During my father’s absence, I was able to go to the maestro’s house more often. Zia Gianna—my father’s elder sister—had become a very wealthy widow upon the death of her much older husband some years ago. She had inherited a huge palazzo and estate in Mantua, and so far as I knew spent most of her time skulking about the place, upset that she lived there rather than in the fashionable city of Venice. As such, she scarcely paid me any attention, preferring instead to spend her time with her Venetian friends at parties, the opera, or visiting the shops at the Rialto. Indeed, she was so seldom actually present in our palazzo that I thought my father could have saved himself the trouble of sending for her at all.
The lessons were pure joy. Each day I could feel my fingers regaining their old strength and suppleness. Such were my enthusiasm, dedication, and—perhaps—talent, that I was soon able to play any piece of music Vivaldi put in front of me at first glance. However, sensing the fast progress I was making, the maestro began giving me much more difficult music—often his own compositions, along with those of others. He also took to instructing me on points of composition and the theory behind it; how music was and should be put together.
“See here,” he said, while we were discussing phrasing one afternoon. “All music must return to where it began—the root of the scale, no?” Picking up his own violin, he played a quick C-major scale, upward and down again. “It always moves back to the beginning. If I were to begin the scale but then stop on the fourth note”—he paused, moving quickly up through the first four notes and then abruptly stopping—“it feels incomplete, and the listener is unsettled.”
I nodded.
“The same is true of a piece of music, be it melody or harmony. This here, for instance”—he pointed with his bow to the sheet of music, a sonata by the old master Corelli—“if I play it like this…” He began to play the first bars of the sonata, then stopped at a random point, though he executed a customary rallentando before stopping. “It simply does not feel right, because I did not end on the tonic chord. Even those who have no understanding of music would feel that this is wrong and somehow incomplete. And again, the listener is unsettled.”
“Yes, completely,” I answered. Despite slowing as he reached his stopping point, it still had not felt final. It had put me almost physically off balance, a feeling not unlike reaching for the back of a chair to steady yourself, only to find the chair was much farther away than you thought.
He smiled, pleased I had grasped his point. “There are rules by which music must abide, even when you are not aware of them. Without such rules, it would be chaos, and one cannot convey much of anything in chaos. This is why you must consider more carefully which notes the music is moving toward, so that you may phrase the melody in a more meaningful way.”
I spent much of the summer thus at the maestro’s house, playing and listening and learning from a teacher whom I knew was second to none. Vivaldi was always pleased to see me, to hear me play, to give me a new piece of music. I thought that if I could spend my entire life this way—living, it seemed, always inside a song—I would be perfectly, absolutely content; happy, even, and would never ask for anything more.
* * *
One day in early September, I arrived at the Red Priest’s house in a melancholy state: my father was due back in the next day or two. And almost as if he had known my spirits would be down, Vivaldi had something a bit different planned.
“Come in, come in,” he said when I opened the door. “I have been waiting for you. I need your assistance.”
My eyebrows rose. “My assistance?”
He nodded. “Here.” He gestured to two music stands he had placed side by side.
I stepped closer and examined the sheets of music on them. It was a largo, a slow movement, for two solo violins.
Vivaldi moved to stand beside me, and when I turned to face him I saw his violin was already in his hand. “It is something I have been working on,” he explained. “A concerto for two violins, in A minor, as you can see. I have heard this movement in my head for some time now, but I need to hear it aloud, with both parts played together.” He smiled. “We shall have to imagine the rest of the orchestra, however.”
“Are you sure you want me to play this?” I asked incredulously. “I am not sure if I—”
He interrupted, shaking his head vehemently. “You must not doubt yourself, Adriana,” he said. “You are more than capable of playing this.” He paused. “I need you to play it.”
I had no idea what to say. I hesitated briefly before taking my violin and bow from the case and setting the instrument into position. I took my place, glancing at the maestro, awaiting his signal to begin. With a single brisk nod, we played the opening together: a series of simple unison notes. At another quick nod from Vivaldi, I took the first violin part, beginning the beautiful cantabile melody that seemed to drift effortlessly from the strings of my violin, almost like falling snow. After another four measures, Vivaldi came in, echoing what I had just played. His next measure consisted of a long F, and from there the melody tumbled into another gentle cascade of notes. I came in above him, on a high B flat, and from there our respective lines of music twined around each other in a tightly and inextricably bound duet.
