Charles Burney

The Present State of Music in France and Italy (2nd, corrected edition)

London: T. Becket and Co., 1773

Padua

That his System is full of new and in-
genious ideas, which could only arise
from a superior knowledge in his art,
may be discovered through its veil
of obscurity; and his friend Padre Co-
lombo accounted to me for that obscurity
and appearance of want of true science,
by confessing that Tartini, with all the
parade of figures, and solutions of prob-
lems, was no mathematician, and that he
did not understand common arithmetic
well. However, he saw more than he
could express by terms or principles
borrowed from any other science; and
though neither a geometrician nor an
algebraist, he had a facility and method
of calculating peculiar to himself, by
which, as he could satisfy his own mind,
he supposed he could instruct others.