Antonio Vivaldi — Made for Pisendel (RV 205, RV 242) — Notebook

Two concertos in Vivaldi's own hand, marked for a violinist from Dresden. Then pages of your own.

The document

In 1716 the court of Dresden sent one of its violinists, Johann Georg Pisendel, to Venice, where he took lessons from Antonio Vivaldi. Vivaldi later marked several of his concertos fatto per Pisendel: made for Pisendel. Two of those autograph scores are kept today at the Saxon State and University Library in Dresden, and this notebook reproduces them in order: the Concerto in D major, RV 205, complete on sixteen leaves, and the first movement of the Concerto in D minor, RV 242, in an early version, on four.

Inside the notebook

First, a short guide: Venice in 1716; the dedication at the top of the first page, added later in Vivaldi's hand; how to read his score; two hands, Vivaldi's score beside the solo part Pisendel copied out; the concerto before it was printed in Amsterdam, in the set that opens with The Four Seasons; and how the music survived in a cabinet of the Dresden court.

Then the manuscripts: forty pages, each verso facing the recto that follows it, every leaf at the same scale, 80% of its size.

Then the pages are yours: 61 pages of staff paper, ten staves to a page, ruled like the two pages Vivaldi's score leaves empty.

A4, spiral-bound, it lies flat. The scores are oblong, and so is the notebook: it opens the way they do.

Antonio Vivaldi · Concerto in D major, RV 205, and Concerto in D minor, RV 242 (first movement, early version) · autograph scores · 1716–17 · Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, Mus.2389-O-123 and Mus.2389-O-44