A marriage made in heaven

Vivaldi and Venice were made for each other, says Anthony Symondson SJ
Vivaldi's Venice: Music and Celebration in the Baroque Era by Patrick Barbier, Souvenir Press £18.99
It is hard to believe that Vivaldi's music lay for years after his death unperformed, known, if at all, only through transcrip lions. He went out of fashion in his own lifetime, but to many he is the quintessence of Venice. Until I read this delightful book I did not know that Vivaldi died, dishonoured, in Vienna in 1741. was given a pauper's funeral in St Stephen's Cathedral, and that one of the boys who sang at it was the nine-yearold Joseph Haydn. Thereafter he was quickly forgotten until his music was rediscovereil in dusty libraries in the late 20th centu.ry and recorded.
Patrick Barbier believes that the composer of The Four Seasons offers a rare example of a total fusion between a city, a man and his work. "Because everything in his instrumental and vocal work reflects the cheerful style, the colours, sometimes sparkling, sometimes misty, the liquid, transparent atmosphere of Venice, Vivaldi and Venice make one together." Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was horn in 1678, the son of Giovanni Battista Vivaldi, a violinist who played in the orchestra of San Marco. He was cited along with his son among the eminent Venetian violinists listed in the Guida de' Forestieri (Guide for Foreigners) of 1713. They lived in a small square between the basilica and San Giovanni in Bragora where a plaque on the facade records his baptism.
Giovanni Battista gave Vivaldi his first violin and harpsichord lessons. He also gave him red hair and, when he was ordained in 1703, he became known as the "Red Priest". The family's limning tresses must have been remarkable, as Vivaldi's father was known in the orchestra of San Marco as "Giovanni Battista Rosso". His son's vocation was pragmatic. Primogeniture was unknown in the Serene Republic and this accounts for untold vocations to the priesthood and the religious life in order to avoid the break-up of property. Shortly before his death, Vivaldi told the Marchese Bentivogtio of Ferrara that he had not said Mass for 23 years. His excuse was asthma but I suspect that he had little interest in the priestly life,
Vivaldi achieved celebrity as one of the maestri teaching the violin at the Ospedalo di Santa Maria di Pieta, an orphanage for abandoned girls. The four Venetian ospedali differed from similar hospices established for the destitute in other European cities by embracing a musical dimension. As well as children they took in beggars, lepers, syphilitics, incurables, and old people. An 18th-century Venetian song ran: " At the Pieta they pray God with the violin/ at the Mendicanti with the flute) at the Ospedaletto with the bassoon/ and at the Incurabili with the drum." They gave musical fame to the poorest people.
La Pieta differed from the others, not only because of Vivaldi but because it enjoyed special prestige, and
was the only one to be entirely female, Women and girls, from orphans to elderly ladies, belonged to the community of 1,000 people situated on the Rive, about 200 metres from the Doge's palace. Babies abandoned by their parents were left in a niche set in the outer wall where they were divided into community and choir girls. Many achieved advanced musical proficiency. Travellers saw the Pieta conservatory as comparable only to those in Naples and as the holy of holies of Venetian instrumental music. In 1704 the Pallade Veneta wrote of Sunday vespers that the music "became a marvel of ecstasy and gave the impression that such a composition came from heaven rather then from mankind". La Pieta established an international reputation and many testified to its celestial quality.
The buildings where Vivaldi and the girls performed no longer exist. If you want In see what the
churches and music rooms were like, you need to visit the chapel of the Mendicanti or the Ospedaletto Santi Giovanni e Paulo del Derelitti not far away in the Barbane delle Tole. The recently restored music room of 1777 at the top of Longlicria's oval staircase is decorated with trompe-l'oeil paintings by Guarama and Mengozzi Colonna and the church retains its unchanged arrangement.
Facing the congregation, elevated above the high altar, is the platform where the putte would sing, concealed by long gilded trellises running from left to right. Below, on either side of the tabernacle, behind two grilled alcoves, the girl musicians, trumpeters or others, accompanied the choir, and transported the congregation into an unreal world, ethereal and sensuous. A Venetian newspaper commented in 1707 that at Christmas the choir "sang pastorals like angels, the voices echoed so well around the creche that
the listeners felt they were in Bethlehem".
Barbier covers a broad canvas and reading Vivaidi's Venire is like being taken into a painting by Canaletto or Guardi, or the interiors of Tiepolo or Longhi. He writes of the city, its people and music; the canals rang with the song of the gondoliers' barcarolles. He describes the hierarchical divisions of Venetian society, the disorientating time sequence unlike any other city in Europe, the round of ritual feast days and the Carnival. He sets the meagre knowledge of Vivaldi in the context of the time, not only his orchestral repertoire but his sacred music. He takes us to the musical splendour of the private palazzi and the uniqueness of Venice as the 17th-century opera capital of Europe.
This is a sparkling book, sparely but well-illustrated in colour, an ideal Christmas present, spoilt only by poor proof-reading and a disappointing format.