1) What is an “Early Work”?

In the definition of the creative periods of an artist and in the chronological organization of his works the concept of “early”, somewhat flexible and intuitive, seems to remain indispensable, notwithstanding the changes that come with differing historical periods, or within these, with reference to one individual or another: that which one era considered precocious was considered slow in another; that which one century considered mere student exercises was considered a work of art in another. Also within the same discipline or the same historical period each individual looks more or less precocious at their art: exceptional cases such as that of Mozart and Linley have us consider as “early” works composed at the age of five or eleven years, while for Haydn the same adjective encompasses works produced around the age of twenty.

But time does not always transmit the first works of an author, or at least information about them: the farther back in history we go, the more the traces and all the biographical fragments become rare. We have a wealth of information on the childhood and youth of Beethoven, we have sufficient information regarding that of Mozart, little on that of Handel and almost nothing for that of Vivaldi. This unhappy progression cannot however be attributed to the natural decay of the sources, nor to the false idea that each step back of a century takes us deeper in to darkness: the degree of notoriety achieved by an individual in his time, just like the mentality and morality of different historical moments, as well as membership in a given social class or geographical area, directly influence the interest in divulging, conserving or ignoring certain information. The same prodigious young Austrian boy that in the second half of the 18^th century came to be disputed and celebrated in the courts of Europe would not have had the same fortune had he been born a century earlier: above all, no one would have ever thought to publish the earliest works when, as surprising as they are, they would have been seen as the exercises of a student who had not yet reached maturity.

In the time of Vivaldi’s youth the time of the ‘prodigal child’ had yet to come, and no youth, no matter how gifted, would be trumpeted around before his works had reached a maturity such that they could be compared to a standard level of the professionals of the period. Perhaps Antonio Vivaldi was not a prodigal child, but even if he was, we can never know: it is certain that while his father Giovanni Battista, an excellent professional musician, and his colleagues contributed to young Antonio’s instruction, they would never have consented to allow musical compositions out of the house that were not yet ready to compare with the music of professionals. Here is why for Vivaldi, like his peers and predecessors, we only speak of works that have reached full maturation. When it was decided that the moment had been reached – not before – then came the test that would sanction official entry in to the society of composers: the publication of the first work, thoughtfully edited, applying their own skills to a genre considered to be paradigmatic. It is for this reason that for Vivaldi, like all his contemporaries and predecessors, the oldest datable work that is known coincides with his Opus 1: twelve Sonatas for Three published in Venice by Giuseppe Sala when Vivaldi was at the age of 25. It is realistic to suppose that, absent any unexpected discoveries, all of his work prior to this publication was destroyed by him, or simply not saved. This situation, typical for a musician born at the end of the 1600s, leads us to restrict the concept of “early works” to its strictly chronological roots: the period of Vivaldi’s youth coincides with the silence of a student and with the absence of any musical testimony; shortly afterwards, when Vivaldi the man approached his maturity, here began his first, public and official musical offerings, which we can define as the “early” stage of his growth as a composer.

2) The Vivaldis’ Circle and the Apprentice

It is very probable that Vivaldi learned music and violin technique primarily from his father Giovanni Battista, a professional violinist who held a top level position among Venetian musicians: of Brescian origin, he moved to Venice in 1666; he was accepted in the orchestra of San Marco in 1685 and was nominated “Maestro di strumenti” of the Ospedale dei Mendicanti in 1689; in 1690 he was one of the first to join the ‘Sovegno di S. Cecilia’, a charitable group promoted by Legrenzi and Partenio; in the Guida de’ Forestieri of Vicenzo Coronelli, a best-seller published many times over the years, Giovanni Battista Vivaldi was cited, until 1700, as one of the most noted violinists of the city. His talents put him in contact with a large group of musician and composers, some of whom likely took part in the education of his son Antonio. The important archival researcher Gastone Vio has brought to light the elements of this circle of musicians, bringing in to focus a fertile and diverse environment in which the young Antonio grew and learned the art. Here we find the two brothers Giacomo Filippo and Bonaventura Spada, both priests, the first a singer and organist at St. Mark’s and the Maestro di Coro at the Pietà from the end of 1672 to 1701; the second, maestro di violin at the Pietà from 1673 to 1703, the year in which Antonio Vivaldi succeeded him. Don Bonaventura must have been rather intimate with the Vivaldi family, if he held Francesco, the second son, at baptism, and if the fourth child was given the name Bonaventura; it is clear that Don Spada, at the time of his Jubilee from the Pietà, willingly passed his teaching post on to the gifted firstborn of his old friend, to whom he perhaps was also a violin teacher. Another maestro in the Vivaldi circle – also a priest – was Marco Marini, who held Zanetta, the fifth child of Giovanni Battista, at baptism; upon his death he left one of his violins to the Pietà. Vio suggests that he was also a violin teacher to Antonio, but we do not have any direct proof.

