A Flow of Music Antonio Vivaldi at the Origins of a Rediscovery
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FONDAZIONE GIORGIO CINI ISTITUTO ITALIANO ANTONIO VIVALDI MYRIAM ZERBI A FLOW OF MUSIC ANTONIO VIVALDI AT THE ORIGINS OF A REDISCOVERY VENEZIA FONDAZIONE GIORGIO CINI 2020 This book recounts the circumstances leading up to the foundation of the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi, established by Antonio Fanna and Angelo Ephrikian on 23 January 1947. It retraces the sometimes surprising adventures in postwar Italy that took the two protagonists from the dream of reviving the Red Priest’s music to the publication of his complete instrumental works. Using the le琀ers of the leading players, contemporary press reports and the personal memories of one of the founders, the author reconstructs the Istituto’s vicissitudes focusing especially on its first years, full of high emotions, enterprise and tenacity, in a war-torn country where a desire for renewal was everywhere palpable, through to 1978 when it was donated by Antonio Fanna to become part of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice. The story, which is enlivened with a copious apparatus of images and documents, unfolds through the personal testimonies of those involved: Angelo Ephrikian, who dreamed the original dream, Antonio Fanna, who laid the practical foundations of the Istituto and ran it for 昀fty years, Alfredo Gallinari the enabling benefactor, who until now has remained, by his own wish, anonymous, Francesco Continetto, the copyist, who transcribed over 昀ve hundred of Vivaldi’s manuscripts, Gian Francesco Malipiero, the Istituto’s artistic director and editor of the greater part of the Venetian composer’s music, and Eugenio Clause琀i the enlightened head of the music publisher Casa Ricordi. Cover image: A Flow of Music Photograph by Arianna Monti SAGGI VIVALDIANI 3 FONDAZIONE GIORGIO CINI ISTITUTO ITALIANO ANTONIO VIVALDI MYRIAM ZERBI A FLOW OF MUSIC ANTONIO VIVALDI THE STORY OF A REDISCOVERY VENEZIA FONDAZIONE GIORGIO CINI 2020 MYRIAM ZERBI, A Flow of Music. Antonio Vivaldi. The Story of a Rediscovery (“Saggi vivaldiani”, 3), Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 2020. Online publication: <www.cini.it> All rights reserved © 2020 Fondazione Giorgio Cini Onlus Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore 30124 Venezia www.cini.it First english language edition: 2020 Translation: John Francis Phillimore Editing: Margherita Gianola Layout: Arianna Monti ISBN 9788896445181 FOREWORD This book intends to retrace the events that led to the setting up of the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi, founded by Antonio Fanna and Angelo Ephrikian on 23 January 1947, and piece together the story of its earliest years. To flesh out my account, I chose to journey again in person the highways and cross the bridges over which those events ran their course, digging out the sources, knocking on doors (which were opened), gathering, recasting, assembling the evidence of correspondence, fragments of news and reports from the newspapers of the time. I retraced the vicissitudes of the various stages, some extraordinary and, often enough, blessed by strokes of luck, the capricious goddess whose good auspices are vital in bringing any enterprise to port, as Fanna himself could attest: “If luck had not been on my side, on at least three occasions, I think that our edition of the instrumental music would hardly have seen the light of day”. That same Fortuna whom I saw along the way often arm‐in‐arm with Kairos who embodies, in Greek mythology “the right moment”. Some of the themes touched on in this volume have already been covered in other contexts, but I have chosen to rehearse them and bring them together to fill out the plot of the story, and then to weave into the structure what amount to the “stories behind the story” exploiting the opportunity of studying the protagonists’ own words from the private archive of Antonio Fanna and the possibility of listening to his own voice through his notes and memories; recollections that run through the narrative like veins in the marble, and will, I hope, add colour to the progress of the venture. I hope that a reading of this book will prove useful for the reconstruction of the circumstances that led to the founding of the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi and its first eventful years of life, trusting that the collage of documents and oral reminiscences will flow like a romance, whose principal actors I can identify in advance as Angelo Ephrikian, the instigator, Antonio Fanna, the realizer, Alfredo Gallinari, the benefactor, Gian Francesco Malipiero, the Artistic Director of the Istituto Vivaldi and editor of the majority of the instrumental works, Francesco Continetto, the copyist, Eugenio Clausetti, the publisher. Last, and by no means least, Fortuna and Kairos. Each of these protagonists contributed with their