The Completed First Movement Of Vivaldi’s Gloria

Distance defeated: the first fruit of the Virtual Music Project

The Virtual Music Project has yielded its first fruit – the complete first movement of Vivaldi’s Gloria.

 

You can listen to the first movement (no visuals) click on the link below.
https://soundcloud.com/daniel-harding-90933651/vivaldi-gloria-first-movement

 

Does it replace the finished performance given by a group of musicians live ? No. Does it work as a recreation of a live performance ? No. All the variables of a live rendition – venue acoustics, audience atmosphere, performer nerves, collective energy, the sheer adrenalin drive that comes from knowing that you are performing live, or that this is a recorded take, are absent – you can’t possibly recreate those when everyone is making their own recordings at different times, in different places, under different circumstances. The unified vision of the conductor or director, shaping and nurturing the eventual performance during the rehearsal process, is also missing; apart from directions and suggestions given at the start of the project, before everyone begins making their recordings, there’s absolutely no conductor authority anymore. The only sway I might have, as the notional director of the recording, is at the editing stage – making choices about balance, panning, mixing and so forth. 

So what was the point ?

The process.

Unlike concert performances, or recordings, where the point of the process is the end result – a polished delivery for the benefit of live listeners or a recording to document a finished result – the point of building this virtual Vivaldi was exactly that – the building. At a time when isolation is a governing factor in everyone’s lives, the sense of being involved in a collective endeavour, and taking the responsibility for learning and recording a piece of music has given us purpose, a task to fulfil; something to occupy the hours and, perhaps most importantly, a sense of a deadline, a dwindling concept in the current climate where we often struggle to find structure to our days, or even know what day of the week it is.

Listening back to the recording, I realise that it gains its power not from the live, communal concerted effort that recordings usually have; it gains its power from the fact that it has been brought about when that is that very aspect that is entirely missing. The performers have come together without actually being physically able to – in fact, having been instructed specifically not to do so – and have managed to transcend the walls of their rooms, their homes, defeating the distance between each other to manage to continue making music.

Now on to the next movement…!