mmoa_writes

On Antonio Vivaldi's Gloria:

What you would expect from a piece in D-major, the happy of the Sound of Music, is probably not what you get from the jarring second movement of Vivaldi's Gloria. With just about every note flattened to a natural, the result of his rendition of the angels' tidings to the shepherds is something quite definitely bizarre. The 3/8 timing, slow enough to lure you into it's false promise of a simple, moving choral but fast enough that it keeps you paying attention to every chord, gives the movement a floating, but uncertain quality. Is it going to finish now? Now? Has it finished? What is that note the basses linger on, and now the altos?

The very words themselves, Et in terra, pax... 'and on earth, peace towards all men!', are made to sound almost ironic, as if the angels themselves know they are speaking of an ideal that can never come to pass, or that if it did, would cost humanity - so beloved by their Creator for it's very sinfulness and potential to overcome - something of it's intrinsic nature.

There is something quite modern that can be found in this piece, reminiscent of some of Vaughan's later pieces written around the climax of the Cold War. But then, of course there would be - wars still wage on, people still die wretchedly whilst others live contentedly. Some of us are grudging followers, others willing drones, toiling after the ambitions of the strong and confident, whom we would love to imagine as evil, cynical creatures, but are as mundane in their sins as we are. Et in terra pax... towards all men! How else could such a childish and beautiful hope be expressed in music but through the happiest scale, but with every other note flattened so that it renders the brightness of D-major to shreds, turning it into the sigh of the grown person who will still hope, for all that they know they should not. It is a happy sadness, like the consolation the faithful receives for all that they may well know they hope in a falsehood.

But there is something else that is even more suitable for this sceptical age. There is questioning in the uncertainty - we are told that there will be peace on earth for all, but we, with the composer, are also saying "But when? But how?" at the same time as we join the 'angels' in their prophetic greetings. It is what we want, or rather, what we have been told that we want, the promise of peace, the end of all strife. We are hoping for the great relief but at the same time as we echo the words of hope, we also flatten the sentiment with the questioning of whether it is what we truly want at all.