Antonio Vivaldi Rediscovery

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was one of Italy greatest composers but he had never earned the reputation that he deserved to have during his lifetime. Not only he was a great violinist, a concertmaster, and a teacher; he was also known as an extraordinary composer with his significant contributions to the concerto’s development such as Stabat Mater, Magnificant, Gloria and The Four Seasons, his most popular work. Throughout the article Discovering the Rediscovery of Antonio Vivaldi by Miles Dayton Fish, we can see the progress of rediscovering one of the most iconic symbol of classical music and how they were able to bring him closer to the public after almost 200 years that had been forgotten. The rediscovery began with an accidental discovery
He was born in low class of the society but later became a priest and increased his family’s standing in Venice. By 1730s, because people were no longer interested in Vivaldi’s outdated music, many opera houses that he was working with decided to end his contract. Vivaldi became broke and even suffered his father’s death at the same time. Soon after that in 1740s, he moved to Vienna where he wished to start his career over again. But not for long, because of the Emperor Charles’s death, opera performance was banned for a year. A year later, Vivaldi died when he was sixty-three years old and was buried at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Many collectors were able to collect some of Vivaldi’s works include The Four Seasons but the majority of his work still remained lost. A century later, a collection of Vivaldi’s works was founded in Hofkirche Cathedral in Dresden, Germany. Because Vivaldi used to have a very close relationship with Jonhann Georg Pisendel, a violist from Dresden, Germany so when Pisendel came back to Dresden in 1717, he brought with him more than forty Vivaldi’s works. Nowadays, the SLB Dresden holds the significant number of Vivaldi’s manuscripts outside of Italy. In order to keep Vivaldi’s manuscripts in the Turin Library and away from the hands of antique collectors and the government, Professor Gentili had to find benefactor to support the purchase of the manuscripts. In 1927, a banker named Mauro Foà purchased the manuscripts and donated them to the Turin Library. The collection was named after his infant son, the Mauro Foà Collection. After researching the manuscripts, Gentili realized many pages were missing in the collection and began his journey of finding the lost portion of the