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

450 quite noble difference: that art is a real fact, which has existed for centuries; and science, although zealously pursued for centuries by people exceptionally learned in physical and mathematical sciences, of which it is an investigation, has never been discovered; hence in desperation it has been concluded that it does not exist and cannot. I therefore present myself to the public on the opposite side to Your Reverence. You will surely be understood by all professors of the art, while I shall not be understood by any professor, with the exception of Padre Vallotti and a few students of the same school. Indeed the learned themselves, who with such zeal have pursued this science, on seeing it publicly proposed by a violin player (to whom his very own profession will give scant credit as a public author on the laws of counterpoint), will immediately reject both the book and the author. Nor will they even deign to read it or study it, to ascertain whether it contains truth or falseness. And yet I am so bold that, although I am sure that things will turn out that way, I nonetheless propose it to the public without being intimidated in the slightest, either by the physicists and mathematicians or by the professors of counterpoint. In contrast with my treatise on music, where I purposefully intended to be obscure where I had some other objective, in these two booklets I want to be clear and I know I am, so that no one has the right anymore to criticise the work and the author by just saying that it is incomprehensible. With regard to these two books, whoever does not understand me is either one who does not wish to, because he gets no benefit from them (he does not know, but presumes to know), or one who is publicly committed to an opposite opinion because he is more concerned with self-regard than with the truth. Those who sincerely seek the truth (i.e. know how much needs to be known in the present need and are not afraid of having their self-regard ruffled), they will certainly understand me. To those alone I propose in the two books an examination of the truth or falseness of the science which I have discovered; to those I shall publicly reply if they will publicly take a stance; and on page 30 of my reply to the critic Monsieur Le Serre I await the physicists and mathematicians; and in the third chapter of my dissertation on the principles of musical harmony contained in the diatonic genus I await the professors of counterpoint. But then both the former and the latter should tread carefully, because I am a man of my word. If they are not satisfied with the example of the great difference there is between my music treatise and these two booklets, and the example of my reply to the unfortunate critique by Monsieur Le Serre and they still want to protest in public, I shall faithfully keep my word and produce that extra material which in the aforementioned books I mention that I am reserving precisely for such a need. If then he who takes the risk finds himself in a much worse condition than Monsieur La Serre, the fault will not be mine. I will have publicly and privately done my duty, having warned them beforehand, not out of arrogance (for proof of the opposite is evident in this letter of mine), nor out any fear I may have for myself or, rather, may instil in them (for I can procure it for myself), but due to pure honesty on my part (for I have been in the