own rhythm and pitch to see through a choral adventure – sometimes extemporising, sometimes in harmony – which brought back to the light of day, after more than two hundred years of darkness, the music of this great Venetian composer. MYRIAM ZERBI – 5 – Fig. 1. GIROLAMO FORABOSCO, The Miraculous Rescue (detail). Venice, Church of Santa Maria Assunta (commonly “Gesuiti”). Fig. 2. ANTONIO LUCIO VIVALDI, baptismal record. Archivio Storico del Patriarcato di Venezia, Parish of San Giovanni in Bragora, Register of Baptisms, Reg. n. 10, 6 May 1678. VIVALDI EARTHQUAKE For a long time the accepted myth was that an earthquake had convulsed marshbanks and dry land, stirring up the waters of the lagoon to invade the city, shouldering through the canals and the rii with an impetus launched from the depths of the earth, ripping up the flagstones of calli and campi and shaking palaces and houses, while the bells of Venice rang out wildly, chimneys collapsed with a terrifying crash and everywhere the Venetians were running for their lives – all this on the day when Antonio Vivaldi was born. Extraordinary natural portents are cheerfully summoned by tellers‐of‐tales to lend a superhuman frame to the appearance of great men. Some stories, such as that of the raging elements that whipped up the waves and jounced the forest of sunken tree‐trunks underpinning the Serenissima, then zoom in to foreground a mother who offers, in the nightmare grip of her panic, her child to the Most High: “Save my child from the fury of the earth and the waters and I will consecrate him to You and make him Your priest.”1 In reality, no seismic event is recorded in Venice on 4 March 1678, in the dogeship of Alvise Contarini;2 whatever quake there was must have been in the breast of Antonio’s mother, Camilla Calicchio.3 Two years earlier, already pregnant by Giovanni Battista Vivaldi “barbier e sonador” (barber and musician), she had hastened to marry him in the church of San Giovanni Battista on the Giudecca, some way from the Castello sestiere and her own parish of San Giovanni in Bragora,4 perhaps in order to elude the 1 Among the many sources reporting this fanciful story, see: REMO GIAZOTTO, Vivaldi, Milan, Nuova Accademia, 1965; edition consulted: Turin, ERI, 1973, p. 12; VIRGILIO BOCCARDI, Vivaldi a Venezia, Treviso, Canova, 2003, p. 31; GIANFRANCO FORMICHETTI, Venezia e il prete col violino, Milan, Bompiani, 2006, p. 7; VIRGILIO BOCCARDI, Le origini lucane di Antonio Vivaldi, catalogue of the Pomarico Vivaldi Festival (August 2012), Pomarico, 2012, pp. 32‐33; DARIO PICCOTTI – ALVARO TORCHIO, Vivaldi e il segreto del Mondo Nuovo, Viterbo, Stampa alternativa/Nuovi Equilibri, 2013, p. 36. 2 A number of earthquakes have struck the Serenissima, one indeed on 4 March but in 1365. In Vivaldi’s own century shocks were felt on 16 July 1670, reaching the Lagoon from the epicentre in Verona; on 11 April 1688 (or possibly on 17 April according to GIAMBATTISTA GALLICCIOLLI, Delle memo‐ rie venete antiche, profane ed ecclesiastiche, Venice, Domenico Fracasso, 1795, vol. 2, p. 235): when a powerful quake in the Romagna was felt in the city; on 4 December 1690: an earthquake in Istria caused the big Bell of St‐Mark’s to toll and damaged the church of San Giovanni e Paolo; on 6 July 1693, a heavy tremor in Mantua registering in Venice; the Venetians were shaken again in 1695 when the earth moved in Asolo. In 1678 there was indeed a quake, but in Siena – and on 24 rather than 4 March – this is said to have caused all the bells of Monte Oliveto to ring, but was not in fact felt in Venice. See: MARIO BARATTA, I terremoti in Italia, Turin, Bocca, 1901, pp. 55, 147, 150, 154, 163,173, 181. 3 Camilla Calicchio, born on Christmas Eve 1653 of a Venetian mother and a father from Pomarico (Basilicata). On the Lucanian origins of the Calicchio family, see GASTONE VIO, Antonio Vivaldi e i Vivaldi, “Informazioni e studi vivaldiani”, 4, 1983, pp. 82‐96; Documenti sulle origini pomaricane di Antonio Vivaldi, ed. Pietro Varuolo, catalogue of the Pomarico Vivaldi Festival (August 2010), Pomarico, 2010; VIRGILIO BOCCARDI, Le origini lucane di Antonio Vivaldi, cit. 4 Camilla had been baptised in the church of Sant’Antonin. Archivio Storico Patriarcale di Venezia, Parish of Sant’Antonin, Baptismal Register, Reg. no. 3, 29 December 1653. This document is published and transcribed by MICKY WHITE in Antonio Vivaldi. A Life in Documents (“Quaderni vivaldiani”, 17), Florence, Olschki, 2013, pp. 3‐4. – 7 – MYRIAM ZERBI prying glances and ciacole5 of the neighbours. Her witness at the nuptials was a gondolier friend Andrea Vedova, coincidentally nicknamed “Trema‐ mondo” (earthshaker). The child that Camilla was then carrying, Gabriella Antonia, born five months later, was fated to have a short life.6 It may be supposed that on that day in early March the agitation in the heart of Camilla, as she brought her first son into the world, was an entirely intimate and personal upheaval.