Antonio Vivaldi

“ On his return to his native city in 1713 Vivaldi was appointed maestro de' concerti at the Ospitale della Pietà, a post which he held until his death in 1743. The institution, which was a foundling-hospital for girls, possessed a choir and a good orchestra composed entirely of females. Vivaldi's own instrument was the violin, for which he wrote very largely; he is stated also to have contributed something to the development of its technical manipulation. [See p. 291a.] The publications on which his fame rests are all works in which the violin takes the principal part. ”

“ In France, it was whispered, free-thinkers and political agitators were the honoured guests of the nobility, who eagerly embraced their theories and applied them to the remedy of social abuses. Only by similar means could the ideals of the Piedmontese reformers be realised; and in those early days of universal illusion none appeared to suspect the danger of arming inexperienced hands with untried weapons. Utopia was already in sight; and all the world was setting out for it as for some heavenly picnic ground.
Of Vivaldi himself, Alfieri spoke with extravagant admiration. ”

“ It was an age when every book or pamphlet bearing on the great question of personal liberty was eagerly devoured by an insatiable public; and a few weeks after Vivaldi's volume had been smuggled into Italy it was the talk of every club and coffee-house from Calabria to Piedmont. The inevitable result soon followed. The Holy Office got wind of the business, and the book was at once put on the Index. ”

“ Vivaldi cried, "Milan is indeed the home of the free spirit, and were I not persuaded that a man's first duty is to improve the condition of his own city and state, I should long ago have left this unhappy kingdom; indeed I sometimes fancy I may yet serve my own people better by proclaiming the truth openly at a distance than by whispering it in their midst." ”

“ When only nine years of age he performed in London in public a concerto of Vivaldi, and afterwards gained an eminent position in the musical profession, surpassing, according to contemporary writers, every other player in England in tone and execution. ”

“ Foremost among these, as Odo now learned, were many of his own countrymen. In his talks with Vivaldi he first explored the course of Italian thought and heard the names of the great jurists, Vico and Gravina, and of his own contemporaries, Filangieri, Verri and Beccaria. Vivaldi lent him Beccaria's famous volume and several numbers of the "Caffe," the brilliant gazette which Verri and his associates were then publishing in Milan, and in which all the questions of the day, theological, economic and literary, were discussed with a freedom possible only under the lenient Austrian rule. ”

“ At this time, possibly largely as a matter of study and exercise, he transcribed concertos [Pg 472] of Vivaldi for harpsichord, mastering thus the form, practically invented by the Italian, which he later used so brilliantly in the Italian Concerto for clavicembalo. ”

“ After an intermission, which she spent simply sitting quietly, pondering the exquisite delicacies of Liszt's piano writing, the second part of the concert opened with Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons", performed by an intimate ensemble rather than with the full complement of strings. The performers were students, to be sure, but she found it delightful nonetheless. When the "Autumn" season opened, she even felt a sudden chill in the air—the performance was so wonderfully effective—and she pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. ”

“ In France, Italy, and Germany the small forms were destined to remain the most popular in harpsichord music; and the sonatas and concertos of Bach are immediately influenced by study of the Italian masters, Corelli and Vivaldi.
In Italy, the birthplace of organ music and so of a part of harpsichord music, interest in keyboard music of any kind declined after the death of Frescobaldi in 1644, and was replaced by interest in opera and in music for the violin. Only one name stands out in the second half of the century, Bernardo Pasquini, of whose work, unhappily, little remains. ”

“ Further originality was displayed in the chamber music of Steffani and Clari, in the concerto grosso of Torelli, in the combined harmonic and rhythmic effects of Vivaldi.
In direct lineage from Monteverde, Scarlatti stands as the second great orchestral innovator. His three principal achievements were:— (1) Balance of tone in the strings by the judicious distribution of the four notes of a chord; (2) numerical suppression of overpowering wind-instruments, and a logical usage of the same in pairs ”

