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

382 circle in the demonstrative genre, as is the third sound in the physical genre. And I say identically with regard to the intrinsic nature. Because the harmonic progression (as such) is identical both demonstratively and physically in a sounding line. It shall always be 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc. in every genre. Now you may say, how can the same identical progression be said to have two different roots? It is inevitable that whoever wants to oppose my system should come to this and take this absurdity on board. I can indeed excuse anyone for the novelty of the thing, there being no idea whatsoever in any science and phenomenon of a fact in which the physical thing is the same, in its intrinsic nature, as the demonstrative thing. Therefore I am not surprised that Your Reverence wrote what you wrote for Signor Dottor Balbi in your last letter, because in fact it usually is as you have written; but it is not so in my case, which I believe to be alone in nature. Therefore, either one has to swallow the absurd, or I must be granted that the root in intrinsic nature is the same. If one does not fear the absurd, and one wants, after all of this, to diversify the roots, the examination is over without any further reply. If, then, one conceives the absurd for what it is in fact, and therefore one grants me the identity of the root, at one glance one shall see that I am right. But the examination can no longer be based on the physical: rather, on the demonstrative combined with the physical, because having understood the demonstrative, one has a double certainty: that as the physical will be, so will the demonstrative. All this is the domain of the Most Illustrious Signor Dottor Balbi, and he must answer me precisely. To Your Reverence I then say specifically that I remember having mentioned to you another time that in the circle you have the whole musical system and that I was ready to have you experience it first-hand. About this, Your Reverence gave me no reply, and I confess that it seemed strange to me, because without realising it, it is a sign that Your Reverence deems it an indifferent thing in itself, and in no way influencing the need. But do not be mistaken. The thing is big in itself, extremely big, and everything influences the need, because it is a physical demonstration of the harmonic nature of the circle, and such a demonstration that by itself it forms our entire musical science. I therefore tell you precisely, that in the circle divided according to its nature, there is the whole consonant system of the major third, the whole consonant system of the minor third, the whole system of the dissonances with their structure and resolution; all the genres, diatonic, chromatic, enharmonic; and everything else there might be to form the science completely and demonstratively. It is so, and I say a lot more than that. But if it is so due solely to the circle, I shall ask Your Reverence especially how it is possible to separate the third sound from the circle, if both the circle and the third sound are the basis of the musical system, one demonstrative, the other one physical? I shall say more, that if Your Reverence could see the system inferred, by force of which you could marvellously ascertain the identity of the two principles, physical and demonstrative, you would be the first to say I am right. In short, the circle is incomparably belongs more to us than to geometricians. Since I am that blind man who found the horse