In the middle of the 20th century, Antonio Vivaldi's corpus of work was meticulously put back together.
In the middle of the 20th century, Antonio Vivaldi's corpus of work was meticulously put back together. Nearly all of Vivaldi's compositions were lost by 1926. Alberto Gentili, a musicologist at Turin University, set out on a ten-year quest to find the missing pages and arrange them in the correct sequence after receiving a box of unfinished, unsorted pages from hundreds of Vivaldi's pieces. The fourteen volumes of Vivaldi's books that were previously believed to have been lost during the Napoleonic War were found in a Piedmont monastery in 1926 by scholars. More than 100 vocal works and the collection of Grand Duke Durazzo's descendants, who bought the abbey complex in the 18th century, contain some of the series' missing motifs. In the end, 319 complete Antonio Vivaldi pieces that had been misplaced for almost two centuries were discovered.
Two psalm arrangements by Vivaldi, Nisi Dominus (RV 803, in eight movements), and Dixit Dominus, have recently been rediscovered (RV 807, in eleven movements). The Australian academic Janice Stockigt recognized these in 2003 and 2005, respectively. "Perhaps the greatest nonoperatic composition from Vivaldi's pen to come to light since the 1920s," said Vivaldi researcher Michael Talbot of RV 807. The harpsichordist and conductor Ondrej Macek uncovered the previously lost opera Argippo (RV 697) by Vivaldi in 2006. His Hofmusici orchestra gave the opera its first performance since 1730 at Prague Castle on May 3, 2008.
Antonio Vivaldi, a relatively unknown composer whose impact had long since been recognized but whose music had all but vanished, made a new public premiere with the eruption of new material. It was as though Antonio Vivaldi had a very brief, extraordinarily fruitful career after having been born a second time. Antonio Vivaldi was regarded by academics as one of the finest and most important classical artists in history by the 1950s, but the hearing public still viewed him as a novel, enigmatic, and strange. His work had a special position in the canon. No other composer of comparable notoriety has gone through that type of rebirth, and it is improbable that any would in the future.