Antonio Vivaldi: The Red Priest

I've decided to quit apologizing for the long breaks between posts, as the frequency with which I post an article is about as often as I get a good night's sleep and have a day to sit back and figure out where the heck I am and what the heck I'm doing! That said, finals are bested, the Fall 2014 final grades are in (at least the ones that matter), and I'm flying high for Christmas break. What better time to write about one of the most fascinating Italian Baroque composers, whose music seems to be heard more often at the holiday times anyway. After all, he did write a whole concerto about Winter.

Antonio Vivaldi was a later Baroque composer, born in 1678 to a humble family in Venice. Whether due to the fact that he was a sickly baby, or the fact that there was an unsettling earthquake the day of his birth, the newborn Antonio was baptized immediately and dedicated to the priesthood in the off chance that he survived to adulthood. As a child, he studied violin and composition from his father as well as from the music director at St. Mark's in Venice.

Despite his obvious musical talent, his infant vows were kept, and after 10 years of study, Vivaldi was ordained as a priest in 1703, at the age of 25. He was much more interested in his music than his priestly duties however, and used his continuing poor health (likely severe asthma, based on the symptoms he described in his correspondence) as a bonafide reason to be granted an exemption from performing mass, and other expected activities for a newly ordained priest. However, Vivaldi did not expect to give up public service completely. Shortly after his entry into the priesthood, he became the violin instructor at the Ospedale della Pieta, an "orphanage" for, in most cases, the illegitimate daughters of noblemen, who were unwilling to acknowledge their daughters' parentage but were happy to provide the best support and education for them.

Vivaldi, whose red hair inspired the nickname "The Red Priest," worked with the Ospedale for over 30 years, teaching general music and strings, as well as composing much of the repertoire that the girls played. Later on, he was appointed music director for the entire program. Under his tutelage, the orphanage's orchestra and choir earned international acclaim. This employment justifies the complaint that I have occasionally heard about Vivaldi's work--it's at times very note-y, and seems to play like a technical etude. Well, that's what many of his concertos were. They were written as part of his curriculum for training his young violin students, and often intended as nothing but passage work etudes. The fact that he was able to write etudes which stand alone as respectable solo works is in and of itself a tribute to Vivaldi's genius.

Some of the characteristics of Vivaldi's concertos--the most famous of which by far are the four violin concertos which make up the Four Seasons--are indeed the technical passage work, the abundance of harmonic sequences (most likely included as part of the girls' music theory education), and a descriptive style reminiscent of word painting techniques of early Italian madrigals. These concertos became widely popular throughout Europe and inspired many transcriptions and arrangements.

Although he maintained his position with the orphanage, later in life Vivaldi began to travel more and also gained success in the opera scene, a portion of his work which many musicians today are unfamiliar with. By the end of his career he had published somewhere between 50 and 100 operas, many of which are lost today. Despite his religious training, Vivaldi actually had issues getting some of his works past the censor boards, because of librettos which included cross-dressing and homosexual relationships.

Because of his work with the orphanage, Vivaldi managed to avoid being locked into the patronage system so common in the Baroque period. However, a great part of his income was generated through commission work for private individuals as well as performing for audiences as prestigious as the Pope. As a priest, he never married, although he maintained a close friendship and suspected romantic relationship with a young singer, Anna Giro. Vivaldi protested whenever insinuations were made, and there is really no evidence for or against a liaison between the two.

Antonio Vivaldi, circa 1725

In 1740, the 62 year old composer left Venice permanently with the intent of taking up residence in Vienna, Austria, most likely to work in the court of Emperor Charles VI. who had expressed great interest in his work. Unfortunately, the emperor passed away and Vivaldi had no source of income in the new city. Ill health prevented him from becoming active in the music scene of Vienna, and in the summer of 1741, Antonio Vivaldi passed away and was was given a pauper's funeral without any music.

Much of his fame was forgotten in the following years, and it wasn't until the efforts of performer/composer Fritz Kreisler in the early 1900s that interest in Vivaldi's music was revived. Over 600 of his works have been cataloged, and as of ten years ago, more were still being discovered. Conversely, only 3 portraits of the composer have survived.

Update: From the Eyes of College

Hello, and for all of those who have been checking on the page daily thank you so much! I have had a few of you email me about when the next episode will be up and my answer is... I don't know! I am working hard in college and I haven't been having much free time in school or outside of it, but I have a few ideas for you guys and I want all of you to give me your opinions! Here is what I was thinking... What if I created a big "fan supported music demonstration" sort of set that anyone can submit to. Say you wrote out a full song, or just a simple little melody it doesn't matter. Just submit it to me and I will put a link to it in the blog and have it shared. I had one person already submit me something and I will have it on here soon. It is a song for a starting out strings class and has a very driven feel to it that I like a lot. So, if you have any kind of song that you wrote and want advertised on here, then send it to my email and all of your responses to my question. If we get 200 responses, I will post something I've been writting on the side on here for you guys to review for me! So start sending those replies in, and use the header as "From The Eyes Of College" so I can tell why I am being flooded! Thanks, and keep checking in!

