Vivaldi or Not Vivaldi – Is That the Question?

The rush to trumpet a recently unearthed Venetian serenata as the creation of famed composer Antonio Vivaldi has provoked a small fracas within the early music community. Some claim that it is, others that it isn’t (though one aria, “Sovvente il sole,” is indisputably Vivaldi, since it can be found elsewhere in his output). The flare-up has at least provided some marketable intrigue for the Venice Baroque Orchestra, which, after having recorded the serenata, “Andromeda liberata” (Andromeda delivered), for Deutsche Grammophon’s Archiv label, will perform it at Zankel Hall tonight.In fact, while the music is quite beautiful, it’s doubtful that this 275-year-old piece would have gotten much attention had it not been for the contentious attribution. The appellation “new” in this case is hardly a bombshell. “Andromeda liberata” may be a “discovery” – French musicologist and dancer Olivier Foures certainly believed so when he recognized the Vivaldi aria in an anonymous manuscript that resided in the archive of the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello in Venice. Yet, practically any early 18th-century serenata – recently dusted off or long available – would be a “discovery” for most New York audiences.What’s unfortunate is that the attention paid to historical conjectures distracts from the music itself. As the late writer John Gardner pointed out, such concerns separate us from the real experience of art – turning Turner into an important painter when viewed as an early Impressionist, for example, but an unimportant one when regarded as a late neoclassicist. The real value lies in Turner, not the labels applied to him. And so with the serenata, a graceful and exuberant work for five solo singers, a chorus, and trumpets, French horns, oboes, strings, and continuo.Serenatas are dramatic cantatas (the name derives from sereno, or “clear night sky,” because they were often performed outdoors at night) that were used as two-act courtly entertainments. They are most often allegorical, and very Venetian. The present work is a musical rendering of the story of Andromeda who, given as a sacrifice to appease an angry Poseidon, is saved by a love-struck Perseus. We are told by Foures that at the original performance, Perseus represented Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, who had just returned home after 14 years of political banishment, and that Andromeda represented his beloved Venice.One thing this controversy demonstrates is that Vivaldi’s reputation is on the rise. It was not so long ago that composer Igor Stravinsky remarked (some attribute the comment to his contemporary, Luigi Dallapiccola) that the prolific Vivaldi had not composed 500 concertos, but one concerto 500 times. I’ve since heard many other composers restate it. And though he was one of the most important musicians of his day – a big influence, for example, on J.S. Bach, who made his own arrangements of nine of Vivaldi’s concertos while he was court organist and music director in Weimar – such gripes could be heard even then.At that time he was often recognized more as a violin virtuoso. Quantz, among others, complained that too much of Vivaldi’s composing was merely routine. (It didn’t help matters that he boasted that he could compose a concerto more quickly than it could be copied.) Yet as master of violin and music director at the Pio Ospedale della Pieta, a Venetian institution for the care of orphaned and abandoned children, which specialized in the training of girls who showed musical aptitude, Vivaldi had to produce a tremendous amount of material. Some of it was bound to be less than inspired.“Everybody knows ‘The Four Seasons,'” explains the Venice Baroque Orchestra’s music director, Andrea Marcon, “but he has many other aspects. It is only in the last year that his vocal music is becoming known to the public. It was incredible to discover that some of his best violin concertos were not known before our recordings.”A distinction can be made between works written at different times in the composer’s life, and for different purposes. “Much of his output is quite strong and different from what is well known, especially the pieces he wrote in the last years of his life when he was no longer publishing and felt much freer to do whatever he wanted.”Happily, these days, we are exposed more and more to that part of his repertoire that shines. Just listen to Patrizia Ciofi sing “Sit nomen Domini” with Fabio Biondi’s Europa Galante from Vivaldi’s “Laudate pueri Dominum” on Virgin Classics: it’s difficult to find music more breathtakingly beautiful. The Venice Baroque Orchestra has played a big role in bringing Vivaldi to the public, with previous recordings on the Sony Classical label of “The Four Seasons” and a variety of violin concertos. “Andromeda Liberata” (which is labeled by Archiv as by “Vivaldi and others”) is only their latest foray into the heart of the early Baroque.Mr. Marcon said that the role of the performer in Vivaldi and his contemporaries is crucial to the music. “Perhaps,” he proposes, “those modern composers who disparaged his music were not able to understand the interpretive sensibilities that are needed to perform it. Take away the freedom of the soloist, and he sounds like a poor composer. Italian music of the Baroque is very much in the hands of the players. If you play Bach on a computer it can sound interesting, but the music of Vivaldi is made with other parameters in mind – the interpreter is fundamental.”Mr. Marcon said for this reason he tries to collaborate with the same musicians and soloists all the time. “After all, this is what Vivaldi did with the orchestra of the Pieta, teaching the same students year after year. The music will sound special when it comes from the heart of everyone in the orchestra in a natural way, and it takes time to develop that way of thinking and playing.”According to Eleanor Selfridge-Field, a professor of music at Stanford University who specializes in Venetian music, the work’s recent performance in Venice itself was musically wonderful. It sounded to her like Vivaldi, but also like Albinoni and several other composers of the time. It will be splendid to hear this music in the intimate confines of Zankel Hall.But I can’t help thinking about the fact that musicians performing serenatas were occasionally placed on gondolas, with the audience situated on land: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a staging at the Central Park boat basin?Venice Baroque Orchestra will perform at Zankel Hall tonight at 7:30 p.m. (Carnegie Hall, 212-903-9600).

Vivaldi or Not Vivaldi – Is That the Question?

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