Any more 'lost' Vivaldi works coming to light? Just so I know the moment has arrived to shoot myself - I wouldn't like to go early. There was a whole opera or two in the last five years; six or seven minutes of a flute concerto seems small beer.
Just because a work has dropped out of sight for a bit does not mean it's been lost. Lost is when the entire pre-1700s manuscript collection of Italian music is floating down the Arno from the devastated Biblioteca Nazionale in 1966. Lost is when the French are required to bring back from Paris what they had looted from Florence, and dumped the lot, music included, in an untidy heap in the piazza della Signoria and said"Sort it out yourselves", which is why there are some oddly inappropriate works in churches and convents that speak of other orders and disciplines altogether, and the music stands in drifts and piles on floors and shelves in abandoned rooms off cloisters closed to all except the clergy. Get on the right side of the Florentine clergy and discovery is your oyster ( as the Bishop said to the actress).
And that's not to mention what the Russians carted away from Berlin and lesser cultural centres in Germany and distributed in conservatories lost in the wilds of the old USSR. Even the Fitzwilliam has found Handel bound in among undistinguished scuola di portfolios.
Anyway, your latest listening as you hold for whoever you hope to speak to is going to be the new Vivaldi 'find'. Don't be surprised if it sounds very much like all the other Vivaldi you have been forced to listen to.
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Is there much forgery of old music? We've heard of lots of faked paintings, but not of music. Would there be much money in it? Do a few lucky people keep making these 'discoveries'?
I see, lending a deaf ear. I thought you always wanted to know the score...
It's a standard first year conservatoire exercise, Raven, 'Write a piece in the style of Vivaldi', but I can't see anyone doing that sort of thing for public consumption. Rather too hard to convince, wouldn't it be? I may be worn out with vivaldian performances but he was quite something and much too hard an act to follow, if you like that kind of thing.
There's so much stuff lying about uncatalogued in reasonably likely places I would guess it's just a matter of going looking for it; so, no, it's not just a few lucky people, rather people who are persistent and build a career from it. I think there are copyist problems with Vivaldi scores too, so that there are often more than one, looking suitably authentic.
Words fail me, C.
I must say I do not in the least mind a spot of Vivaldi from time to time. However, it would seem that to some folks music is clearly not the food of love...
Lots more 'lost' Vivaldi yet to be unearthed I'm afraid. Unlike Bach, Couperin, Rameau and Handel, who continued to be studied and played in the 19th century, Vivaldi was completely forgotten after he died, and was 'redescovered' only in the early 1930s in Italy. Pieces by Vivaldi are constantly being redescovered and there is a new addition to the Vivaldi catalogue every few months. Some 'discoveries' are important (whole operas), others not (reworkings or early versions of concertos we already know and love).
He wrote 95 operas, 12 survive; scattered arias reappear with increasing regularity. But in any case, he was such a prolific composer that you don't have to look far to find unedited, unperformed and unrecorded material: it's all in Turin, and there's still plenty left which is correctly catalogued and accessible, but nobody has got round to having a look at yet.
To give the 'world premiere' of this incomplete flute concero in Bury St Edmonds says it all.
95 take away 12; goodness, that's a lot of opera-going. Nomad will be pleased.
I don't mind a bit of Vivaldi from time to time either, Nomad, and some of the cantatas are ravishing. It's the discovery industry that is a bit of a pain - more or less on the pain-scale of the 'please hold' waiting music. As our scholar advisor remarks - go to Turin and get some fresh Vivaldi out of the library. No need to rootle about in Scotland and be astonishd that a bit of lost work turns up.
HG: 9 October was my birthday and one of my presents was a magazine containing
........>>>>>>>>>>>>
a free CD of
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Four Seasons !!
..to complete the earlier quote: "..give me excess of it that surfeiting the appetite may sicken and so die.
How appropriate.
Many happy returns, Nomad!
p.s. the Dixit Dominus the article refers to was not 'unearthed' in Dresden, it had been wrongly attributed to Galuppi and was therefore simply catalogued under the wrong author. As soon as the reattribution was made, we 'premiered' the piece at the Leon Festival in Spain as Vivaldi's work. It's offensive to the libraries to keep on saying music has been 'rediscovered' or 'unearthed' when the manuscripts are well cared for and known about and are simply awaiting attribution.
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