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

383 LETTERS shoe, because I demonstrate it as the harmonic root, and because I find all of our music completely within it, and much more of our use and need, I cannot understand how one could ever separate it from the physical harmonic, of which it is law and root in every sense. Please, therefore, do me the favour for this last time of digging into the subject more than has hitherto been done, and of compensating for my inability to explain myself with your reflection and realisation, while submitting to bothmy most obsequious regards, I remain more and more Your Reverence’s most humble, devoted and obliged servant Giuseppe Tartini Padua, 1 December 1752 106. Tartini to G.B. Martini Regarding my silence, by which Your Reverence and Signor Dottor Balbi must have rightly been surprised, I am here to tell you the reason for this. From the last letter of yours, written to me as you were leaving for Rome, I clearly detected that nothing would ever be concluded with the method used by me for the examination, and that my personal presence there was necessary. I had thus decided to be there in September, but due to the events I shall mention, I was forced to stay here. During last year’s autumn, I had to write, in Villa [?] a brief treatise on music for a cavaliere , a patron and student of mine, who strongly wished for it (so he said) for his own pleasure, and to whom I gave the original by hand. This last August, to my surprise, I heard the cavaliere order me that not only does he want the treatise in print, but that at least half of the musical and mathematical figures required for the purpose were to be engraved. My very valid reasons against this were nothing to him; and this because (he says) after having the treatise seen and examined by worthy persons he was given the task of having it printed, even against my will. In this case, I was at least granted the favour that he would allow me to have the treatise to revise it, correct it, lengthen it, etc., which I did, as well as I could, this autumn; but it was impossible for me to leave Padua. This treatise will then be published soon, and it will be my duty to send three copies there, for Your Reverence, for Signor Dottor Balbi and for Padre Riccati; 57 praying you all, in advance, with my heart and with no desire to be flattered, to tell me, each for his own part, his own frank 57 Vincenzo Riccati (1707-1775), a mathematician from Treviso. See Bagni, 1997: pp. 61-65.