BY ELIZABETH ANDERSON, AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER CHOIR
In this blog, Elizabeth Anderson of the Australian Chamber Choir shares her journey into discovering the music of Agatha della Pietà — a girl who was left at an Italian orphanage around the year 1720, then went on to compose and perform music under the teachings of Vivaldi. Three centuries later, Elizabeth has found and pieced together Agatha’s music, which is now performed for the first time.
Agatha was born without the fingers of her left hand. As a child with a disability, she was given up to the orphanage known as the Ospedale della Pietà.
If you visit Venice, you can go to the Pietà, which is now the Metropole Hotel on Riva degli Schiavoni at the mouth of the Grand Canal. When Canaletto set up his easel there in 1730, he would have had no idea that the view he was painting would become one of the most desirable views in the world of tourism: today, a small room at the Metropole/Pietà with that view will set you back at least $1800AU for one night.
I’m told that the scaffetta – the tiny revolving door, where newborns would once have been anonymously delivered – is still visible in the outer wall of the edifice.
A star in the making
Agatha was fortunate in that Vivaldi had been employed at the Pietà since 1703, and had developed a wonderful music education program from which she would benefit. Agatha became one of the star students of the 1730s and 40s, with her name recorded as the soprano soloist on manuscripts of Cantatas by Giovanni Porta and Andrea Bernasconi.
At the age of 16, Agatha would have graduated into the Pietà’s elite five-year course for the most talented musicians, and she was a documented member of the Pietà’s famous all-female performing ensemble known as the coro.
It’s possible that within the closed community where she lived and worked, Agatha may have felt entirely fulfilled as a singer and later as a teacher and composer. But her compositions were never performed outside the walls of the orphanage, so in that sense, she was an artist who never truly emerged.
Discovering Agatha
Already at high school, I was fascinated by the idea that Vivaldi was involved in giving orphan girls a musical education. Who financed the musical tuition? How did the institution find orphans who were musically gifted? If these young women performed at a professional standard, surely some of them were also interested in composing?
In my role as manager of the Australian Chamber Choir, I have a say in our programming. When we decided to include the Vivaldi Gloria in the ACC’s 2022 program, my curiosity was rekindled. How fantastic would it be to perform a work by one of Vivaldi’s orphan students alongside the Vivaldi Gloria?
I studied Italian at uni, so I sent off an email inquiry in my best Italian to a consultant librarian at the Conservatorium Library in Venice, where (it appeared from the catalogues) fragments of manuscripts of a composition written by Agatha, an orphan student from Vivaldi’s time, were held.
I received an instant response, and after a short exchange of emails, I was furnished with images of an incomplete set of manuscript parts of the Cantata by Agatha della Pietà.
A musical upbringing
As an orphan of the middle eighteenth century, Agatha could not have chosen a better place to grow up. As a young child, she was given the best musical tuition and the best opportunities imaginable.
From an early age, she sang with a professional ensemble. As a teenager, she was paid to teach the younger students. At the age of 16, when most young women were expected to give up their education and concentrate on finding a husband, Agatha was offered the equivalent of a full-scholarship course of tertiary study – something virtually unheard of for young women of her time.
Soon, she was the teacher of some of the most talented singers of the Pietà. She wrote a treatise on singing technique, which she dedicated to one of her students, a contralto named Gregoria. Those who remained at the Pietà as part of the professional teaching staff were treated extremely well, even offered holidays at the villas of wealthy patrons. Later in life, Agatha took over the administration of the Pietà.
When composition was not for women
Whether or not she was critically aware of it, one barrier remained unassailable for Agatha.
Whereas singing and playing an instrument were considered desirable feminine attributes, during the 18th Century musical composition was not something that women were encouraged to pursue.
Agatha would have felt extremely lucky to be able to hear her music performed (as was probably the case) by the orphans of the Pietà, a privilege that female composers living in normal society could not have accessed so easily.
