Venice: Pure City

ability of the hand to register it. There is such animation and rhythmic drive that the momentum is irresistible. The coloristic effects, the vivid impressionism, the shimmering harmonies, the fantastic ingenuity of Venetian music find their acme in Vivaldi. Any imitated pattern creates excitement. Agitation creates excitement. Vivaldi is vivacity. Speed, of composition and of execution, is the key. The words used by his contemporaries were “fierezza,” fiery energy, and “prestezza” or rapidity. The melodic force is overwhelming. The impression is one of inexhaustibility.

He was also a man of the theatre, creating an environment of insistent and unrelenting sound for the expression of extravagant and violent feeling. His most famous work, The Four Seasons, is intensely expressive. It was a way of translating a pictorial and operatic genre into music. There is in fact in his art a thoroughly Venetian tendency to combine display with melody, so that he introduces operatic effects within his instrumental music and sustains his operas with the techniques of his concerti. The first page of the solo violin part of the “Spring” concerto resembles a composition by Mondrian; the notes seem to dance together. They arch and leap and soar in serried ranks. On his scores Vivaldi will scrawl down hurriedly “spiritoso” or “allegro.”

Sometimes he will continue the notation for three or four pages; then pause; then cross it all out; then with the same vigour and rapidity begin all over again from the first notes. On occasions he would write out two movements for the same place, and then leave it to the interpreter or musicians to make their preference. He worked sometimes so quickly that he forgot his original key. His writing became more abrupt and elliptical in the course of composition.

The same rush of genius, the same facility and prolixity, are evident through the history of Venetian culture. Tintoretto was well known for the ferocious energy of his artistic practice. He could paint the walls of a church, or the hall of a guild, within a week. In a later century Tiepolo was known for being able to finish a large canvas in ten hours. So in the music of Vivaldi there is a tremendous quickness and pressure, guided by a driving force and rhythmic impulse that astonished his contemporaries. It is as inexorable as fate. It rushes forward like the tides of the lagoon. What is the secret of this exuberance in the artists of Venice? It is joy. Joy in creation. It has to do with the fact of living in an harmonious city. Yet it is also the joy of living in unity with the culture and society that surrounded them. They were at home. The ground of their being was Venice itself.

Is it then possible to interpret the nature of Venetian music as an organic whole? It is marked by exuberance and spontaneity, a ferocious gaiety that is manifest in other forms of Venetian art. The most used and favoured word is brilliance. It has associations with the glitter of Venetian glass, and the glittering light upon the water. Yet Venetian music also has associations with the richness of colour and texture in Venetian art. We read of the brilliant “tone colours” and “chromatic phrases” associated with the musicians of Venice, as opposed to those of Naples or of Florence. The Venetian manuals of music written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, rely largely upon expounding the arts of improvisation and ornamentation. Venetian music, therefore, is predominantly expressive. The temperamental affinities, to put it perhaps too crudely, are with show over substance. One German musicologist of the eighteenth century, contrasting Venetian melodies with Roman harmonies, remarked that “the Venetian makes its way to the ear more quickly, but its spell continues for a shorter time.” The art of echo, already noticed in sacred polychoral music, was also an aspect of secular music. The Venetian sonata, for example, has been noticed for its marked contrapuntal effects.

The music of Venice has a certain sweetness. It was often light and clear. In that sense it could be suggested that it contains little interior life. There could be no Beethoven in Venice. It has an irresistible flow. It has the rhythm of the sea, not of the wheel. It provokes astonishment and admiration rather than contemplation. Yet it could also be unruly and abrupt, with sudden and unexpected turns both in melody and in harmony. It is often eccentric or extravagant. It sometimes relishes strangeness, or what were known as bizzarria. It has an eastern flavour. It can even be claimed that, through the agency of Venice, the music of the East entered the classical European tradition. Venetian music is sustained by constant and subtle variation. It favours contrast and intricacy; it can be fast, and florid. It perfectly suits the genius of the virtuoso. It has been suggested that the solo concerto was first heard in Venice. It may be possible, then, to define the nature of this music as an expression of the Venetian temperament; Stendhal remarked that “the glittering reflection of the Venetian character falls across the texture of Venetian music.” The process of transmission and inheritance has never properly been understood, except in the evident relish of a language that describes art and character in identical terms. And so we have the words—vivacity, gaiety, radiance, extravagance, energy, buoyancy, spontaneity, urgency, facility, exuberance, impetuosity. Oh! Venezia!

A Venetian Chronology

FOURTH, FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES AD

The Veneti tribe leave the Italian mainland for the islands to escape successive waves of barbarian invaders. The islands form part of the Byzantine Empire.

421: The legendary founding of Venice. The real date of the city’s foundation is probably over a century later.

446: The Veneti meet at Grado and establish the rule of a tribune.

568: Torcello founded.

SEVENTH CENTURY

Early: The basilica of S. Maria Assunta is built at Torcello.

697: The first doge of Venice, Paoluccio Anafesto, is elected by the people.

EIGHTH CENTURY

Byzantine domination of northern Italy is ended by barbarian invasions.

NINTH CENTURY

Beginning: The original palace of the doge is constructed in the area now known as Saint Mark’s Square.

810: Pepin unsuccessfully attempts to claim the islands for the Frankish empire.

825: The area of Saint Mark’s Square is completed.

828: The body of Saint Mark is brought from Alexandria to Venice. Saint Mark replaces Saint Theodore as patron of the city.

TENTH CENTURY

900: The lagoons are fortified.

928: The first mention of a Venetian glass-maker.

ELEVENTH CENTURY

End: Venice establishes itself as an autonomous state and a maritime republic. It develops into a strong naval power and builds an empire in the East, seizing the eastern shores of the Adriatic before 1200, and capturing many of the islands in the Aegean, including Cyprus and Crete.

The Venetian Carnival is instituted.

TWELFTH CENTURY

1100: Venice participates in the First Crusade.

Early: The Arsenal is constructed.

1167: The first public loans are issued in Venice.

1171: Two great columns, one surmounted by Saint Theodore and the other by a lion, are erected in Saint Mark’s Square.

1178: Venice takes control of the Brenner Pass from Verona, and establishes an extensive empire on the Italian mainland or terra firma over the next four centuries.

Late: The earliest surviving mention of a gondola.

The great council, comprised exclusively of aristocratic families, is established. It elects the doge and the senate.

THIRTEENTH CENTURY

1203–4: Venice plays a major role in the assault and sacking of Constantinople. It brings home the four