068 Vivaldi's Gloria (tracks 68 and 100)

 

Vivaldi taught music at a girls' orphanage Ospedale della Pietà in Venice and he wrote most of his orchestral (600 concertos including The Four Seasons) and choral music for them. He taught them to play and sing it, and their musical reputation spread round Europe. Young men, looking for a musically-educated wife would attend concerts to watch the young ladies perform behind grills, we are told.

 

Modern editions of the Gloria and other choral works are invariably scored for SATB, but where did the men come from? This has always fascinated me. HLC in the 20th C hardly threw open its doors to young men, so what about a Venetian girls' orphanage in the early 1700's? Fat chance!

 

Singing the bass parts may have involved young priests but much more likely these performances were all female. Tenor range can be sung by some women and we know that matrons (house mothers) from the orphanage were involved. Bass parts transposed up an octave are singable, with double basses in the orchestra supplying the missing octave.

 

With this theory in mind, I arranged the whole of the Gloria for girls voices, and I started Ph.D research under Philip Talbot at Liverpool University. Unfortunately,  my "promotion" to deputy head put paid to these official studies after a year. But the inspiration for starting was the Chapel Choir and I shall always be grateful for the chance to put theory into practice using the choirs. Did I hear someone say "Who needs men?". The Chapel Choirs did very well without.