THE SECRETS OF VIVALDI'S GLORIA
Backstage with Jeannette Sorrell

Q.  The Vivaldi Gloria is an amazingly popular piece.  Will your performance sound different than the recordings I’m used to?

JS.   “The” Vivaldi Gloria is actually one of three Glorias that he composed! The famous one – the one we’re playing – is officially called RV 589 in the Vivaldi catalogue.  This piece was already a household tune well before the period-instrument revival blossomed in the 1970’s.  So we are accustomed to hearing it in the performance style of the mid-twentieth century.   In that sense, our performance will sound quite different.

Q.  Because of being on period instruments?

JS.  Yes, but not only that.  It’s the way you approach the interpretation.  Coming from a baroque perspective, we look for the rhetorical/dramatic elements in the music – as well as the expressive harmonies, and the spirit of the dance.   And above all, I try to put music in service of the text. It is surprising how different the piece sounds when run through this baroque filter rather than the 20th-century one.

Q.  Aside from changing the interpretive filter, your performance seeks to emulate the sonority of Vivaldi’s choir at the Pietà, by including teenage girls.  How does that change the sound?

JS. Teenage voices have a more pure and airy sound.  We are fortunate to have five very special girls who are exceptionally talented.  But we have not gone so far as to replace our tenors and basses with deep-voiced older women, which is what Vivaldi actually had at the Pietà!  Scholars believe that Vivaldi’s “bass” singers could not reach the lower notes that he wrote, and simply sang them an octave higher whenever necessary.  Not every circumstance of a composer’s original performance is worth emulating, though…  I think this is a case where the music is best served by giving Vivaldi the male voices that he lacked.