Behind the Musik: Vivaldi’s World

Program

INTERMISSION

Program Notes

By Michael Unterman

The theme of Vivaldi’s World could easily spin off from one concert into a ten(-or-more)-part mini-series. Four or five episodes would delve into the vibrant musical community Antonio Vivaldi helped foster at the Ospedale della Pietà; a few more to cover his well-travelled operas and international fame; the music of his teachers and influences could fill another episode or two; and we would need at least one more to cover the numerous contemporaneous homages and transcriptions, from Germany (notably those of J.S. Bach) to England and even to France, where Italian music had long been considered taboo. This concert, then, would be our pilot, where we’ll tease out a few of these threads and hopefully spur you to clamour for more!

We set the scene from a broader context: the Italian music craze that swept across Europe around the turn of the 18^th century. The Grand Tour may have been a foundation of this trend, where young nobles and well-to-dos would travel for months to years across Europe to be steeped in Italian culture, a highlight of which was invariably witnessing performances by the likes of Vivaldi or Corelli. Italian music was also being published and widely disseminated, when it wasn’t the musicians themselves being exported, enticed to take positions and explore opportunities across Europe (as all the Italian composers on this program did to some degree). 

The Italian style was also wholeheartedly adopted by foreign composers such as Handel, and in the case of the Dutch composer Johan Hendrik van Weissenburg it even inspired the Italianate pseudonym: Henricus Albicastro. Due in part to this double identity, the details of his life are sketchy. He may have led an ensemble at the University of Leiden and may have worked in the music publishing business with Francis Barbry, who specialized in the music of Italian composers. Within a relatively short time span, from 1701–1706, Alicastro’s nine opuses of twelve works each were published, a period of intense activity that was abruptly curtailed around the same time that Johan Hendrik was named a captain in the Dutch Cavalry against the backdrop of the War of Spanish Succession.

The Italian style of baroque instrumental music is perhaps best described as drawing its inspiration from the parallel Italian innovation of opera: dramatic contrasts, music evoking setting and action, and lyrical movements reminiscent of arias. Albicastro’s Concerto à 4 in C Minor models this perfectly: a slow and moody opening, a jagged and unpredictable second movement, a third that could be a transcribed aria, and a fourth characterized by sharp dynamic contrasts.

From this Dutch homage, we move to the real deal: a concerto written for our protagonist’s musical home, the Ospedale de la Pietà. The Ospedale was a wide-ranging charity: a true hospital providing medical care, as well as a boarding school and orphanage, primarily for girls. The Ospedale’s orchestra was made up of both young and adult women who had come through the orphanage and school, many becoming star performers and composers in their own rights, and all adding up to a powerhouse ensemble that drew large audiences, helping to fund the Ospedale’s work.

At the helm of the orchestra was Vivaldi, his Concerto for 2 oboes in D Minor clearly reflecting a tight-knit ensemble. In the mysterious and subtly tense Largo, the upper voices all move as a unit, with no obvious soloist emerging—that tension then breaking into an urgent Allegro where the two oboe soloists come to the fore, tackling the crisis at hand as a duo in lock step. The following Largo is a long-braided intertwining, with each soloist expanding on the gestures of the other. The final Allegro molto is then a brilliant juxtaposition of all three modes: moving swiftly from unison to parallel to braided motion as the soloists and ensemble attack the gauntlet head on.

The Concerto “Grosso Mogul” points to a side of Vivaldi’s career that is often overlooked: that of his international renown. The title itself is an interesting mystery. Only one anonymous manuscript source calls it by this name and it was discovered in Germany, not Italy. This points to the possibility that it was performed as an entr’acte in productions of Vivaldi’s opera Argippo, which was mounted in both Vienna and Prague in 1730. The opera is set in the Mughal Empire (centred in present-day India) and was originally entitled Il gran Mogul, or The Great Mughal. The misspelling “Mogol” and the misuse of the word “grosso” (meaning big or large, instead of “gran” meaning great) point to something of a bootleg copy, hastily made by a non-Italian speaker. (An earlier handwritten copy of the concerto also found its way into the hands of J.S. Bach, who transcribed the concerto for solo organ—BWV 594 for those keeping score.)