“ What Frescobaldi was in the first half of the seventeenth century, that was Pasquini in the second half. In Italy, Austria, and France he was treated like a prince; and his tombstone bears the proud inscription, “Organist of the Senate and People of Rome.” With Scarlatti the art of clavier-playing reaches its height, and begins to decline. It is not clavierists but violinists, the wordless rivals of the singers, who have carried the type of Italian virtuosity into our own times—Corelli, Vivaldi, Locatelli, Tartini, Paganini. ”

“ At the time when his attention was first strongly attracted to Italian instrumental music by the principles of form which their composers had originated, and worked with great skill, he arranged sixteen violin concertos of Vivaldi's for the clavier solo, and three of the same and a first movement for the organ. Of the originals of these it appears from Spitta [1] that there is only one [App. p.523 "there are six"] to be found for comparison; but, as Spitta observes, from the freedom with which Bach treated his original in this instance it is legitimate to infer his treatment of the others. ”

“ Such people are merely Finger Composers—in his riper years Bach used to call them Harpsichord Knights—that is to say, their fingers tell them what to write instead of being instructed by the brain what to play.137 Bach abandoned that method of composition when he observed that [pg 71] brilliant flourishes lead nowhere. He realised that musical ideas need to be subordinated to a plan and that the young composer's first need is a model to instruct his efforts. Opportunely Vivaldi's Concertos for the Violin,138 then recently published, gave him the guidance he needed. ”

“ The practice of playing music between the acts is of long standing, the frequent inappropriateness of these interludes having been repeatedly commented on, however. A writer in the last century expressly complains that at the end of every act, the audience, "carried away by a jig of Vivaldi's, or a concerto of Giardini's, lose every warm impression relative to the piece, and begin again cool and unconcerned as at the commencement of the representation." ”

“ The same feature shows itself right up to the time of his apprenticeship at Hamburg: in any case he might have already known the Corellian style, thanks to the propaganda of George Moffat, who spread this style very early in Germany. [30] After Corelli, Locatelli, [31] and especially Vivaldi, [32] have singularly transformed the Concerto Grosso by giving it the free character of programme music [33] and by turning it resolutely towards the form of the Sonata in three parts. ”

“ Vivaldi and his Concertos were the first from whom he sought counsel. From them he turned to the principal Organ and Clavier composers of the period. Nothing is more intellectually stimulating than counterpoint, and the composers Bach studied were distinguished by their mastery of it, as their fugal writing attests. Hence Bach's diligent study and imitation of them pointed his taste and imagination to perceive wherein himself was lacking and what steps were needed to take him farther in his art.
A second rock upon which genius often comes to grief is the public's undiscriminating applause. ”

“ To Pugnani more than to any other master of the violin appears to be due the preservation of the pure grand style of Corelli, Tartini and Vivaldi, and its transmission to the next generation of violinists. ”

“ Bach and Walther had plenty of encouragement in this kind of music, since the Duke’s nephew Joh. Ernst (who unfortunately died young) had considerable skill on the violin, and also was a fair composer. They vied with one another in arranging Italian concertos for the harpsichord and organ. Sixteen of Vivaldi’s violin concertos were arranged by Bach for the harpsichord (Peters, 217) and three for the organ (Peters, 247) . [28] Walther arranged thirteen for organ from the works of Torelli, Taglietti, Albinoni, etc., and they are preserved in MS. in the Royal Library at Berlin. ”

“ In the sixteenth century, Orlando di Lasso, Isaac, and Palestrina were engaged in writing Church music, in which stringed instruments were heard; in the seventeenth, lived Stradella, Lotti, Bononcini, Lully, and Corelli. In the eighteenth century, the period when the art of Violin-making was at its zenith, the list is indeed a glorious one. At this point is the constellation of Veracini, Geminiani, Vivaldi, Locatelli, Boccherini, Tartini, Viotti, Nardini, among the Italians; while in France it is the epoch of Leclair and Gaviniès, composers of Violin music of the highest excellence. ”

