I feel compelled to join Mr. Satz's camp on the issue of Bach's
appreciation of Vivaldi: I don't think it is necessary or valid, when
evaluating Vivaldi, to take into account Bach's appropriations of certain
stylistic elements of the Red Priest's music.

Without meaning to denegrate Vivaldi, one of the signs of great
compositional ability is to take musical material which, on its own, seems
rather lackluster and transform it into something better than the sum of
its parts.  Of course, if one wants to borrow musical ideas from lofty
sources, then feel free to do so!  Composers, however, have long turned to
musical sources of decidedly limited quality or breadth to produce truly
inspired works.  Bartok, Vaughn Williams, Stravinsky and many others are
famous for using folk tunes in their music, but this does not necessarily
mean that the folk sources themselves are great works of art.  Take Les
Noces by Stravinsky or the last movement of Bartok's Divertimento: both
clearly owe something to folk music, but they each transcend their sources.

There is also the famous example of Beethoven's 5th Symphony: great piece,
Ludwig, but that first movement melody sure warn't written by no Irving
Berlin!

Of course, there are also numerous examples of composers turning to equally
great (or even surpassingly great) sources for inspiration.  Brahms,
Hindemith, and countless (or very large numbers of) others have done it.

My point is that the mere fact that Bach was influenced by Vivaldi does
not -- or at least should not -- change the way we view the quality of
Vivaldi's music.  Vivaldi's work should stand or fall on its own merits,
not the merits of music that appropriates certain of its elements.  I must
admit that the idea of using Bach's transcriptions of works by Vivaldi as
support for Vivaldi's greatness seems to me rather like pulling yourself up
by your own bootstraps -- or perhaps by someone else's!  As a side note,
for an interesting point of view on this author-source relationship, I
recommend the works of the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges -- he has
some very intriguing opinions on the subject.  In particular, his story
"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" is illuminating, as are some of his
essays.

Well, those are my opinions, and you can have 'em.  I've tried to be
equitable, even though I must admit that I've never been much of a fan
of Vivaldi.  That may change!

everitt clark
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