Tartini (1754, p.100). Benjamin Stillingfleet translates the relevant passage from Tartini's treatise as follows (Stillingfleet, 1771, p.35):
"and I infinitely applaud the opinion of P. Vallotti, our organ-master, as the most reasonable of all. He says, that you ought to give to the white keys of the organ all their natural perfection –, both because they are the natural notes of the diatonic genus, and because in church-music the greatest use is made of them; throwing thus the greatest imperfection upon those black keys, which are most remote from the diatonic scale, and which are hardly ever used."
The original Italian reads (Tartini, 1754, p.100):
"ed io lodo infinitamente il sentimento del Padre Valloti nostro Maestro come il più ragionevole di tutti, perchè il più prudente. Egli, dice, che si deve lasciare a' tasti bianchi dell' organo tutta la loro naturale perfezione; sì perchè sono li naturali del Genere diatonico; sì perchè di quelli nel servigio Ecclesiastico sé ne fa il maggior uso: riducendo la massima imperfezione a que' tasti neri, che fono i più lontani dal Genere diatonico, e di quasi niun' uso."
Barbieri (1982, pp.63, 65). Barbieri quotes the chemist and musical theorist, Alessandro Barca, writing sometime after Vallotti's death, as saying that his temperament had been little more than merely referred to in his unpublished writings.
