Thursday, July 9, 2015
Worked from 9-2, then wrote until 9 with 30 minutes for dinner. I'm now fully into No. 4, one of the more challenging chapters in this new book. This is where the shift comes in, the exposure of all things Italian and the introduction of Fabio Biondi playing Vivaldi. Here is the great selling point of the novel. Vivaldi. As I read more about this amazing composer, my love and affection for him continue to grow. No one that I'm aware of has positioned Vivaldi as a composer for teenagers, and yet throughout most of his composing career, he wrote concertos specifically for abandoned and orphaned teenage girls. That's who played his music every day from the early 1700s through the 1740s. You can actually hear the optimism, vitality for life, and joy of music woven into his phrases and melodic lines. He's constantly reinforcing a positive, happy sensation onto his performers and listeners. He suffered form asthma all his life and by all accounts was unorthodox and unusual, yet he was a genius who overcame whatever emotional issues he suffered to write music that is so happy and sublime, and always different, even though the Vivaldi sound is evident within every movement of every concerto. Nowhere is this on display more powerfully than in La Stravaganza. Every movement feels exact and perfect. It's a wonderfully free antidepressant that most teenagers know nothing about. I've always known that listening to Vivaldi puts me in a good mood, no matter how grumpy I might be. He's a wonderful stabilizer of extreme emotions. The emotional extremes were surely over-the-top inside the orphanage of the Ospedale della pieta, but the excitement of playing such lively music and listening to it must have been incredible. I wonder if the girls realized how amazing his music actually was, or whether he was just like all the other baroque composers of the day. He certainly wasn't. There's something so clean and exact about his concertos at his best. So joyous. Truly remarkable and something worth sharing.
Worked from 9-2, then wrote until 9 with 30 minutes for dinner. I'm now fully into No. 4, one of the more challenging chapters in this new book. This is where the shift comes in, the exposure of all things Italian and the introduction of Fabio Biondi playing Vivaldi. Here is the great selling point of the novel. Vivaldi. As I read more about this amazing composer, my love and affection for him continue to grow. No one that I'm aware of has positioned Vivaldi as a composer for teenagers, and yet throughout most of his composing career, he wrote concertos specifically for abandoned and orphaned teenage girls. That's who played his music every day from the early 1700s through the 1740s. You can actually hear the optimism, vitality for life, and joy of music woven into his phrases and melodic lines. He's constantly reinforcing a positive, happy sensation onto his performers and listeners. He suffered form asthma all his life and by all accounts was unorthodox and unusual, yet he was a genius who overcame whatever emotional issues he suffered to write music that is so happy and sublime, and always different, even though the Vivaldi sound is evident within every movement of every concerto. Nowhere is this on display more powerfully than in La Stravaganza. Every movement feels exact and perfect. It's a wonderfully free antidepressant that most teenagers know nothing about. I've always known that listening to Vivaldi puts me in a good mood, no matter how grumpy I might be. He's a wonderful stabilizer of extreme emotions. The emotional extremes were surely over-the-top inside the orphanage of the Ospedale della pieta, but the excitement of playing such lively music and listening to it must have been incredible. I wonder if the girls realized how amazing his music actually was, or whether he was just like all the other baroque composers of the day. He certainly wasn't. There's something so clean and exact about his concertos at his best. So joyous. Truly remarkable and something worth sharing.
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