3/28/2013

Red Priest

Antonio Vivaldi was born March 4^th, in 1678 in Venice, which was a city-state in the North part of Italy during the time that he was alive. Antonio might have been put in the priesthood against his will. This idea has not been proven. Some people think it makes sense he was put into the priesthood against his will or without really wanting to be a priest. This is because in Antonio’s day training for the priesthood was often the only possible way for a poor family like the Vivaldi family to get free schooling.

            Vivaldi said he suffered from chest pains and that he had trouble saying the Holy mass. This was a serious problem for a priest. Antonio Vivaldi eventually got a job working in the Ospedale della Pietà (this was a home for abandoned children). He worked there from 1703 to 1715 and again a second time from 1723 to 1740. While he worked there, Antonio Vivaldi wrote some works for children to practice their music. While working at this job, Antonio Vivaldi wrote most of his works. He was given the nickname the Red Priest. This name was given to him because he was a redheaded catholic priest.

These Ospedali often had the daughters of noblemen who had a number of mistresses. Despite that, they still called the schools orphanages. The girls perform with the talents that they learned to develop at the orphanage.  While visiting Rome in 1739, the French Magistrate and President of the Parlement de Dijons wrote about his experience in his Lettres familières écrites d'Italie. These were published after his death in 1799. He wrote:

 "the Ospedali have the best music here. There are four of them, all for illegitimate or orphaned girls whose parents cannot support them. These are brought up at the State's expense and trained exclusively in music. Indeed they sing like angels, play the violin, flute, organ, oboe, cello, bassoon... The performances are entirely their own and each concert is composed of about forty girls."

            Vivaldi got more popular after he left his job at the Opsedale. Vivaldi wrote a lot of music including l'Estro armonico (~1710), Ottone in villa (~1713), Juditha Triumphans devicta Holofernis barbaric (1716), Armida, Teuzzone (1719), Tito Manlio (1719) and more. Soon he was travelling all over Italian peninsula and even was invited to play for the Holy Roman emperor, but he died before he got there.

            Vivaldi wrote works on commission from foreign rulers, such as the French king, Louis XV - the erenade La Sena festeggiante (Festival on the Seine), for example. He also performed personally to the Swedish Queen Christina (or the “Palace of the North”) and Pietro Ottoboni.

            Soon Vivaldi returned to the orphanage he once worked at and continued to write and travel here and there. In 1725, he published Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The trial of harmony and invention), opus 8, in Amsterdam. This consisted of twelve concertos, seven of which were descriptive: The Four Seasons, Storm at Sea, Pleasure and The Hunt. The four seasons have four different melodies and he tied poetry to them. This is partly the reason that it has always been so popular. When someone gets tired of one of the season after a couple of years, they can start enjoying a different one. This even affected different time periods in history. For example, in the Baroque era, Spring was very popular and in the romantic era they liked Winter. I personally like winter.

After his stay in Prague, Vivaldi spent his time working mostly on operas. He did not publish any more instrumental music after this time.  However, Vivaldi did keep writing instrumental music but it was only to sell the music manuscripts to private individuals or to the Ospedale della Pietà. After 1735, the  Ospedale della Pietà paid him a fixed honorarium of 100 ducats a year. An honorarium is like a salary given for a service you do that is small enough that it is like a gift. In 1733, Vivaldi met an Englishman who was traveling. His name was Edward Holdsworth.  Mr Holdsworth had been had been commissioned to buy some of Vivaldi's compositions. The man who hired Holdsworth was the English writer Charles Jennens. This is really interesting because Jennens was the author of the texts for oratorios by Handel. What this means is that Handels writer hired someone to buy compositions from Vivaldi. Holdsworth wrote to Jennens:

"I spoke with your friend Vivaldi today. He told me that he had decided to publish no more concertos because otherwise he can no longer sell his handwritten compositions. He earns more with these, he said, and since he charges one guinea per piece, that must be true if he finds a goodly number of buyers."

Venice was at that time in a bad economic downturn. Antonio Vivaldi resigned from the Ospedale in 1740. He was planning to move to Vienna to be under the patronage of his Charles VI. Charles VI was a great admirer of Vivaldi’s and his patronage meant he would cover his expenses and let him work on his music. The very sad part is that his stay in Vienna was shorter than anyone expected including him. You see he died there on July 28th 1741 "of internal fire". He had arrived in 1740 and died in 1741. Antonio Vivaldi, one of the greatest composers ever and the person many people think about when they think of the Baroque era received a humble burial.

Though the “Red Priest's” music was loved during his lifetime, it later became less popular as time went by. Suddenly, in the first half of the 20th century, people started liking him again because things go in and out of style in a way that seems a little bit mysterious. Today, Vivaldi is one of the most famous and easiest to identify of all the famous Baroque composers.

Vivaldi made a very important contribution to music History. There are many composers who are more famous. Even among Baroque musicians, people like Bach or Handel might be more famous or respected as musicians. But when it comes to thinking about Baroque music, Vivaldi almost seems to be the perfect example of the Baroque sound. He is the person whose work most closely seems to fit the word Baroque. That is a wonderful contribution and he made a very important place for himself in history.