Ospedale della Pietà

 

In 1703, at the age of 25, Vivaldi was ordained, and also was appointed Maestro di Violini at the Ospedale della Pietà, one of the orphanages for girls in Venice. He developed a very good team of women violin teachers, which may have been one of the reasons for sacking him in 1709, since he had made himself redundant. Also his personality and lifestyle aggravated some of his superiors. He continued in and out of their employment for much of his career.

In 1713 he was again in their employ, and Gasparini, the Maestro di Cappella, took what proved to be permanent sick leave. For the next six years Vivaldi was responsible for producing new sacred choral music. The Magnificat RV610 appears to have been composed during this period. Three years later he was sacked, but then reinstated as Maestro di Concerti, a promotion. During the ensuing years he spent little time in Venice: from 1718 he spent two years in Mantua, and from 1720-23 he was in Rome. While in Rome he was contracted to compose two new concertos per month for the Pietà for the fee of a sequin per concerto. This he duly did, supplying over the years some 140 concertos on this basis. He was used to sending his manuscripts away, since his publisher at the time was in Amsterdam. Although he was absent, he was important to the economy of the Pietà because the now famous orchestra he had developed, and the music he wrote for it, drew in many rich foreign visitors. They of course made donations.