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

461 LETTERS many ways; and with regard to the substance of the doctrine contained therein, there is not much to find fault with, as it is common doctrine. But from what is presently happening to me, I realising very clearly that God wants to glorify Himself in a particular way, by choosing a man who in His hands appears in the exact same way as the donkey’s jawbone in Samson’s hand; and since there has been between the two of us, for many years, such trust and sincerity of heart, which mutually obliges us to avoid hiding the truth from one another, I consider it a definite commitment to reveal to you in advance the private news of what will shortly have to be exposed in public for the examination of the whole learned world. The substance can be explained in a few words: the odd numbers 3·5·7·11·13, etc. are composites, therefore they are not prime in themselves; prime numbers in themselves are the simple forms of the ratios which I distinguish from the proportions and from whose elements (as garments of that body, or body of that spirit) are composed all odd numbers through addition. Music, or better said, the science of harmonics, is not otherwise subordinate to arithmetic and geometry; it is actually that prime principle which allows no other principle before it. As a consequence, arithmetic is subordinate to this science, and geometry, which is its minister, is a composite resulting from the conjunction of the two measures of harmonic and arithmetic quantity. Your Reverence can readily see, and immediately understand, that making such statements on the most highly accredited common sciences is the same as uttering as many heresies, whereas for certain ancient philosophers they were incontrovertible truths. We will then soon see which side the scales tip, but if the scales tip towards our musical side, Your Reverence will infer better than me which and how much honour is this discovery of music, for it would validate Plato’s statement that music and astronomy lead to the discovery of this science that in many ways he wished to conceal, yet of which in many other ways he wanted to make it known that he was an expert. Since my dearest Signor Nardini has safely arrived here, he asks me to submit to you his most cordial and reverent regards, as do Signor Don Antonio and I, as with ever greater debt and deference I remain Your Reverence’s most humble, devoted and obliged servant Giuseppe Tartini Padua, 9 June 1769