Vivaldi was born in Venice just three years after? amp; H and was lucky enough to have a rather musical dad - a fiddler at St Mark's. At the age of fifteen he entered the priesthood, and was ordained fully some ten years later. The combination of his holy orders and his mop of Chris Evans ginger hair led to him being nicknamed Hlprete rosso\ the red priest, although having a special dispensation that allowed him not to say Mass, I'm not sure quite how much of a priest he could have been. It's a bit like being a rugby player, but not actually playing any matches. (So, Jonny Wilkinson at the moment, then.) Vivaldi spent most of his professional life as music director of a girls' fi amp;OK, that's not what a piano duel is at all, I know. But it does sound more fun. The real duel saw Handel playing organ and Scarlatti playing keyboard, and each was adjudged to be the best on their respective instruments. «»rphanage in Venice, the Conservatorio dell'Ospedale della Pieta -or, often, the Pieta, for short.
His priesthood was called into question, again, when he was rumoured to be more than just good friends with not just one soprano but two: sisters, Anna and Paolina. Eventually he, too, like Handel, I ravelled all over Europe, but precious little is known about what he got up to. He spent the last couple of years of his life in Vienna, where, sadly, he pulled off the Composer's End No 207 - the so-called 'Death in Poverty' position - perfectly. He was sixty-three. Thankfully, he left behind him some fifty operas and 400 or so concertos (or just one if you agree with Stravinsky), the most well known, now - almost to the point of distraction - being part of Tl cimento dell'Armonia e dell'in-ventione' Opus 8. That is, The Tour Seasons: not just a beautiful series of concertos, but also not a bad hotel and a fine pizza.
THE PACKAGE HOLIDAY
W
ell, it's 1725 already. My word, doesn't time fly when you roll it up and throw it at somebody. 1725. The year of The Tour Seasons. The year that Peter the Great became less so, in that he died. The year that Bach, in a breathtaking display of foresight, wrote the music for a mobile telephone incoming call alert, although he called it the Anna Majjdalena Notebook.
The year the Italian adventurer and author Casanova was born and, very soon, became the next big thing. But where exacdy ARE we? What age is it now? Who's in, who's out, who's up, who's down? And why DO birds suddenly appear every time YOU are near? Well, let me try and answer some of those questions, starting with the easiest first.
It's no longer the age of Wren - Sir Christopher is now a two-year-old tourist attraction in his beloved St Paul's. It is, though, still the age of one of the greatest double acts in science - Isaac ('gravity') Newton and Edmond ('comet') Halley. It is also, arguably, the time of Congreve, the man who put the 'oration' into 'Restoration comedy', with his deft prose and elegant construction.
It was, too, the age of the Grand Tour. Now I could have coped with this. Ever since the delightfully named French painter, Hyacinth Rigaud, had written a sort of eighteenth-century version of the 'rough guide' to the Grand Tour, everyone had been at it. Composers, artists, even Tsars - Peter the Great had tried it before he croaked, under a pseudonym/ Anyhow, with the Grand Tour came the grand tacky souvenir, naturally. In fact, a whole school of artists grew up, the ' volutin? or panoramists, who fulfilled the demand for memories of Italy by positioning themselves in the major tour resorts and coming up with huge, horizontal horizons of Venice and other places. No doubt each one bore the legend lMia Mamma e andata a Veneziana, e tutto questo que mia apportato e questa bruta maglutta?pf Canaletto is the man remembered now for this sort of stuff, although at the time Francesco Guardi was perhaps more popular.
So, if it was the age of the Grand Tour, what music might have beguiled you had you ventured to Italy? Well, one man you might have come across if you'd got the right room with the right view was Albinoni.
SO THE OLD ADAGIO GOES
he Venetian Tomaso Albinoni, despite his many good works, was destined to become not even a one-hit wonder. Like many composers, he would often be working on several pieces at once -whether operas with Metastasio, the Tim Rice of his day, or symphonies, a form in which he was reputed to have been quite a pioneer. Sometimes, he would simply write down an idea, or part of an idea, with maybe only the odd part sketched in, the intention being that he would leave it aside to return to another day. It was one such 'sketch', a mere fragment of manuscript, which the Italian scholar Remo Giazotto found in 1945, lining his wastepaper basket. It had fi That is, 'before he croaked', and 'under a pseudonym'. Not 'before he croaked under a pseudonym', if you understand me? Just wanted to make that clear. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, Tsar Peter never, to the best of my knowledge, croaked under a pseudonym. Good. Glad to clear that up. fi fi Translation: 'My mum went to Venice and all I got was this lousy painting.' only a handful of notes scribbled in on the violin part, and some but not all of the bass part. With a little bit of guesswork and a prevailing wind, he came up with what is now known as 'the Albinoni Adagio' -despite the fact that Albinoni hadn't actually written it.
Being an 'adagio' - the Italian word meaning 'at a slow pace' - it is an unhurried and simple string tune, punctuated by a soft, often reedy organ sound. As a result of its hybrid composition, it is more romantic than most baroque pieces of its type. So when you listen to it next time, think of Albinoni and his sketches; think of Remo Giazotto, going largely unremembered; but most of all, think of Canaletto, painting the sun setting over Venice, the lap, lap, lapping of the weedy canals, the cumbersome clunk of paint-peeling gondolas. Beautiful. Deliquescent. And, before we go any further, let me answer the question I posed earlier, on page 61. Simple. Just like me, they long to be… close to you. There. I think that's covered everything.
DON'T FORGET NATHAN THE PROPHET!
R
ight. Where are Bach and Handel? Well, they're still dominant, to be fair. Bach was coming up with stuff like the St John Passion and the St Matthew Passion - more of which later - whereas Handel, well, he managed the opera Rodelinda (from which we get the gorgeous aria 'Dove sei') and even Zadok the Priest (not forgetting Nathan the Prophet - more on this later too). Each a sort of separate leg of the… compositional Colossus, bestriding the… harbour that is… well, that is music. As it were. OK, needs work. But where is music at, as they would have said in the '70s? Where is it all at? Where is it all jjoingi Well, it's more or less doing what everyone else is doing - it's going on a Grand Tour. Let me try and explain, before you send someone to sit with me.
Here's what I mean. Imagine you are music in general, right? Well, behind you… is home - that is, Church music. Like home, it will always be there, but for now, well… we're off exploring. The journey has already taken in opera, which has reached its first peak and is already on the wane. Its time will come again, but not for years. For now, instrumental music is King, and its kingdom is Italy.
In terms of instrumental music, overtures came first - a band playing as one. Then the band split - two separate sections of the same band, almost like teams, playing against each other. This 'two-team' formation was called the concerto. Then, one of the groups became smaller. So now it's a small bunch of soloists versus the rest of the band - or the concerto grosso - the great concerto.
Try and look at it like this. Imagine each j is a player in the orchestra. In an overture, the orchestra was like this: ffifTiliTtfiittflT tmmwmtm! ififfifflfffTftm All together, see? Then the orchestra split: ttttfttft tftfffttf ttttttttt ttttttttt ttttttttt ttttttttt