Just saw the BBC TV show about Vivaldi's original girls' singing school (see review below) which had been unknown to me before this. Vivaldi is a favourite of mine and I was chuffed to bits to learn that there is so much more than the 4 Seasons! Moreover, I was really pleased to see that history is being remade and that this amazing artistic endeavour is being once again enjoyed. Would LOVE to hear more of this!
When an invitation to ‘Vivaldi’s Women’ arrived in my Inbox shortly before Christmas, it triggered vague memories of being told at school how the ‘red priest’ (Vivaldi was ordained and had red hair) taught in a girls’ school and composed for his pupils. Inspirational though this was at the time, nothing we did at school came anywhere near the concert we heard on Friday night at the Holywell.
And, as with most things one learns at school, the story is much more complex. Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was employed at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, which was an institution rather like the Foundling Hospitals, where children were taken if their families were unable to care for them. About ten per cent of them were considered musical enough to be trained by the composer to sing and play instruments for the chapel services. The boys left to pursue a trade at sixteen, but the girls, unless they married or entered a convent, simply stayed on. The age range of the singers therefore was from around fourteen to sixty-plus, and a great deal of research has gone into finding out what the ages and vocal ranges and so on were of the actual women who sang there.
Now, devotees of Glenn Miller will know that his band was not just a band, but a sound (real devotees will remember James Stewart talking about ‘the sound’ in that wonderful grainy way in The Glenn Miller Story). Well, the good news is that a new sound has evolved in Oxford – and not just any old sound but one which is as far as possible a recreation of what Vivaldi had in mind when he was composing much of his choral music.
‘Vivaldi’s Women’ has evolved from the Oxford Girl’s Choir, and like the original Venetian choir, it contains women and girls of all ages. They all wear specially designed costumes akin to those worn at the Pietà, giving them a strangely demure look. There is nothing demure about their singing, however. Between them they cover the full vocal range, so that they are not singing in the kind of close harmony that many girls’ choirs do, with the bass part assigned to altos: these tenors and basses actually sing tenor and bass. This is not so strange as it may sound. If you go to a women’s monastery in Greece you will often hear female basses even today as a matter of course, and as Richard Vendome is keen to point out, most of us never get around to developing our full vocal range.
The overall effect is quite different from that of a mixed choir, and has an extraordinary cohesiveness which you don’t get with the substantial difference between male and female voices, marvellous though that can be.
It was, of course, an all-Vivaldi programme, including the well-known Gloria, and two sonatas, one for violin and one for cello. Apart from the very high standard of performance – ‘This is as good as an amateur choir can possibly get’, declared one of my companions – we were struck by the sense of community that the performers seemed to have. They could almost have grown up together – and perhaps some of them had. It seems extraordinary to be able to say this about any choir, but there seemed to be not an ounce of competitiveness. Every single one of them seemed completely focussed on making music.
Crucial to any performance of this kind, of course, is the accompaniment. Richard Vendome directed from the keyboard, Persephone Gibbs gave a good lead from the violin, and there was some really excellent continuo playing by Bridget Cunningham. There was also some fine playing in the Gloria from the oboe and trumpet. For me the real star of the evening was, however, Jennifer Bullock on cello. Not only did she provide an absolutely sensitive and reliable underpinning for the whole concert, but her performance of the Sonata in B flat major (RV 46) was nothing short of sublime.
Only one gripe – and that was with the Holywell itself. Most of us were dressed for winter, but the under-seat heating was turned up so high it was more like a sauna than a concert hall, and the temperature level led to a frequent necessity for re-tuning, which placed an undue strain on the musicians. After a complaint to the management from one of the audience the heating was turned off for the second half, which meant we were able to sit back and enjoy rather than enduring discomfort for the sake of art. Holywell management – please take note! But congratulations on hosting this concert. May there be many more.
To hear a sample of the singing, go on the Schola Pietatis Antonio Vivaldi website - www.spav.co.uk, where you will also find information about past and future events.