Catalogo delle concordanze musicali vivaldiane

By Antonio Vivaldi

Catalogo delle concordanze musicali vivaldiane, or, inventory and synoptic view of all the loci communes in Vivaldi’s music: from whole movements down to small musical fragments, themes, phrases and ideas that circulate throughout his huge oeuvre and – sometimes – outside it, in composers from whom Vivaldi obtained them or who obtained them from Vivaldi. These hundreds of cross-references and concordances of varying degree build up a map of Vivaldi’s musical language, of his artistic evolution over time and of his creative and stylistic choices.

The great map of musical concordances in Vivaldi’s music opens one’s eyes to an extraordinary and complex laboratory of ideas, to a skilful and rigorous method of working that, once inventoried and organized, brings new perspectives to musicological research.

Indeed, the main aim of this study is to offer a new and useful instrument with which to confront problems of dating, chronology, attribution and identification, as well as to aid the study of Vivaldi’s creative periods and compositional methods. Cases of new musical attributions – described here in detail – have already been numerous, thanks to the adoption of this new kind of approach.

The volume is divided into two parts: an Introduction, which examines Vivaldi’s compositional process and establishes the epistemological bases of the system of musical concordances, and the Catalogue proper, in which, following the numbering of the Ryom catalogue, all the concordances so far noted in Vivaldi’s music are listed.

The author, who holds the responsibility for maintaining the Ryom catalogue, has updated his study to take account of the most recent additions to it.