“ One of the greatest of these composer-violinists was Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713) , whose works are often played by violinists of our own time, and have served as models for composers. He was one of the first to try to write music that should show off the beauty and possibilities of the violin.
The “Golden Age” of the Italian violin composers dated from 1720 to 1750, and was the time of Locatelli, Pugnani, Nardini, Veracini, Tartini and Vivaldi who added oboes and horns to the orchestral accompaniment of the Concerti Grossi. ”

“ The one in D minor is considered the finest of all. Of still greater value are the concertos for two and three pianos, in which the form of the concerto grosso is employed in a new manner. There even exists a concerto for four claviers and orchestra; this, however, is only an elaboration of a violin concerto by Vivaldi. It should be remarked in this connection that Bach regarded the organ as an instrument for church use exclusively and wrote no organ concertos, whereas Handel produced many works of that class. ”

“ Here he studied Vivaldi's violin-concertos, and made the acquaintance of Heine, a musician in Dresden, with whom he went to live in March 1716. He now had opportunities of hearing great artists, such as Pisendel, Veracini, Sylvius Weiss, Richter and Buffardin, the flute-player. In 1717 he went, during his three months' leave, to Vienna, and studied counterpoint in the octave with Zerlenka, a pupil of Fux. In 1718 he entered the chapel of the King of Poland, which consisted of 12 players, and was stationed alternately in Warsaw and Dresden. ”

“ At this critical moment, Wido went to Master Wilibald, and said to him, “Now, my old friend, is the time when you may help me with your art, as you frequently have offered to do. If your music be really so powerful as you say it is, go then and deliver the Mayor, by softening the enraged mob. As a reward he certainly will grant you any thing you may request. Speak then a word for me and my love, and demand my beloved Emma as the price of your assistance. The bag-piper laughed at this speech, and replied, “we must satisfy the follies of children, in order to prevent them crying.” ”

“ It was a soft, regular sound, like the ticking of a clock, like the beating of a heart—it was the rocking of a cradle.
Anne-Marie smiled to herself, and her soul sank into peacefulness. The gentle clicking sound lulled her near to sleep again. She was utterly at peace—utterly happy. Life opened wider portals over wider shining lands.
Then, with the awakening of memory, came the thought of her violin. With a soft tremor of joy, she realized that the brief silence of the past year was over. Music would stream again from her hands over the world.
Her violin! ”

“ But Wido always had objections; he never would allow the parent of his fair one to be harmed by the slightest offence, and hoped to win him by perseverance and complacency.
Wilibald told him, “Thou art an idiot, if thou hopest to win, by an open and honourable sentiment, like thy love, the approbation of a rich and proud old fool. He will not surrender without some of the plagues of Egypt are put in force against him. When once Emma is thine, and he no more can change what has happened, then thou wilt find him friendly and kind. ”

“ Still, even when the more pretentious kind of Italian sculpture was at its lowest, a spark of its old life smouldered here and there in the improvisations of the plasticatore, or stucco modeller; and I hoped to find, in the despised groups of San Vivaldo, something of the coarse naïveté and brutal energy which animate their more famous rivals of Varallo. In this hope we started in search of San Vivaldo; and as the guide-books told us that it could be reached only by way of Castel Fiorentino, we promptly determined to attack it from San Gimignano. ”

“ Sister Nivedita's reminiscences in a November 5, 1904 letter to Alberta Sturges (Lady Sandwich) of Swami Vivekananda's talk on renunciation while he was staying at Ridgely Manor:
"In India we never say that you should renounce a higher thing for a lower. It is better to be absorbed in music or in literature than in comfort or pleasure, and we never say otherwise." (LSN II: 690)
44. In Sister Nivedita's November 19, 1909 letter to Miss Josephine MacLeod:
"The fire burns if we plunge our hand in — whether we feel it or not — so it is with him who speaks the name of God." ”