Venice in the 18th century. A charismatic, mercurial violinist with flaming red hair becomes the musical director of the Ospedale della Pietà, where he teaches talented orphan girls and composes his majestic music. We all know Vivaldi; it is time we learn another name.
The Instrumentalist is the enchanting story of Anna Maria della Pietà, a musical prodigy, deposited at the orphanage as a newborn in 1696. Anna Maria existed, she lived her entire life in the orphanage, was taught by Vivaldi, and became one of the most celebrated violinists of her generation. How did her fierce ambition and prodigious talent influence the Red Priest?
Harriet Constable reimagines the forgotten story of the remarkable Anna Maria della Pietà in her lyrical debut novel, The Instrumentalist.
What was the most challenging part of writing your first novel?
I knew it could be difficult to bring these girls to life in a way that felt as exciting and alive as Venice was in 1704, especially as so much of women’s history is missing. I was able to discover some remarkable things about my lead character Anna Maria from books and articles, but I couldn’t find out how it felt to be her – what it felt like to play, to perform, to create. My solution was to tag the plot to the truth as much as possible but to imagine into the gaps. I spent a month in Venice, immersing myself in Anna Maria’s world to try and bring it into vivid reality. Because of my background in documentary filmmaking, and because I have a visual mind, I tried to give everything a cinematic feel. I wanted to plunge my readers into 18th century Venice at every possible opportunity, sweeping with a gull from the fish market across the terracotta roofs and into the stifling rooms of the Pietà; standing on the cracked roof with Anna Maria as the colours of her mind rise with the sounds of the city.
How did your musical training in flute and piano prepare you to capture the lyrical quality of performing and composing in the novel?
I grew up in a musical family. My mum is a classically trained musician; I play the piano and flute and I sing. The music of the greats, Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, was the soundtrack to my upbringing. So, when I discovered that Vivaldi had taught an all-female orchestra who lived in an orphanage for his entire career, I was instantly gripped. These women and girls were remarkable musicians. They were vital to the development of Vivaldi’s music, and yet I’d never heard of them. I knew I would do everything in my power to tell their story.
Though I’ve always been deeply passionate about music I hadn’t written about it before. My work as a journalist has focused on the untold true stories of remarkable people, especially women, so this was a leap into the unknown for me. And yet, when I began to play with how to write Anna Maria’s experiences of performing and creating music it felt very natural. The colours began pouring out. The chance to let my imagination run wild was delicious, irresistible. I was finally able to give words to the emotions I have when I listen to this gorgeous music.
Image: Maxmarwiki, CC BY-SA 4.0
As I began reading the book I was struck by the rhythm of your words. There is a beautiful cadence that seems to mirror the act of composing with letters instead of notes. As an author who is also a musician, how do meter and modulation influence your writing?
The Irish poet John O’Donohue once said, “music is what language would love to be if it could.” I wanted to make the language sing when Anna Maria is playing and performing, to make it the closest thing to actual music that it could be.
To create the musical scenes in the book I would often play certain pieces of music and write in time to them. The scene at the start of chapter 2 when Anna Maria first hears Vivaldi playing his violin, for instance, can be read in time with third movement from Summer from The Four Seasons. The music I listened to really influenced how I wrote. If I needed a scene to be slow and lamenting, I’d listen to On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter, if I needed it to be bright and exciting I’d listen to something like Stravinski’s Firebird Suite.
I also wanted to create a beat that ran through the book. I set the metronome ticking from the first line with the Maragona bell toll. That beat continues throughout the book: from fingernails drumming on the desks, to rhythmic clap of the audience, to the tap, tap, tap of Anna Maria’s heart.
What inspired Anna Maria della Pietà’s ability to hear in color?
I knew there was a danger of frightening some people off with a book where classical music runs through the pages. I needed to find a way to express the music and the beauty of Ann Maria’s creative mind that felt welcoming and playful and joyous. I wanted anyone to relish it, regardless of whether they have a musical background or not.
