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Reviewed by:
  • The King's Arrow
  • Elizabeth Bush
Cadnum, Michael The King's Arrow. Viking, 2008 [224p] ISBN 978-0-670-06331-4$16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-12

Early eighteenth-century Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi looks back on his life and tells his audience how his career emerged from a struggle between his mother, who had bargained with God for her newborn son's health by promising he would become a priest, and Antonio and his father, who recognized his passion and ability to be a musician. A compromise was reached in which Vivaldi became a priest, dedicated to the musical education of orphan girls. The tension between spiritual and secular demands makes for an involving story, and Shefelman's smooth telling does it justice. However, in Shefelman's concluding note that sorts fact from fiction, she presents no suggestion, much less evidence, that this romantic path to the priesthood is true. Nor, for that matter, does she support other details proffered as fact in the text, such as Vivaldi's rumored flight from Mass to notate a composition taking shape in his mind. That makes this pretty untenable as an actual biography, but listeners who are content with a broadly imagined, biographically inspired tale may be pleased with both the domestic drama and Tom Shefelman's watercolor tour (in a style reminiscent of Emily Arnold McCully) along the canals [End Page 306] and through the churches and palaces of Venice. A brief glossary, a suggestion for further listening, and a dozen-bar arrangement of "Spring" from The Four Seasons are included.

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