Unfortunately, the full score (if one ever existed) and four of the eight parts needed to perform Agatha’s Cantata were lost. This meant that it could not be performed again until somebody reconstructed it.
Could it be that the archivists responsible for preserving the manuscripts of the PIetà were more diligent with the manuscripts of male composers than with those of female composers?
For whatever reason, the incomplete set of two instrumental and two vocal parts for Agatha’s cantata remained untouched in the Benedetto Marcello Library for almost three centuries.
Hearing Agatha’s voice
I never really intended to reconstruct all six movements of Agatha’s Cantata. I started with the first movement, for choir and orchestra, just to see if it would work.
As a harpsichordist, I’ve spent the last 40-or-so years exploring baroque repertoire for my instrument, both as a soloist and with various combinations of instruments.
I’ve been fortunate to be able to play harpsichord continuo with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Tasmanian and Melbourne symphony orchestras, the Queensland Orchestra and the Melbourne Baroque Orchestra. So I have firsthand experience of playing Baroque music in both the largest and smallest instrumental combinations.
Vivaldi almost always has the orchestra doubling the choir parts, so in this movement, I doubled the soprano with the existing first violin part and the second violin with the existing alto part. The only part that I had to write was the tenor part, which would need to be able to be doubled on viola.
With three given parts, the fourth was just a matter of filling in the harmonies. Following the harmonic vocabulary of the 18th Century, I didn’t really need to make very many decisions, so the work was relatively straight-forward.
By following the information that was given to me in the manuscripts provided, I feel as if I have simply ‘rediscovered’ Agatha’s intended musical lines rather than ‘reconstructing’ them. If you think that you can hear my voice in there, then I have made a mistake! You shouldn’t be able to hear my voice at all.
Filling in the gaps
With the first movement completed, our artistic director Douglas Lawrence (who is also my ‘other half’) and I were very excited. It seemed a pity to perform only two-and-a-half minutes of Agatha’s buoyant and inspired music.
I went on to reconstruct the other two movements for choir and orchestra in the same way. That left the three movements for which I had only a cello and a first violin part. These must be arias for solo voices or duets. My son Jacob was home on a break from his work as a freelance tenor in Switzerland. He did a Masters in Early Music Performance at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, and he was really interested in the reconstruction. He suggested a few changes, and encouraged me to reconstruct the solo movements.
‘Rediscovering’ the melodic line for the soloists was really the same process as with the concerted movements:
1. Establish the harmony
2. Create a harmonic skeleton
3. Fill in the gaps.
I don’t think I would have attempted this without Jacob’s encouragement and assistance.
It’s time to listen
This is an opportunity for Australians to hear something for the first time that no other living person has heard.
In Australia, when we talk about a world premiere, we expect a piece of music composed in Australia. When we talk about an Australian premiere, that’s when people in other countries have heard it first. This is a world premiere in Australia of a piece of music written in Venice 280 years ago. No piece of music by any of the orphans of 18th-Century Venice has been heard by anyone alive today. This has never happened before. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Agatha’s story is about the power of positivity and about overcoming the challenge of perception and prejudice. It reminds us to try to remain free of prejudice, and to respect each other.
I feel sad that this beautiful composition could not be celebrated outside the walls of the PIetà during Agatha’s lifetime, due to the prejudices of the prevailing culture.
I feel tremendously privileged to be able to bring this exciting work to a wider audience. And I hope to make that audience as wide as possible, firstly by touring the work around Victoria, secondly by livestreaming the Melbourne performance, thirdly by recording it and uploading to Spotify, and fourthly by making the score and parts available to others.
The Australian Chamber Choir, directed by douglas Lawrence, will perform Vivaldi’s Gloria, Agatha’s Cantata in Macedon 30 April, Geelong 1 May, and Melbourne 7 May. The final performance will be livestreamed and available on demand. Bookings and full details the ACC website.
Images supplied.
