And his time Instruments 'Antonio Vivaldi and his time' GREAT ITALIAN VIOLINMAKING San Vidal Church More likely founded around 1084, under the Doge Vitale Falier, and dedicated to his patron saint, this church was reconstructed for the first time during the XII century. Hear Antonio Vivaldi’s magnificent ‘Four Seasons’ performed by Venice’s acclaimed I Musici Veneziani. The 1.5-hour show will whisk you back to 18th-century Venice, with performers dressed in traditional Venetian costumes and a spectacular setting in the exclusive Salone Capitolare at.
The Ospedale della Pietà was a convent, orphanage, and music school in Venice. Like other Venetian ospedali, the Pietà was first established as a hospice for the needy. A group of Venetian nuns, called the Consorelle di Santa Maria dell’Umiltà, established this charitable institution for orphans and abandoned girls in the fourteenth century. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Pietà - along with the three other charitable Ospedali Grandi - was well known for its all-female musical ensembles that attracted tourists and patrons from around Europe.
Locanda Vivaldi is a small boutique hotel facing the lagoon, just few steps from Saint Mark's Square. The location is just perfect, the view from the rooms and the rooftop terrace is simply amazing. The atmosphere of the hotel is intimate, we are the right choice for a romantic escape to Venice!
Vivaldi Four Seasons
Musical activity[edit]
Infants could be left at the Pietà via the scaffetta, a window only large enough to admit infants. Not all infants were female, nor were they necessarily orphans. Through the seventeenth century all four of the surviving ospedali gained increasing attention through the performances of sacred music by their female musicians, known as figlie di coro. Formal rules for the training of figlie were carefully drafted and periodically revised.[1] Many of these concerts were given for select audiences consisting of important visitors. The audience was separated from the performers by a metal grill, probably to hide the disfiguration of the girls. As the institution became celebrated, it sometimes received infants related (not always legitimately) to members of the nobility. In the later decades of the Venetian Republic, which collapsed in 1797, it also accepted adolescent music students - called figlie di spese - whose fees were paid by sponsoring foreign courts or dignitaries.[2]
The Pietà produced many virtuose like Chiara della Pietà and at least two composers – Anna Bon and Vincenta Da Ponte. The life of successful figlie was much coveted. Some were given lavish gifts by admirers, and many were offered periods of vacation in villas on the Italian mainland. Most remained there their entire lives, though as the Venetian economy declined in the eighteenth century, some left to make (usually advantageous) marriages. In this instance, the institution provided a future bride with a small dowry.
- Antonio Vivaldi – Life and Legacy. Vivaldi was an Italian baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher and Catholic priest. Born Antonio Lucio Vivaldi in Venice on the 4th March 1678, he is recognised as one of the greatest baroque composers and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe.
- Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice in 1678 and since he was a child he began to study the violin pushed by his father who, despite being a barber, was also a violinist in the orchestra of the Basilica of San Marco. Later he was probably a pupil of the greatest masters of the time, even if there is no certain information on the matter.
Each Ospedali Grandi usually had an orchestra of at least thirty to forty elements, all females (La Pietà's orchestra counted up to sixty) and competed with each other by hiring the best musicians in the city, promoting high quality concerts, and through such activities provided countless commissions for violin and other instruments makers to provide for the maintenance and repair of such instruments. These artisans were named 'liuter del loco'.The office of 'liuter del loco' guaranteed a constant flow of income: curating the instruments of an entire orchestra was a burdensome activity which required the work of more than one person; instruments had to be picked up, continuously repaired because of breakage and ungluing from use, and sometimes instruments had to be built. The responsible violin maker also had to supply strings for the entire orchestra, keep an accounting book detailing all operations, and issue semi-annual or annual invoices. These invoices, or ‘policies’ as they were called at the time, were handwritten by the appointed violin maker and had to be approved by the 'maestre del coro' or the maestro di cappella – who would usually be granted a discount – before being paid by the hospital administration. These ‘policies’ are not only a precious source of information for the study of an author (luthier) and his work, but they are also a valid tool to gather more information on the musical practice of the 'sonadori' (players) of the time. There is also much information that can be gleaned from their organological study. For a reading of some of the most interesting invoices, we refer to the appendix of Pio[3] book where some of them (the author has found and catalogued more than 110, totaling 400 pages) are listed in chronological order and cover the years from 1750 to 1810.
The composer Antonio Vivaldi was appointed a violin teacher in 1703 and served in various roles through 1715, and again from 1723 to 1740. Much of Vivaldi's sacred vocal and instrumental music was written for performance at the Pietà.[4]The conservatory of the Pietà hospital was the only hospital to remain active until approximately 1830. All the other hospitals completely closed their musical activity during the first years of the nineteenth century. From an instrument inventory[5] dated 1790 we learn that during that year the Pietà hospital had still “four violins with used bows, four cellos, seventeen violins, two marine trumpets (these may have been violini in tromba marina),[6] six small violas, two viola d’amore, two mandolines, two lutes, one theorbo, four hunting horns with accessories, two psalteries with harmonic box, two cymbals, three flutes, two big cymbals with spinets, six spinets.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's account of 1770 conveys his impressions but has been over-generalized as a description of the institution over an entire century. After describing how the performers were hidden behind metal grilles, he related in his Confessions (1770):
I have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music; the richness of the art, the exquisite taste of the vocal part, the excellence of the voices, the justness of the execution, everything in these delightful concerts concurs to produce an impression which certainly is not the mode, but from which I am of opinion no heart is secure.
