Vivaldi. The world's most forgetful composer? Why on earth have so many of his manuscripts been turning up in obscure collections across the British Isles in the last couple of months? In October, it was a flute concerto called Il Gran Mogol ("The Great Mogul", if my Italian's up to snuff) discovered in the Marquesses of Lothian's family papers in Edinburgh, and this month, it's a couple of violin sonatas in a 180-page portfolio donated to the Foundling Museum in London, pieces that were probably originally written for amateurs, which could be heard for the first time in 270 years, played by La Serenissima in Liverpool on Sunday.
Something's going on. It's as if Vivaldi deliberately left some of his original manuscripts around locations in Britain as part of a deliberate attempt to keep posterity interested in his music, creating a posthumous treasure hunt that would take more than two and a half centuries to solve. There must be more out there. The Gran Mogol concerto was one of a set of four, all previously thought lost, so the other three must be lurking in libraries and private collections somewhere. And given the Vivaldi hit rate over the last few weeks, I reckon it's worth us all checking our lofts. Who knows what Antonio and his successors might have left in attics from Stoke to Southwold, from Bo'ness to Bournemouth? Even if you haven't got a couple of Scottish marquesses in your family, you too could be sitting on some Vivaldian treasure.
