Don Satz responding to Philip Peters responding to Don:

>>>But for me, Vivaldi offers mediocre melodies...
>>
>>Bach thought quite differently about Vivaldi's melodies, he even used a
>>number of them in his own work.
>
>Beethoven took a next-to-nothing theme of Diabelli's and created a
>masterpiece.  Does this necessarily mean that Beethoven thought highly
>of the Diabelli theme?  There can be a large number of reasons why one
>composer borrows from another.  I do wonder if we have any documented
>quotes from Bach relating to his opinion of Vivaldi.

Good point.  But it's also pretty certain that Bach borrowed from
Vivaldi in order to learn stuff (he transcribed several concerti - BY
HAND, rather than by MIDI), and it's also quite clear that he owned a
number of Vivaldi scores.  Remember, at that time actually knowing music
or obtaining music outside your own little bailiwick was a big effin'
deal.  No internet ordering, for instance, and your town might not have
a music library or a music store.  Furthermore, scores were expensive,
and Bach had expenses - a wife and all those kids, if nothing else.  Bach
*invested* in Vivaldi.

Forkel, Bach's first major biographer, who had access at least to CPE
Bach, writes:

   John Sebastian Bach's first attempts at composition were,
   like all first attempts, defective.  Without any instruction
   to lead him into the way which might gradually have conducted
   him from step to step, he was obliged, like all those who
   enter on such a career without a guide, to do at first as
   well as he could.  To run or leap up and down the instrument,
   to take both hands as full as all the five fingers will allow,
   and to proceed in this wild manner till they by chance find
   a resting place are the arts which all beginners have in
   common with each other.  They can therefore be only "finger
   composers" (or "clavier hussars," as Bach, in his riper years,
   used to call them); that is, they must let their fingers first
   play for them what they are to write, instead of writing for
   the fingers what they shall play.  But Bach did not long
   follow this course.  He soon began to feel that the eternal
   running and leaping led to nothing; that there must be order,
   connection, and proportion in the thoughts; and that, to
   attain such objects, some kind of guide was necessary.
   Vivaldi's Concertos for the violin, which were then just
   published, served him for such a guide.  He so often heard
   them praised as admirable compositions that he conceived the
   happy idea of arranging them all for his clavier.  He studied
   the chain of ideas, their relation to each other, the variations
   of the modulations, and many other particulars.  The change
   necessary to be made in the ideas and passages composed for
   the violin, but not suitable to the clavier, taught him to
   think musically; so that after his labor was completed, he
   no longer needed to expect his ideas from his fingers, but
   could derive them from his own fancy.

As for a quote, Bach wrote only when business demanded it.  Thus, his
remarks about music come exclusively from anecdotes told by the family,
students, and, I think, people who heard him play.

Now, no one should think that Bach was necessarily right in his high
regard for Vivaldi.  In other words, if I disliked Vivaldi's music (on
the contrary, I love Vivaldi's music, probably as much as Don can't stand
it), knowing that Bach respected it wouldn't convert me, though it might
give me pause.  I do find it a bit odd, however, to hear that Vivaldi's
music is "emotionally superficial." I think that's a judgment colored
by expectations set up by Beethoven and Wagner.  I'm pretty certain
that few of us hear Baroque music as its first audience did.  We may
have lost the emotional key, as the Nineteenth Century did for Mozart -
regarded generally then as a minor master.  Indeed, George Bernard Shaw
wrote an essay called "Tuneful Little Ditties?" during the Mozart centenary
- an essay which did much to usher in our modern appreciation of this
composer.

At any rate, as an emotionally shallow guy myself, I find that Vivaldi
suits me.  The variety and invention he gets within a narrow emotional
range never cease to amaze me.

Steve Schwartz