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

369 LETTERS in one word, the physical harmonic science is the metaphysics of the known sciences of quantity: a truth which in due time will be experienced first-hand. Meanwhile, may one examine indeed most rigorously if my treatise is conceived in this way, and if the main proportions lead the conclusion to this end with geometrical rigour. Because is that is true, unfailingly the circle is squared both physically and demonstratively, without any objection to the squaring be caused by the fact that the line AX of Figure XIII cannot be fixed to a quantity determined by a number. Please do me the favour, therefore, of considering carefully what I have set out in the present letter; and if it is not enough, write to me again, pointing out what is not understood and which difficulties remain. I inform you that in my last letter I drew the figure of an ellipse, calling it circular. I have already declared from the start that I have not studied geometry, therefore there is nothing easier for me than to mistake the terms. I have learned in these days that the ellipse indeed depends upon curves, but not circular ones. So may that figure of mine be called a circular segment and not an ellipse; and thus it is corrected. Meanwhile, I submit to you my most obsequious regards, and I submit myself as ever to be Your Reverence’s most humble, devoted and obliged servant Giuseppe Tartini Padua, 4 August 1752 101. Tartini to G.B. Martini The method followed to reach once and for all the end of this examination would be excellent, if it could be separated from many disadvantages. I shall mention some of them. In the month of June I gave notice to Your Reverence and to the worthiest Signor Dottor Balbi that I had experimented the third sound on the oboe, and detected the same third sound as on the violin, but incomparably more audible. To this, Your Reverence replied to me rejoicing in this higher universality, and telling me that you believed that the same should follow in the trial on the organ, etc., compared to the pipes, etc. This happened in June. The letter received last Saturday from Your Reverence contains these precise words, faithfully copied. And it must be more noticeable (such harmonic law) in those instruments which produce a longer and stronger sound, since these are more suitable to manifest said law. But not only can the generation of the third sound not be obtained by all string instruments, in no way can it be from wind and percussion instruments. Hence one should say etc. These have hitherto been your words. Now, this is very bad, that neither the Most Revered Signor Dottor Balbi, nor Your Reverence,