ardour I talk, write, eat, walk and do everything. I ask you therefore to overlook the impetuous expressions of my replies, if sometimes they escape me inadvertently: both because I am not, in fact, aware of them, and because in substance, in my soul, my tongue and I are always at your service. I shall come to the last objection proposed, optimally conceived, and which in our case is wonderfully useful to clarify my proposition. In order to avoid increasing the issues, I shall pass quickly over the difficulty (quite great, for that matter) of granting vibrations as direct causes of sound (in general) generated by the two strings touched, etc. etc. This cause is too vague and general, and it substantially teaches nothing more than that which would be taught by assigning motion in general as a cause of sounds; to say something precise, and indeed convincing, one should rather observe that in the tromba marina there can be motion and vibration of the string without there being, or being possible, sound: some racket and noise indeed, but not my determined sound, this being impossible by nature, and by art (it is the same in trumpets, hunting horns, etc.), because it depends on another principle, quite different from vibrations of the string. But this in due time, if Your Reverence and Signor Dottor Balbi are curious to know it; but for now let us attend to the rest. The proposed objection remains then in all its force. This notwithstanding, I confirm my proposition to be perfectly true, that is to say that the third sound produced by the ratios forming the harmonic series is required by harmonic nature in very general; it is infinitely constant; it is the universal harmonic root, and all the extra that can be said, giving to said precise concept every maximum expansion. Please deign to take note of my frankness in the present case, because it is very helpful. I grant you your objection, and yet I reply thus. If this time, then, I prove my proposition in such a way that there is no space for an answer, it shall be a more than evident sign of the truth of that foundation of mine upon which I have built this system. To prove my proposition in a manner to leave space for a reply, this is only, and can only be, through demonstration. But I do not want to do this. I wish for Your Reverence to do it, as it belongs to you in particular, jointly with the most esteemed Signor Dottor Balbi. May two, three, four parts be harmonically arranged in concord ( stricto modo ), and may the harmonic bass be assigned to them demonstratively. I say that it will be the very third sound which I perceived on the bowed instruments; and just as one can infer it by demonstration, in the same way it can be inferred physically because of the third sound. The following example is a small instance. You may then make it as large as you want.