The program notes are written by Rena Roussin, Musicologist-in-Residence.

At a glance and on the surface, there might seem to be little in common between Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi, Renaissance artist and polymath Leonardo da Vinci, and contemporary composer Jocelyn Hagen. And yet, as tonight’s concert of Vivaldi’s Gloria and Hagen’s The Notebooks of Leonardo do Vinci demonstrates, there are numerous connections between these three seemingly disparate figures. Visionaries, the title of tonight’s concert, encapsulates many of these connections. All three creative artists push the boundaries of their chosen art forms; invite us to think deeply and reflectively on life, art, and creativity; and often use simple and direct musical or written language to communicate extraordinarily complex insights and ideas about music. 

Exempting The Four Seasons, Vivaldi’s Gloria is probably the composer’s best-known work. A cantata-mass that sets the Latin “Gloria” text of Catholic liturgy, Vivaldi’s setting of the text is often celebrated as one of the most joyous and uplifting pieces of sacred choral music in the repertoire. Its broader context and musical language also demonstrate Vivaldi as a visionary in the fields of music, education, and theology. Ordained as a priest in 1703, the composer also worked as a violin teacher at and composed for the ensembles of his native Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for girls that primarily housed the daughters of Venetian noblemen and their mistresses. The ‘anonymous’ donations of the girls’ fathers ensured the children’s proper upbringing and a particularly rich education in music and the arts. The Gloria was premiered by the Ospedale’s students and performed across Europe. In addition to highlighting Vivaldi’s work as a teacher (and notably, even as an internationally recognized and celebrated composer, Vivaldi continued work as an educator at the orphanage until a year before his death), the Gloria also highlights his musical ingenuity. The piece draws on and fuses techniques and practices associated with sacred music, opera, and the concerto—the three genres in which Vivaldi made his primary musical contributions and greatest innovations.

The famed painter of Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, the Italian Renaissance artist and polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is also well-known for his legendary journaling habit. He routinely kept notebooks that contain visionary insights across art, anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, palaeontology, and philosophy. He detailed his thoughts and ideas in a daily writing and sketching practice, which he maintained from age 26 until his death, filling in the process approximately 50 notebooks that span over 20,000 pages, and which together form an extraordinary display of virtuosic intellect. Published after da Vinci’s own lifetime, the notebooks can be explored online, and selections of them are routinely displayed as museum exhibits. American composer Jocelyn Hagen encountered the notebooks in 2016 at one such exhibit, and was inspired to work towards a 2019 musical piece to commemorate the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death, resulting in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. 

In contrast to Vivaldi’s well-known cantata, Hagen’s multimedia symphony is perhaps not as familiar to contemporary audiences, but is equally a visionary, innovative piece that deserves to have its own place in music history. Exploring selections from the notebooks through text, music, and film, the creative process of the piece involved four years of brainstorming, composition, collaboration across 23 commissioning companies. In addition to Hagen’s libretto and music, the multimedia symphony features film by Isaac Gale, animation by Joseph Midthun, and MUSÉIK software from Ion Concert Media. In contrast to the popular custom of showing films with live orchestra (as, for instance, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra often does), which requires orchestral musicians to sync their performance perfectly to a film’s soundtrack, MUSÉIK technology lets music guide the film. Through both the technology and the work of a video engineer, the accompanying film of The Notebooks syncs to the orchestra’s and choir’s performance, and is capable of following cues from the conductor. This ensures that specific images are connected to, and last for the full duration of, specific moments of music and text, so that—in Hagen’s own words— “music serves as the foundation of the film instead of it functioning as purely a supporting musical soundtrack.” Furthermore, through syncing the video to music rather than the other way around, we are able more readily to appreciate the creativity of the performing musicians: after all, one of the most exciting realities of live music is that no two performances of a piece are ever perfectly identical. 

Hagen deserves her own acknowledgment as an innovative musical visionary. Yet she has also spoken publicly about her hope that The Notebooks will inspire listeners to reflect on their own unique creativity, curiosity, and intellect, as well as on what we individually and collectively hope to create in this world. Vivaldi’s piece further invites us into reflection, consideration, and a sense of wonder. Together, the two pieces function as a dialogue; they remind us to look and listen more closely at the world and all that is in it, and perhaps even to envision it anew.  

—Rena Roussin, Musicologist-in-Residence