He goes on to describe meeting the musicians.[7]
The original building (shown above) is currently a hotel-restaurant complex (the Metropole). The nearby church of the Pietà was completed in 1761, two decades after the death of Antonio Vivaldi. The facade of the church was only completed in the early 20th century. An early childhood education center is still housed in the rear of the building complex behind the church. Most of this complex was donated to the Ospedale in the 1720s, enabling it to expand its activities. Some of Vivaldi's premiere pupils, such as Anna Maria del Violino, were given individual rooms in these newly acquired buildings. It is possible that in the salon of one of them the famous concert for 'i conti del Nord', celebrated in a painting by Francesco Guardi,[8] took place on January 22, 1782.[citation needed] Guardi's painting is mistitled[citation needed] 'The Dinner and Ball in the Teatro San Benedetto'.
Musicians who studied in the Ospedale[edit]
Composers who held posts at the Ospedale della Pietà[edit]
References in Fiction[edit]
Vivaldi Classical Music
- Vivaldi's Virgins, first published in 2007 and translated into 12 languages, is a novel by Barbara Quick set in the Ospedale della Pietà during the lifetime of Anna Maria della Pietà, one of Vivaldi's favorite students there. The novel was released as an audio title in December 2019.
- The Ospedale della Pieta is the main setting of Rosalind Laker's [pen name of Barbara Ovstedal] The Venetian Mask (1992)
- Corona, L. The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice. is a romanticized history of the women who were abandoned and studied in the Ospedale della Pietà.
References[edit]
- ^Baldauf-Berdes, Jane (1993). Women Musicians of Venice: Musical Foundations, 1525-1855. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- ^Porta, Giovanni (1 January 1995). Selected sacred music from the Ospedale della Pietà. A-R Editions, Inc. pp. 7–8. ISBN978-0-89579-318-8.
- ^Stefano Pio book pp.322 – 403
- ^Heller, Karl (1997). Antonio Vivaldi: The Red Priest of Venice. Hal Leonard Corporation. pp. 51–54. ISBN978-1-57467-015-8.
- ^Pio Stefano book
- ^Chandler, Adrian; Recreating Vivaldi's violino in tromba marina; The Strad, 15 April 2015: https://www.thestrad.com/recreating-vivaldis-violino-in-tromba-marina/4526.article Retrieved 1 March 2021
- ^'Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Wikiquote'. en.wikiquote.org. Retrieved 2016-12-15.
- ^'Francesco Guardi (1712-1793)'. Retrieved 2016-12-15.
Bibliography[edit]
- Jane L. Baldauf-Berdes: Women Musicians of Venice. Musical Foundations, 1525–1855. Rev. ed. Oxford 1996; ISBN0-19-816604-4
- Fernyhough, Clare (12 February 2006). 'Revealed: Vivaldi's life with a whole orchestra of women'. Independent on Sunday (UK national title). p. 32. Retrieved 19 September 2010.
- André Romijn. Hidden Harmonies: The Secret Life of Antonio Vivaldi (2008); ISBN978-0-9554100-1-7
- Eleanor Selfridge-Field. A New Chronology of Venetian Opera and Related Genres, 1660–1760 (2007); ISBN978-0-8047-4437-9
- E. Selfridge-Field. Venetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi, 3rd rev. edn., 1994; ISBN0-486-28151-5
- E. Selfridge-Field. Pallade Veneta: Writings on Music in Venetian Society, 1650–1750. Venice (1985); ISBN9788875520069
- Vivaldi's Violins: the Accounts of Ospedale della Pietà; retrieved 20 February 2006; archived from the original on 2006-12-05.
- Vanessa Tonelli. 'Women and music in the Venetian Ospedali.' Thesis. Michigan State University 2013.
External links[edit]
- 45°26′03″N12°20′41″E / 45.4341°N 12.3446°ECoordinates: 45°26′03″N12°20′41″E / 45.4341°N 12.3446°E
All music lovers always connect the city of Venice with the famous composer Antonio Vivaldi.
The great composer of Baroque music was indeed born in Venice and lived and worked here most of his life. But those who visit Venice, looking for evidence of him becoming one of the greatest violinists of all time, will probably be disappointed, because in addition to having little information about his life, little is left in his city.
But we know that little Antonio was baptized in the beautiful Gothic church of San Giovanni in Bragora, the parish of his family, in May 1678.
In fact, in this wonderful church there is a plaque dedicated to him next to the baptismal font. We do not know however, which was his house, but we can imagine a child and adolescent in St Mark's Basilica with his father, who was a violinist.
Ten years after his mother introduced him to an ecclesiastical career and Antonio went to study theology in the church of San Geminianus, in front of St Mark's Basilica, the jewel of the Renaissance destroyed by Napoleon.
In 1703 he was ordained a priest in the church of San Giovanni in Oleo which was also destroyed in the 800s.
Venice Vivaldi Concert
He worked as a violin teacher in the Pietà Church from 1703 to 1720, but the current church overlooking the Riva degli Schiavoni is not the one known by Vivaldi, because the building was rebuilt in neoclassical style in 1740.
Antonio Vivaldi also worked as a theatre manager in the famous Sant'Angelo Theatre and it is where he wrote his most famous works. The theatre, which overlooked the Grand Canal, was destroyed in 1804 and replaced by a hotel.
Venice Vivaldi Church
Around 1730s he left Venice never to return, and died a poor and forgotten man in Vienna and buried in a mass grave with no tombstone.