Anna Maria della Pieta (1696-1782) was a famous Italian violinist for most of the eighteenth century. Probably the child of a sex worker, she grew up in, and remained at, Ospedale della Pieta, the famous Venetian orphanage where Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was her teacher.
And that is the starting point for Harriet Constable’s debut novel which published last month. Her Anna Maria is totally absorbed in her violin with which her relationship is almost erotic from the age of eight when she first discovers the instrument’s sound and shape. Vivaldi, never named, and always referred to as “her teacher”, spots her extraordinary talent almost immediately. Her single minded focus and ambition costs her almost everything, including two important friendships as she grows up. I loved the account of her being taken, by Vivaldi, to a luthier to choose her own violin and the depiction of eighteenth century Venice is evocatively convincing.
The Anna Maria we meet here is also richly, and fascinatingly synaesthetic, perceiving every sound she makes, or hears, in a panoply of colour. Once the “colours come” she can play almost anything although she also works indefatigably to achieve the excellence she wants. At the same time, she is obliged to deal with the nuns who run the Ospedale strictly and without kindness. There’s a lot of physical punishment. Is it really true that every baby posted through that famous hole in the wall was branded with a P? They and Vivaldi don’t always see eye to eye although the music, with his orchestra and soloists, brings in money for the institution which pleases the governors.
So what, I wonder, was Vivaldi really like? He was relatively young and spent a lot of time alone with nubile teenage girls. Historically, he took one of them (not Anna Maria) away on tour to Vienna and lived with her, although nobody knows exactly how things were between them. One of the Ospedale girls becomes pregnant in the novel and the details are appalling although we are left to speculate about how she got into this situation. Anna Maria has a volatile relationship with “her teacher” and there are often ambiguous sexual undertones.
More interesting, perhaps, is Constable’s idea that the musically bright girls he worked with were all composing music as well. Could he have passed off some of their work as his own? It would, perhaps, explain how he managed to produce such an enormous output. In this novel, the idea for the Four Seasons and most of the work on it comes from Anna Maria, uncredited – to her fury.
Thus, this is also very much a feminist novel. As Vivaldi points out sneeringly, women are not taken seriously as composers in the eighteenth century. Moreover they have few choices. Any girl who is dropped from Vivaldi’s orchestra is ruthlessly “sold” off by the Ospedale for marriage, a fate not that far from the prostitution which was, presumably, the lot of many of their hapless mothers. Anna Maria passionately wants equality, as well as recognition for her musical ability, as she grapples with her conscience (she behaves very badly several times) and the talent which makes her different from everyone else.
The Instrumentalist is an intriguing novel, strong on story telling and sensuously written. I was particularly interested because I’m an amateur violinist which means that, in a tiny way, I feel the instrument in my hands as Anna Maria does. But, of course, you don’t need ever to have touched a violin to enjoy this.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Atlantic by Luke Jennings
