Vivaldi's Girls

December 1696 St. Mark's Cathedral, Venice

December 1696

St. Mark's Cathedral, VeniceWe both performed in a Christmas concert at St. Mark's Basilica, the most beautiful cathedral in all of Christendom. I took my position in the fourth row of violinists and felt a nervous excitement in my hands and fingers, waiting in silence until the young maestro Antonio Vivaldi would be announced to quiet applause under the curved arches of this glorious Byzantine church. He was a small figure, a proud youngster who always held his back straight and erect to get the most out of the little stature God had granted him. But whenever he stood to play the violin, Antonio was transformed. He was no longer the struggling youth with thin breaths and short legs. When he played, he was an inspired master who brought sighs from the women and beaming smiles from his family.

There were thirty of us present to play that day. We were all boys; in itself, that was a strange twist. There was a conservatory in Venice; well, a school of music, attached to the orphanage. The prefect of the school didn't waste time teaching music to the boys; they were instructed in the trades. The orphan girls were taught music so not having any girls in this concert in St. Mark's might seem a surprise. But to play in the Cathedral – that was reserved for Venice's boys and, mostly, the boys from the families whose brilliance in trade determined the fate of the city.

I pondered all that from the darkened recess near the back of the orchestra as I saw Antonio enter from the left of the altar. His family was not rich or important. But by this tender age he had already achieved a degree of fame that I had long dreamed would be my life's work. It was his mastery of music that placed there on the altar of St. Mark's for this Christmas concert; I thought it a position reserved for families of note in our city. For a moment, I wanted to trade my fine clothing for his secondhand waistcoat.

The nervousness left my hands as I thought about all that. But the feeling that took its place forced an involuntary tightening of my grip on the neck of the violin and bow.

When Antonio entered, he held his violin delicately in one hand, his arm stiff so as not to swing the instrument. In his other hand he held the bow, which he swung carelessly back and forth in rhythm to the little steps he took on the approach. It was as if while protecting the violin he was insouciantly announcing his arrival with the swaying of the bow and smiling at the audience that he already took for his own.

The conductor followed him onto the low step of the altar and then mounted a small platform so that he could be seen by the musicians arranged in rows around him. I heard the clack-clack of his baton as he rapped it on the stand before him, then he raised his arms for a moment and brought both down in one sweep across his chest.

The ten violins in the third and fourth rows began at once, and the sound of a viola chimed in on the second measure. By the fourth measure the woodwinds had joined in and low notes sang from the oboe. The pace of the bowing increased as the composition stretched into its translation section, and I could hear my breathing increase while I focused with intensity on maintaining the pace. The crescendo tipped the sounds of little orchestra into a sudden dive of silence. Although all movement from the musicians had ceased, the last notes hung like an angelic cloud over the audience, echoing softly from the vault of the dome above us.

The conductor held through this pause with his arms raised above his head. After three beats he brought the baton down with such suddenness that it seemed he would lose his balance. But he had coached us in the weeks leading up to this concert to jump into the next measure as soon as his right arm began its downward swing. By the time the baton hit the bottom of the arc, the strings and woodwinds had raised their voices and were praising Almighty God with the all the strength built into them.

Instead of finishing the composition with whispered notes that trailed off into the assembled crowd, the conductor had chosen a piece that ended with a frenzied boom that reverberated off the walls in the interior of St. Mark's long after we had rested our instruments on our knees.

The concert was a great success and it received a sustained applause uncommon in the hallowed space of a cathedral. I was so enthralled with the music and my responsibilities with it that I had no time to study Antonio. But as the sounds of the melody finally drifted away to reside forevermore in the recesses of stone and mosaic that decorated the walls of this church, I noticed him standing in front of the orchestra, bowing to the applause.

When we had completed our work, I carefully wrapped my violin in soft cloth and nestled it into the velvet-lined case that my father had purchased for me. The sacred instrument had appeared on my bed a year ago but only after much discussion and argument.

“What would you do with it?” he asked me repeatedly before giving in to my pleading.

“I will protect it and learn to play it, with mastery,” I would reply.

On that afternoon in Christmastide, after packing my violin safely away, I walked from the nave into the crisp air of winter, past people who had cheered the performance but who now hardly noticed me as I emerged from the church. I was an anonymous musician from the unseen rows of other anonymous musicians who lined the back of the orchestra on this night.

I slipped quietly past the gaggle of young girls that surrounded the thin young violinist with blazing red hair. He smiled at his coterie and told small stories, the kind of stories that would come to mind for a self-absorbed young man.

I nodded in Antonio's direction. Was it to be civil and acknowledge his presence, or a feeble attempt to draw some of the attention that surrounded him? It would have been better if he had ignored my shy plea for attention.

“Domenico!” he said. “Where have you been? I haven't seen you all night.”

The stinging comment left me more isolated than I had been sitting in the darkened rows of the minor violinists in the church.