Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741) Flute Concerto in F Major "La Tempesta di Mare", Op. 10, No.1, RV 433 Oboe Concerto in D Minor, Op. 8, No.9, RV 454...
Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741)
Flute Concerto in F Major "La
Tempesta di Mare", Op. 10, No.1, RV 433
Oboe Concerto in D Minor, Op. 8, No.9, RV
454
Trumpet Concerto in G Minor (transcribed
by Jean Thilde)
Flute Concerto in D Major "Il
Gardellino" Op. 10, No.3, RV 428
Trumpet Concerto in B Flat Minor
(transcribed by Jean Thilde)
Bassoon Concerto in E Minor, F. VII,
No.6, RV 484
Flute Concerto in G Minor, Op. 10, No.2,
RV 439, "La Notte"
Once virtually forgotten, Antonio Vivaldi
now enjoys a reputation that equals the international fame he enjoyed in his
heyday. Born in Venice in 1678, the son of a barber who was himself to win
distinction as a violinist in the service of the great Gabrielis and Monteverdi
at the basilica of San Marco, he studied for the priesthood and was ordained in
1703. At the same time he established himself as a violinist of remarkable
ability. A later visitor to Venice described his playing in the opera-house in
1715, his use of high positions so that his fingers almost touched the bridge
of the violin, leaving little room for the bow, and his contrapuntal cadenza, a
fugue played at great speed. The experience, the observer added, was too
artificial to be enjoyable. Nevertheless Vivaldi was among the most famous
virtuosi of the day, as well as being a prolific composer of music that won
wide favour at home and abroad and exercised a far-reaching influence on the
music of others.
For much of his life Vivaldi was
intermittently associated with the Ospedale della Pietà, one of the four famous
foundations in Venice for the education of orphan, illegitimate or indigent
girls, a select group of whom were trained as musicians. Venice attracted, then
as now, many foreign tourists, and the Pietà and its music long remained a
centre of cultural pilgrimage. In 1703, the year of his ordination, Vivaldi,
known as il prete rosso, the red priest, from the inherited colour of his hair,
was appointed violin-master of the pupils of the Pietà. The position was
subject to annual renewal by the board of governors, whose voting was not
invariably in Vivaldi's favour, particularly as his reputation and consequent
obligations outside the orphanage increased. In 1709 he briefly left the Pietà,
to be reinstated in 1711. In 1716 he was again removed, to be given, a month
later, the title Maestro de' Concerti, director of instrumental music. A year
later he left the Pietà for a period of three years spent in Mantua as Maestro
di Cappella da Camera to Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, the German nobleman
appointed by the Emperor in Vienna to govern the city.
By 1720 Vivaldi was again in Venice and
in 1723 the relationship with the Pietà was resumed, apparently on a less
formal basis. Vivaldi was commissioned to write two new concertos a month, and
to rehearse and direct the performance of some of them. The arrangement allowed
him to travel and he spent some time in Rome, and indirectly sought possible
appointment in Paris through dedicating compositions to Louis XV, although
there was no practical result. Vienna seemed to offer more, with the good will
of Charles VI, whose inopportune death, when Vivaldi attempted in old age to
find employment there, must have proved a very considerable disappointment.
In 1730 Vivaldi visited Bohemia; in 1735
he was appointed again to the position of Maestro de' Concerti at the Pietà and
in 1738 he appeared in Amsterdam, where he led the orchestra at the centenary
of the Schouwburg Theatre. By 1740, however, Venice had begun to grow tired of
Vivaldi, and shortly after the performance of concertos specially written as
part of a serenata for the entertainment of the young Prince Friedrich
Christian of Saxony his impending departure was announced to the governors of
the Pietà, who were asked, and at first refused, to buy some of his concertos.
The following year Vivaldi travelled to
Vienna, where he arrived in June, and had time to sell some of the scores he
had brought with him, before succumbing to some form of stomach inflammation.
He died a month to the day after his arrival and was
buried the same day with as little expense as possible As was remarked in
Venice, he had once been worth 50,000 ducats a year, but through his
extravagance he died in poverty.
Much of Vivaldi's expenditure was
presumably in the opera-house. He was associated from 1714 with the management
of the San Angelo Theatre, a second-rate house which nevertheless began to win
a name for decent performances, whatever its economies in quality and
spectacle. Vivaldi is known to have written some 46 operas, and possible some
40 more than this; he was also involved as composer and entrepreneur in their
production in other houses in Italy. It was his work in the opera-house that
led to Benedetto Marcello's satirical attack on him in 1720 in Il teatro
alla moda, on the frontispiece of which Aldaviva, alias Vivaldi, is seen as
an angel with a fiddle, wearing a priest's hat, standing on the tiller with one
foot raised, as if to beat time. It has been suggested that "on the
fiddle" had similar connotations in Italian to those it retains in
English. Vivaldi had his enemies.
Vivaldi wrote some fifteen concertos for
flauto traverso, the transverse flute, two for solo recorder and three for an
instrument he describes as a flautino, identifiable with the sopranino recorder
rather than the anachronistic piccolo. The three concertos here included, La
tempesta di mare (The Storm at Sea) RV 433, Il gardellino (The
Goldfinch) RV 428, and La notte (Night) RV 439, were all published by Le
Gene in Amsterdam in 1729, forming part of the set of six concertos that
make up Opus 10. It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the
descriptive elements in the music, although these are by no means as detailed
or programmatic as the famous Four Seasons, published in Amsterdam three
years earlier, with their poetic explanation. Nevertheless La tempesta,
like the other concertos of the same name, provides something of a storm, while
the goldfinch exerts its lungs to as good effect as the birds of spring in the
Four Seasons.
The trumpet as a solo instrument found no
place at the Pietà, where, a recent scholar has pointed out, its presence would
have demanded the employment of another expert
teacher for an instrument that might have limited appeal for the young ladies
of the establishment. The two arrangements for solo trumpet by Jean Thilde make
a useful addition to the repertoire of the trumpet, calling, as always in
Baroque trumpet music, itself originally designed for valveless instruments,
skilful manipulation of the upper register, where alone consecutive notes of
the scale were possible in Vivaldi's day.
The Oboe Concerto in D minor, RV 454,
also exists as the ninth concerto in Opus 8, published in Amsterdam in 1725 as Il
cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest of Harmony and Invention)
and including the Four Seasons, designed for strings.
The bassoon was an instrument included
in the instrumentarium of the Pietà and for it Vivaldi wrote some 39 concertos,
two of them incomplete. The E minor Concerto, RV 484, like its
companions, demands a degree of virtuosity, testimony to the prowess of the
girls of the Pietà, or to the teachers often drawn from their ranks, or perhaps
to the bassoonist Giuseppe Biancardi, a member of the Guild of Musicians whose
name appears on one of the concertos.