In my research I met some musicians who have synaesthesia, but many more who simply used colour words to describe sound. They’d say things like, ‘this section feels very yellow,’ or ‘can we make that more blue,’ and I’d know they meant warmer, brighter, or cooler, softer, more mellow. Colour is emotive; music is emotive. I thought it would be a treat to read if we could visualise the music. I loved the idea of watching it rise above the city, pour out of the Pietà windows, seep into the corridors.
I also love colour generally. My home is decorated in pinks and greens and blues. I think it all stems back to my gran, Helen Urwin, who was very artistic and taught me to celebrate and play with colour. It felt natural to write about music in this way, and a tiny nod to her – to all the ways that my gran encouraged my creativity.
Had you been to Venice before deciding to write the book? What was your research process to capture 18th century Venice in vivid detail?
I had never been to Venice before I discovered this story, and for much of the time I was researching I couldn’t go because of the pandemic. Finally in January 2022 I got to go. Arriving was like stepping onto set. In many ways Venice hasn’t changed since Anna Maria’s time: I was plunged back into the 18th century. I spent a month living in Venice, exploring the city, thinking of it as a place that moves and flows like the music itself. I tried to totally immerse myself into Anna Maria’s mind. I’d run around the labyrinthine streets blasting The Four Seasons on my headphones. I interviewed students at the Conservatory of Music and went to concerts at the La Fenice. I stood at the hole in the wall where the mothers laid their babies and whispered goodbye. I wanted to make Venice its own character in the book, to make it live and breathe.
The research didn’t end when I returned to London. I spent time studying luthiers making violins and interviewed maestro teachers and prodigy students. I even took violin lessons, although I quickly realised it was going to take too long to get what I needed that way. I ended up paying my violin teacher to come and play for me, while I sat and listened like some fabulous duke.
I was intrigued by your choice to refer to Anna Maria della Pietà as a maestro and not the feminine, maestra. Can you explain your thoughts around your decision to have the superlative take precedence over gender?
In The Instrumentalist Anna Maria is a girl and Vivaldi is a man. It is the 18th century – a male dominated world. From purely a gender perspective, Vivaldi will always have the power in this story.
But both Anna Maria and Vivaldi are remarkable musicians, and music is power in the Republic. The male/female dichotomy is challenged by Anna Maria and Vivaldi’s talent: for their instruments, for performance and for composition. Music becomes an equaliser. We start to ask, does Vivaldi, the maestro, have the power, with all his knowledge and experience and flare? Or does Anna Maria, the prodigy, have the power, this shining star whose talent threatens to eclipse her teacher’s? Because Anna Maria is so determined and so brilliant she does not simply want to be the greatest female musician in the world, she wants to be the greatest musician in the world. The women and girls of the Pietà were said to be too intelligent to marry by the men of Venice. I realised they were just well educated enough to understand all that they were capable of, and yet all they could not have. I wanted the book to be about power, not gender. And so, Anna Maria is determined to become a maestro.
Is it your hope that the book will change our perception of the orphaned musicians and their contribution to Vivaldi’s oeuvre?
Absolutely. The women and girls of the Pietà were fundamental to the explosion of a whole new form of music – the concerto. This music was so exciting, so invigorating, so different it literally frightened some audiences. Imagine being there! Imagine being part of it! We’re still discovering just how remarkable these musicians were. We know some of the girls were composers in their own right, and that many of them were copyists, transcribing work for Vivaldi. We know that Anna Maria composed her own cadenzas, and that she was known throughout Europe to be the greatest musician of the 18th century. She is said to have eclipsed even the great Giuseppe Tartini. Just think what that would have taken – to be an orphan, posted through a wall, growing up in this brutal orphanage with no parents, no love, and then managing to achieve all that she did. It’s astonishing. It’s possible the women and girls even helped Vivaldi compose in some way. We know for certain that their talent provided this breeding ground to test ideas with. Without a collection of disabled and disfigured female orphans we would not have some of the most famous pieces of classical music in the world today. History is so much more colourful, nuanced, inspiring than we know.
Cover Image: Jacopo Guarana’s fresco ‘Concert of the Putte’ (1776-77). Photo by Marica S.Tacconi, CC BY-SA
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