some of his works. We still do not know exactly what and how
much Vivaldi composed, but in recent years we have realised that
his oeuvre must have been extremely extensive.’
‘How did you reach this conclusion?’ interrupts Signor Giordano.
There is already more interest in his voice than at the outset of their
interview.
‘Ah. Call it luck, call it God’s will,’ smiles the professor. ‘It all
began a couple of years ago, in the autumn of 1926 to be precise,
when our library received a request to value a collection of
manuscripts and books. It concerned a collection from an old
monastery in Monferrato; the order wanted to sell the documents to
fund some renovation work. It immediately became clear that the
portfolio largely comprised musical scores, so it was of the greatest
interest to me. I have, in fact, for years been searching for the lost
music archives of the Orchestra of the Court of Savoy, once resident
here in Turin. As you are probably aware, the Court of Savoy at one
time withdrew to Sardinia so as to stay out of the hands of
Napoleon. According to tradition, the music archive was too bulky
to take with them and it was thus decided to hide it somewhere
secure. This was so thoroughly achieved that the archive has, alas,
never since been found. You may imagine how excited both the
director of the library, Luigi Torri, and myself were about the
collection now offered us. Might this be part of the Savoy archive?
What I discovered were indeed all musical compositions. Much
work by another composer, Alessandro Stradella, but also fourteen
volumes consisting of original work by Antonio Vivaldi. This last
was most extraordinary, for all the manuscripts were original and
annotated by Vivaldi himself. An absolute treasure-trove, and
completely beyond the financial reach of our library. In the
meanwhile there were other sharks in the ocean and we had to
negotiate swiftly to ensure that the collection remained intact and
did not become disseminated amongst hundreds of antique-dealers.
That would only increase the risk of this music once more being
lost, buried in the dark and dusty depths of private collections.’
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