Range - David Epstein Page 0,125
be glad that some curious writer came along and made a little use of it. I would like to dedicate this chapter to Jane L. Baldauf-Berdes.
exploding from its traditional bounds: J. Kerman and G. Tomlinson, Listen (Brief Fourth Edition). (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000), chaps. 7 and 9. (Vivaldi as “undisputed champion” is from p. 117.)
full weight of entertainment: This is from pp. 118–38 of the modern publication of a contemporaneous account that provided an important source throughout the chapter on eighteenth-century music in Europe: P. A. Scholes, ed., Dr. Burney’s Musical Tours in Europe, vol. 1, An Eighteenth-Century Musical Tour in France and Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).
dominated for a century: E. Selfridge-Field, “Music at the Pietà Before Vivaldi,” Early Music 14, no. 3 (1986): 373–86; R. Thackray, “Music Education in Eighteenth Century Italy,” reprint from Studies in Music 9 (1975): 1–7.
“Only in Venice”: E. Arnold and J. Baldauf-Berdes, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002).
reserved for men: J. Spitzer and N. Zaslaw, The Birth of the Orchestra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 175. Also: Scholes, ed., Burney’s Musical Tours in Europe, vol. 1, 137.
“They sing like angels”: A. Pugh, Women in Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
“The sight of girls”: Hester L. Piozzi, Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (Tredition Classics, 2012 [Kindle ebook]).
“feminine instruments”; “first of her sex”: Arnold and Baldauf-Berdes, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen.
“angelic Sirens”: Coli’s writing appeared in 1687 in Pallade Veneta, a (largely forgotten) periodical that carried commentary in letter form. The best source on the periodical is: E. Selfridge-Field, Pallade Veneta: Writings on Music in Venetian Society, 1650–1750 (Venice: Fondazione Levi, 1985).
“the premier violinist in Europe”; “unsurpassed”: J. L. Baldauf-Berdes, “Anna Maria della Pietà: The Woman Musician of Venice Personified,” in Cecilia Reclaimed, ed. S. C. Cook and J. S. Tsou (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).
An expense report: This is from another remarkable source, a book of scanned original documents compiled by Micky White, a British former sports photographer and Vivaldi enthusiast who moved to Venice and made it her mission to pore over the Pietà’s immense archives: M. White, Antonio Vivaldi: A Life in Documents (with CD-ROM) (Florence: Olschki, 2013), 87.
ordered by the Senate: Baldauf-Berdes, “Anna Maria della Pietà.”
“I had brought with me”: Rousseau was a musical autodidact. His quotes come from his famous autobiographical work, The Confessions.
“Missing are the fingers”: The anonymous poem (c. 1740) was translated by Baldauf-Berdes and M. Civera from R. Giazotto, Vivaldi (Turin: ERI, 1973).
“My request was granted”: Lady Anna Riggs Miller, Letters from Italy Describing the Manners, Customs, Antiquities, Paintings, etc. of that Country in the Years MDCCLXX and MDCCLXXI, vol. 2 (Printed for E. and C. Dilly, 1777), 360–61.
some trinket left: D. E. Kaley, “The Church of the Pietà” (Venice: International Fund for Monuments, 1980).
An eighteenth-century roster: From one of the many lists of musicians and instruments that Baldauf-Berdes compiled from archival research. This particular one is in Box 1 of 48 in the Baldauf-Berdes collection at Duke’s Rubinstein Library.
“penitential mood”: Baldauf-Berdes, Women Musicians of Venice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
“It was really curious”: Scholes, ed., Burney’s Musical Tours in Europe, vol. 1.
“acquiring skills not expected of my sex”: Arnold and Baldauf-Berdes, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen.
Pelegrina della Pietà: One of the many orphans listed on a Pietà roster, she is also expertly discussed by Micky White in a BBC Four film called Vivaldi’s Women.
“all styles”: R. Rolland, A Musical Tour Through the Land of the Past (New York: Henry Holt, 1922).
“Vivaldi had at his disposal”: M. Pincherle, “Vivaldi and the ‘Ospitali’ of Venice,” Musical Quarterly 24, no. 3 (1938): 300–312.
“might never have been composed at all”: D. Arnold. “Venetian Motets and Their Singers,” Musical Times 119 (1978): 319–21. (The specific piece discussed is Exsultate, jubilate, but the author uses it as representative of Mozart’s sacred music.)
Napoleon’s troops: Arnold and Baldauf-Berdes, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen.
went entirely unidentified: In a research proposal written for the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation in 1989, Baldauf-Berdes chronicled this and other instances of the figlie being forgotten. The series she intended to publish, unfortunately, was one of those she was never able to complete.
left the world having been: Baldauf-Berdes, “Anna Maria della Pietà.”
“able indigents”: G. J. Buelow, ed., The Late Baroque Era (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993).
“how to choose”: R. Lane, “How to Choose a Musical Instrument for My Child,” Upperbeachesmusic, January 5, 2017.
he didn’t really like the first two instruments: M. Steinberg, “Yo-Yo Ma on Intonation, Practice, and the Role of Music in Our Lives,” Strings, September 17, 2015, online ed.
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