How to Practice Episode 3 - Don't get frustrated

Hello, and welcome back! Sorry for the delay but between getting ready for college, graduation, and the simple uncanny timing of life's messages has put me back a bit!

Now, on to the lesson: Not getting frustrated from practicing and not getting results. I know how hard that is, practicing the Haydn Cello Concerto No. 1 for the past month and still can't play a simple line that shouldn't take more than one or two times through to be able to preform. There are just some things in life that will get you down, and you must put effort to keep going through them and continue to practice them. Always remember the music is nothing more than ink on a piece of paper, or pixels on a screen. If you keep putting effort towards the song and continue to work on it constructively then you will see progress. Here are some examples of breaking a piece down:

If you notice that the piece is getting higher than the range you know how to play is, then practice a scale that resembles that phrase, or find a scale that gets you to go that high. In my previous statement of the Haydn Cello Concerto No. 1, I have problems with the highest part of the song that seems unapproachable. However, when you break the phrase down into it's fundamental level it is nothing more than a G major scale so I practice a G major scale in 3 octaves, focusing most of my effort on the last octave in tune and getting vibrato on the notes. Start off slowly, then build yourself up to the speed of the piece.

If you notice that there is a rhythm that you can't seem to play, then use "tick" marks, or a / above each beat, or subdivided beat. This one can explained to cellist, using the Haydn, with the whole thumb position phrase that is heard multiple times throughout the piece. If you write in those marks above the 8th note beat (the song is slow, and is normally conducted in 8 instead of 4), then it will help to count the piece/ Once you write in the notes then work slowly counting by clapping the beat out loud with a recording or your teacher play the phrase.

If you don't feel like you are remembering the dynamics enough, or your director says you aren't playing them enough then take the song and look for all the crescendos and decrescendos and use a "hot" color (red, orange or yellow) to indicate the crescendos and a "cool" color (green, blue or purple) to indicate the decrescendos. Experts have proven that colors pop out at you subcontiously and you will be reminded to play them. My only suggestion is not to do this on originals.

How to Practice: Episode 2 - Using YouTube and Recordings

Welcome Bach everyone! Today's tip of the day is on how to use YouTube and other forms of recording to your advantage. Teachers will not normally agree with this tip because watching the video too many times may go against what he or she is trying to teach. For example, search "Bach Cello Suite No. 1 Prelude" and look at how many results you get. Think about how many variants there are in each performance, because no two people will play it the exact same. However if you use this the way I believe is the best way to do, you will increase efficiency in your practicing.

YouTube has now become a world wide business for almost anything you want to see. You can go on there and search for videos on the "Traxxas Rustler" and find several thousand videos (When searched on 5/23/12, I found 13,900!), and as stated above if you search for "Bach Cello Suite No. 1 Prelude" you will find a large number of people preforming it (On 5/23/12 there was 4,720). Keywords does make a difference, however that's a topic for the end of the lesson. Anyways, as I said, when you search for Bach's Prelude from Suite No. 1, you see there are almost 5,000 performances of that song alone, and rarely does the same video get re-posted, so the overall possibilities are varied greatly. One person could begin with the first phrase (the phrase almost everyone recognizes when someone starts playing) very well, but make a small mistake in the second phrase. Then take another video and that person might play it very well throughout, but not stick to the stylistics perfectly throughout. There are many possible differences, and that is the 1st reason why this is a good way to practice: Find a couple recordings that suit either how you imagine the piece to sound or how your teacher thinks it should sound and begin listening to them constantly.

The more you listen to a piece, the more familiar you feel when you see the sheet music. Just picking up the sheet music, you can see how "insane" it looks, or how much of a push in mental and physical level that the piece will push you but unless you already know the piece the sheet music will look a little foreign. It's like when you go to a new school: You can see from the outside of the building that there are few classes, or many classes in the building. You can also tell when you get inside the same thing, but you see more than you did before, but until you actually walk around the school and see for yourself where everything is and know where you should be, the place is pretty much foreign territory to you. The same applies to music. You hear Prelude and you hear that there is a lot going on, but the melody is pretty straight forward. When you get the sheet music however, you see that there is a whole lot more to the sheet music than you anticipated (most people don't know that the piece is almost entirely 16th notes). But just from hearing you know that it is fairly simple to learn.

Another advantage of this tip is when you see some people playing the music, it helps develop fingerings and articulations you may or may not have thought about using before. For example, watch someone preform the Haydn Cello Concerto No. 1, and see how many possible fingerings there are for some of the actual performance. Same rule applies to articulations, if someone wasn't aware that Haydn was from the Classical time period and thought he was from the Baroque era, the articulations of his music would be entirely different. However, by listening to the music you can tell that he wasn't from the Baroque era.

Remember that this is no substitute for practicing, this is simply a tool to make practicing easier, and more efficient.