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Of the some thirty-seven Vivaldi bassoon concertos available in modern edition[1], only a handful are regularly used by teachers. Few are available in adequate performing editions[2] or on recordings. According to Wayne Wilkins' Index of Bassoon Music (The Music Register: Magnolia, Arkansas, 1978, pp. 64-65), fewer than half of the concertos are published in performing editions. Of these, five concertos have been published more than once and five others appear only in Schoenbach's Schirmer edition[3]. While in some cases the neglected concertos rightfully may be ignored because of inferior quality, it may be that habit has kept many bassoonists from delving into the lesser-known works. More to the point, bassoonists and bassoon teachers may be hesitant to experiment with "new" Vivaldi concertos not having the time to really examine the pedagogical merits and difficulties of each piece.
There are numerous thematic catalogues of Vivaldi's works (so many that one requires a concordance to keep track of the various numbering systems), but no teacher's guide to the concertos - a help toward choosing a piece. The teacher may be reduced to offering students the tried and true sequence of concertos over and over, always beginning with the same "easier" introductory Vivaldi and progressing through one or two moderately difficult pieces until reaching the virtuosic pinnacle of one of the C major "tours de force!"
If one's goal is to arrange the thirty-seven in a progressive pedagogical order, which technical criteria are to be examined? These might be divided into two categories: (1) those technical considerations which are unequivocal (such as fingering difficult intervals, rapid passages, complex rhythms, rapid tonguing, and the like) and (2) those musical considerations which may require a particular level of sophistication (such as the working out of slow movements, ornamentation, phrasing, etc.). Certainly, it is likely that a useful teacher's guide to the Vivaldi concertos would be based substantially on unequivocal considerations and less so on abstract interpretive considerations (leaving interpretive considerations up to the individual instructor).
Since the concertos are mature Baroque in style, one presupposes
certain useful practice
methods in preparing to play them. Practicing major and minor
scales and arpeggios would
seem to be the most obvious preparatory endeavor. A distinctive
and seemingly character
istic stylistic feature of Vivaldi's scoring for the bassoon in
these works is the use of the embell
ished bass line, often with either rapid scalar flights or patterns
of fast arpeggiated notes. In
fact, these arpeggios may be identified for their peculiarly Vivaldian
flavor, especially since
they often feature extremely wide interregister leaps of over
an octave (see the example below).
Students typically have the most difficulty with Vivaldi's characteristic broken arpeggiated figures, less with scales. In terms of finger dexterity and fingering technique, the wide interregister leaps and disjunct[4] patterns yield some of the most difficult passages in the concertos. On the average, the Vivaldi concertos are fairly evenly balanced between scalar or conjunct[5] material and disjunct material with a slight predilection for disjunct material (55.5%). The concerto with the least disjunct material was nearly 70% scalar or conjunct while the concerto with the most disjunct material was nearly 75% disjunct.
Measure by measure analysis of the concerto
bassoon parts provided the raw material for a disjunct material
percentage score which was used to prioritize the concertos in
order of least to most disjunct material (see Table: Vivaldi Bassoon
Concertos: A Pedagogical Ordering.). Passages having exceptionally
wide leaps in fast notes were weighted as were passages featuring
rapid scalar runs. The resulting order is progressive in terms
of increasing difficulty based on the amount of disjunct material
contained in each successive bassoon part. The list may meet pedagogical
needs in that it provides the teacher with a technically concrete
means of determining the relative difficulty level of each concerto.
This information may assist the teacher in choosing a series of
pieces that provides a consistently increasing challenge to the
student rather than an uneven fluctuation between exceptionally
difficult and moderately difficult.
David Pierce is double reed teacher at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. His bassoon teachers were Mr. Wilbur Simpson (of the Chicago Symphony) and Prof. Sanford Berry (of the University of Illinois). Dr. Pierce's dissertation entitled, "The Bassoon in the Woodwind Quintet: Performance and Technical Demands and Their Solutions," is available through University Microfilms (order # DA8701591).
ENDNOTES
1 . Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi published by Edizioni Ricordi, Milan. As Richard Seidler points out in his definitive research, "The Bassoon Concertos of Antonio Vivaldi," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University, 1974, there are two incomplete bassoon concertos which remain unpublished.
2. One such edition is the beautifully prepared twovolume set of ten concertos edited by Sol Schoenbach and published by G. Schirmer, New York.
3. Ten Bassoon Concertos in two volumes. G. Schirmer, New York.
4. Disjunct is defined here as melodic intervals greater than a semi- or whole tone.
5. Conjunct is defined here as melodic
intervals of a semi- or whole tone.