I kept my eyes on the music, fearful of making a mistake, of spoiling this perfect tapestry of sound that we were creating; yet even so I could sense that every now and then Vivaldi would take his gaze from his own score and watch me.
Dio mio, this is beautiful, more beautiful than anything I have ever heard. Dimly I realized that I had stopped breathing for a moment.
The long strands of notes continued on, entwining and embracing one another like lovers, rising and falling like a sigh, like a breath. They fit together so perfectly that it did not seem as though Vivaldi could have written it; rather, he must have found it, fully formed; must have plucked this exquisite music from thin air, from some enormous body of music that already existed around us, audible only to those who sought it.
The tenderness of the minor melodies was so heart-wrenching, so painfully beautiful, as to make playing it almost terrifyingly intimate, as if in doing so I was seeing the maestro’s naked soul, and he could see mine. I shivered slightly, pressing the feelings of fear and exposure into the bow hairs, the strings; let it bleed into the music.
As we neared the end of the movement, I could see that the last few measures were simply a repetition of the chords at the beginning. As we entered those final measures, I tore my eyes from the music and turned to look at Vivaldi, only to find his warm, dark eyes already seeking mine as we ended the piece together in perfect unison.
We stood, eyes locked, until the last traces of the music faded completely and we were only ourselves again, but somehow not quite the same as we had been only minutes before.
Finally he lowered his instrument, and, exhaling shakily, I did the same. Breaking the loud silence that always seems to follow a powerful piece of music, he said, keeping his eyes on mine, “It is just as I have always said. You play the music, Adriana, not just some notes on a page, but something far greater.”
“I…” I did not know what to say, nor could I bear his gaze any longer. I looked down at the floor. “Surely I…”
He did not seem to hear my barely formed protests. My heart quickened as he stepped closer, reaching out and placing a hand gently beneath my chin, tilting my face to meet his eyes again. “It is as if you were able to read my thoughts, to know what I was feeling as I wrote this…” He trailed off, and slowly, carefully, his hand began tracing the line of my jawbone, caressing the curve of my cheek.
I was frozen, unable to move, unwilling to do so. Unthinkingly, I closed my eyes and leaned ever so slightly into his touch, into the feverish heat of where his skin met mine. He drew nearer to me, the cloth of our clothing whispering as it brushed together, and his fingers trailed lightly down my neck, resting at the nape, drawing me gently toward him. Our lips were almost touching. I could feel his breath caressing my skin as I inhaled his scent. I could hear his heart beating, or was that my own? My existence shrank down to the pounding in my ears, and his lips, just a hairsbreadth from mine.
Some part of me knew I could close the distance between us with little more than a breath. Instead I waited there for him, suspended, wanting the tide to draw me under or cast me out to sea. I felt certain, somehow, that I was going to drown.
Suddenly, he pulled back and moved away, putting several long paces between us. “I am sorry,” he said, looking away and running his fingers through his hair. “I should not have—”
“No, no,” I assured him. “I—” I broke off, not having the slightest idea of what I meant to say next. That I liked his touch? That I wished he had continued? That I wanted him to kiss me?
Did I?
A heavy, uncomfortable silence stretched between us, and I felt as if it were stifling me, leaving me alone, too alone, with my thoughts.
Finally Vivaldi spoke. “Perhaps you should go,” he said, still not looking at me. “I do not think…” He trailed off awkwardly.
Struggling to find my voice, I nodded. “Yes, I believe you are right,” I said, putting my violin and bow back in their case. I walked quickly to the door, stopping just as I reached it. “Shall we say … three days hence, at the same time?” I ventured. Vivaldi nodded in response. With that, I took my leave, only to spend the rest of that day—and the next, and the one after—trying to understand what, exactly, had happened.