Vivaldi and Tartini
The virtuoso violinists of eighteenth-century Italy cut dashing figures. Their dazzling performances were sought after by opera houses, cathedrals, the leading courts and scholarly academies. Giuseppe Tartini was known both for his music and also as a fencer who was well nigh unbeatable. Meanwhile Antonio Vivaldi exuded a furious energy, whether in the speed at which he composed or in the pyrotechnics of his playing.
There was something of both the gipsy and the magician in these virtuosos. The violin was associated with pedlars and other itinerants, being sufficiently simple to be played by men of the streets. Yet from this simple wooden box and its gut strings, Tartini or Vivaldi could produce near-magical sounds. They could imitate the human voice or conjure up a fugue from the four strings. So intricate was their technique that it could even be attributed to the devil. Tartini claimed that he transcribed his Devil’s Trill sonata from a piece that Old Nick had played him in a dream.
Despite these satanic connotations, both Tartini and Vivaldi spent their lives as servants of the church. Vivaldi was an ordained priest but rapidly discovered that violin-playing was more lucrative than saying the Mass. Tartini’s parents wanted him to take holy orders, but he rebelled and fled to a monastery where he practised his playing for three years in stubborn isolation. Later he worked at the basilica of San Antonio in Padua, as the leader of its orchestra.
Both men were famed as teachers. At Padua, Tartini established a ‘School of Nations’ that attracted aspiring soloists from across Europe. His lessons emphasised the techniques of bowing needed to draw cantabile lines or crisp articulation from the strings. Many pupils took his precepts back to their native lands or beyond. At least one disciple came to England: Pieter Hellendaal was organist at St Margaret’s Church in King’s Lynn before moving to Cambridge where he lived on Trumpington Street and was buried in Little St Mary’s Church.
Vivaldi, by contrast, taught at the Ospedale della Pietà, a foundation for orphaned and illegitimate girls in Venice. Music was regarded as a valuable skill for the foundlings, enabling them to make their own living in the city’s opera houses and allowing the orphanage to earn prestige and attract bequests with its impressive orchestra. Performances at the Pietà were among the chief attractions of Venice for foreign visitors. Part of the allure was that the ensemble performed behind grilles to protect the modesty of its girls, leaving the imagination of male listeners to run riot. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau said: ‘I can think of nothing as voluptuous or as moving as this music. What grieved me were those accursed grilles, which allowed only tones to come through and concealed the angels of loveliness of whom they were worthy.’ All the same, a few of the girls managed to become known beyond the Pietà’s walls, including Signora Anna Maria who was celebrated as one of the best violinists in Europe.
Perhaps it was the need to engage listeners on the other side of a screen that led Vivaldi to develop his trademark style of visceral rhythms and driving harmonies. In the Concerto in C major for strings RV114 that opens tonight’s concert, the first movement is swept forward by the pervasive dotted rhythms that push on through remote keys. The finale is a Ciaccona, where a chain of catchy harmonies is repeated under a sparky duet between the two violins; there is also a ‘minore’ section, where the bass is reworked as a lament, before C major returns amid jubilant virtuosity. Equally vivid is the Concerto in D minor for strings RV127. In both of the outer movements, the first violin part is a stream of furious semiquavers, never ceasing except for brief flashes of unison writing.
More expansive are Vivaldi’s concertos for solo violin. Here the fast movements often see the soloist rocketing away in excited figuration, while the slow movements are tranquil pools of sound that harbour dreamy melodies. The Concerto in F major ‘Per la solennita di San Lorenzo’ RV286 exemplifies this more spacious manner. In the fast movements, Vivaldi often introduces flattened or minor-key harmonies that seem to impede the forward motion, yet have the end result of pushing the music more strongly to its home-key. As the concerto’s title indicates, it was performed on 10 August for the Feast of St Lawrence Martyr, possibly during a service at the Pietà. One manuscript bears a reference to the famed Anna Maria of the Pietà, the girl whose string-playing rivalled that of the best violinists of Europe; perhaps this was one of the 31 concertos that Vivaldi wrote expressly for her.
Yet more solo ebullience occurs in the Concerto in D major for violin ‘Il Grosso Mogul’ RV208. The first movement opens on a large scale, with upward-racing salutes that are later interrupted by minor-key sighs. The soloist then becomes increasingly domineering, with long stretches of double-stopping that culminate in a cadenza. The slow movement is unique: an extended solo roulade with the continuo as the only accompaniment, similar to a recitative but with lavish adornment. The concerto’s nickname of ‘Grosso Mogul’ is obscure; it is unlikely there was a personal connection with the Emperor of Delhi, but perhaps the name referred to the piece’s sumptuousness or to Venice’s links with the Far East. Certainly it was a popular concerto in northern Europe, where many copies circulated and where Johann Sebastian Bach made an arrangement for organ.
Tartini’s concertos are every bit as virtuosic at Vivaldi’s but the end result is less fiery; instead the soloist’s dexterity is subordinated to a pervasive melodiousness. The style can already be heard in the Concerto in A major for violin D96 which ends the first half of tonight’s programme. In the fast movements the figuration is divided into clear phrases, aerating the texture and giving spaces for breath. The solo line tends to move by step rather than leap; the figuration is not unlike a singer’s ornaments in an early Classical aria. Most unusually, the concerto has two slow movements, ending with a Largo andante that bears the motto, ‘Flow bitter tears... until my bitter anguish is consumed’.
Still more lyrical is Tartini’s Concerto in D minor for violin D45. Here the figuration has been stripped away to leave simple, etched tunes. The first movement, for instance, opens with a stark theme split into short phrases. The texture is airy and the soloist is frequently accompanied by nothing more than the other violins. The finale, too, is characterised by a dance-like theme of such simplicity that it could almost be a folk tune.
As Tartini moved towards this cantabile style, he also developed theories that viewed the human voice as the source of musical perfection. In an early manifestation of the aesthetics of the Enlightenment, he declared that: ‘I am as home as much as I can be with Nature, and as little as possible with Art, having no Art but the imitation of Nature’. And what could be more natural than the imitation of the human voice? His concertos undoubtedly strive towards a vocal ideal; some, such as that extraordinary slow finale of the A major concerto, even bear poetic mottos, as if to compensate for the lack of words. Tartini also preferred to use a longer bow, the better to draw out his cantabile melodies. In exploring the violin’s power to sing, Tartini moved away from Vivaldi’s legacy of urgent figuration; both men wrote equally spellbinding music, but in completely different ways.