Outside of Venice, some clues allow us to postulate that he may have also received, many times during the years 1700 – 1701 and 1703, violin lessons at Torino from Lorenzo Francesco Somis (1662 – 1736), father of the more famous Giovanni Battista (1686 – 1723): this information, reported by Mario Rinaldi without any bibliographical reference, is partially confirmed in a letter of 16 October 1701 in which the Bolognese musician Giuseppe Carlo Pesci relates to Giacomo Antonio Perti how at Torino he met “Signor Battista Vivaldi, called il Rosino of the Virtuoso Violin, already known to him in Venice, with his son who was also Virtuoso on the same instrument.”

A thornier question is that of who might have trained Antonio in composition. In the past, starting with Pincherle, the name of Legrenzi was frequently given, but always as a hypothetical. In truth, the professional business of Giovanni Battista Vivaldi often intersected with the most famous maestro: they both came from Brescia; Vivaldi’s father was accepted to San Marco in the same year in which Legrenzi started there as Maestro di Capello;  he then took over at the Mendicanti just as Legrenzi was suspended from his activity there as “Maestro di Coro”; he was among the first to join the musical Sovegno started by Legrenzi. However, it is difficult to believe that it could have been Legrenzi who taught composition to Giovanni Battista’s first born, given that he died when the boy was only 12 years old. Similarly, there were other maestri who could have taught the young Antonio composition: for instrumental music one of the most probable was Giorgio Genitili (1699? – 1731 or after), violinist and colleague of his father in the Ducal cappella from 1689, where he was named a soloist in 1693; in 1700 Coronelli’s Guide cites him, together with Giovanni Battista Vivaldi and Pasqualino Rossi, as one of the best venetian violinists; a year later he was given the position of “Maestro di strumenti” at the Ospedale dei Mendicanti, a position which Giovanni Battista Vivaldi had held until 1693; finally, but not secondarily, Gentili was an esteemed composer of instrumental music, with a resume of six collections of various genres published at Venice and Amsterdam between 1701 and 1716. The traces of his presence are not found only in his professional relationship with Giovanni Battista, but most of all in the strong stylistic influence that the instrumental language of Gentili had on the music of the young Antonio, a footprint scarcely noticed until today.

Other older maestri, equally close to the Vivaldi family, could have taken a role in Antonio’s musical instruction: Gian Domenico Partenio (1633 – 1701), second Maestro and then first Maestro at San Marco in the last decade of the 1600s and “Maestro di Coro” at the Mendicanti from 1685 to 1689, and Lodovico Fuga (1643 – 1722), singer at San Marco. Both of them, other than working as musicians in the Ducal cappella with Giovanni Battista Vivaldi, lived in the same parish, San Martino. Similar instances, while certainly not conclusive, combine to define a picture in which the musical maturation of Antonio Vivaldi did not only occur amongst the names of the most famous musicians of the time, but was enriched through the patronage of singers, violinists, maestri di strumenti and di cappella of varying ages, skills and importance.

We cannot exclude the possibility that it was Giovanni Battista Vivaldi himself who could have educated his first born in composition, as well as in violin, if one could find the confirmation of the hypothesis according to which one “Giambattista Rossi” who composed the opera La fedeletà sfortunata in 1688 (with libretto by Pietro Barbieri, theater unknown) can be identified as Giovanni Battista Vivaldi, given that he was commonly referred to, in San Marco as well as at the Mendicanti, as “Giovanni Battista Rossi” or “Giovanni Battista Rosetto” for the color of his hair.

In any case, the musical presence of Vivaldi senior in Antonio’s training was very strong; as happened in any family artistic business – one thinks of, in another field, Giambattista Tiepolo and of his gifted son Giandomenico – Antonio soon became his father’s collaborator, and the two of them formed a close partnership, which dissolved only after Giovanni Battista’s death. Starting with Antonio’s appearance in the Basilica of San Marco as an extra instrumentalist for Christmas of 1696, the two Vivaldis became an inseparable duo: we find them in Torino in 1701, in Brescia in 1711, at Padova in 1712, at Vicenza in 1713; much other information about these ‘tours’, which must have been rather frequent, is unfortunately missing, and the last documented trip is from 1729, to an unspecific “Germany”. Also important in the evaluation of the strength of this relationship is the weight of the work as faithful and reliable copyist undertaken by Giovanni Battista for all of his life on behalf of his son, as well as the fact that the two almost always lived together.