I really enjoyed the ARC of Playing by Heart. You bring to
life the lives of remarkable women, lives I imagined poorly in the past because
not much is known except for the more famous ones like Mozart’s sister.
I’ve not heard of
many women composers. Do you think there are more of these whose music is lost
to history? Did you uncover any more gems?
Oh, yes, there have been many little-known but highly
accomplished women composers through the years. A number of them are listed in
one of the first books I consulted on the subject: Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950, edited by
Jane Bowers and Judith Tick. I recently discovered a newer book you may also
find of interest: Sounds and Sweet Airs:
The Forgotten Women of Classical Music by Anna Beer. Interestingly, neither
book mentions Maria Teresa Agnesi, the composer who inspired my main character.
I include a reference in the Author’s Note to Playing by Heart that does contain information about Agnesi: the
8-volume work Women Composers: Music
through the Ages edited by Martha Furman Schleifer and Sylvia Glickman.
For specific examples, I suggest you look at the list of “10
Female Composers You Should Know” put together by BBC Music Magazine
(
http://www.classical-music.com/article/10-female-composers-you-should-know
) It includes two female composers who lived in the shadow of famous male relatives,
Fanny Mendolssohn, sister of Felix, and Clara Schumann, wife of Robert.
I read that you went
to Italy for your research. Were you able to see the Agnesi villa? Or a
representative one?
I have been to Italy several times, but I didn’t decide to
write Playing by Heart until after my last visit. So, no, I didn’t
research the novel there. Fortunately, I have been to Milan and seen the Duomo,
so I feel I have a sense of the city. I was also able to see photographs and
drawings of some of the buildings mentioned in the novel that I haven’t visited
in person. I used those images as well as written descriptions to imagine what
the Agnesi villa and the other palazzos referred to in the novel must have been
like. Unfortunately, the actual Agnesi villa in Milan was destroyed during
World War II.
Please tell us
something about the class system in that period. I was fascinated at how hungry
for a title the story-father, Salvini, was, and how easily he could become a
nobleman. He clearly had the wealth, which I noted in your descriptions of their
home, and their ability to hire tutors, carriage drivers, cooks, etc. Did it
ever occur to Salvini that his highly educated daughters could become servants
as well?
This topic interests
me because India is a very class and caste conscious society and marriage above
or below one’s station is considered highly inappropriate.
As I understand it, even if Salvini had not become a
nobleman, his daughters would never have become servants. At that time in the
Duchy of Milan, daughters from wealthy households had only two acceptable
“career paths” as it were: marriage or the convent. (There’s an old Italian
saying to that effect, though I can’t quite recall the phrasing of it now.) Any
other choice, including getting a job, would have been considered scandalous. So,
if Salvini hadn’t been a nobleman, he would have arranged for his daughters to marry
men of the merchant class, or sent them to a convent. I believe the girls could
possibly even have married minor noblemen. Maria Teresa Agnesi, the composer
who inspired my character, is an example of this. She married a minor nobleman
before her father’s nobility was officially recognized, and as far as I know,
that fact didn’t cause any scandal.
We see the world
through Emilia’s eyes. How did you develop her voice? Did you hear it clearly
from the beginning or did you have to hone it? I would enjoy hearing your
process on developing voice.
Developing Emilia’s voice was a great challenge indeed! I
wanted her language to sound appropriate to the time, place, and her station in
life. However, I didn’t want the voice to be off-putting for modern readers,
especially teens. The challenge was compounded by the fact that Emilia’s native
language is Italian and not English.
I’m a fan of historical fiction, so rereading some of my
all-time favorites, including Pride and
Prejudice, helped me tune into the voice I wanted to achieve, as did
reading excerpts from several published travel journals written around that time.
Since the story is in first person, I tried very hard to focus on how my
character viewed her world. She’s a composer and lyricist, so I felt her voice
would be somewhat poetic and strived for that in my writing. With the help of
my critique group and the etymology section of the Oxford English Dictionary, I weeded out any words or phrases that weren’t
appropriate to the time. I also interspersed Italian words to occasionally
remind the reader that my character was actually thinking and speaking in
Italian and not English.
This was a very
Catholic book in that you depict the very sacramental nature of the lives they
led, praying the rosary, hearing Mass, the artwork in their home, composing
music for the glory of God, etc. It was refreshing to read a book wherein the
religion of the characters isn’t ignored and actually plays an important role
in the plot. How did you go about making these choices?
 |
Carmela holding her book in her hand
for the very first time! |
I did lots of research related to life in general during the
Enlightenment, and religious practices in particular. One book was of immense
help to me: The World of Maria Gaetana
Agnesi, Mathematician of God, by Massimo Mazzotti. The book reveals a great
deal about the practice of Catholicism in the Duchy of Milan at that time and
especially the role it played in Maria Gaetana Agnesi’s life and family. The
Salvini household in Playing by Heart
is modeled on hers.
I especially enjoyed
the lack of 21st century anachronisms. Your story people ring true to their
time and place. Is this something you had to work hard at, given the customs
and mores of 18th century Milan?
Definitely. One of my pet peeves when I read historical
fiction is when the characters’ actions and attitudes aren’t true to the time
and setting. I think being the daughter of Italian immigrants who came from a
small rural village was a great help. Despite being born in the 20th
century, my parents grew up without electricity or telephones. My mother told
me stories of doing laundry in a stream, cooking meals in a fireplace, and
taking bread to be baked in the village baker’s oven. Her family’s traditions
and beliefs were more in tuned with those of past centuries than with modern
times. I think exposure to those ideas—and visiting her village myself as a
girl—helped me better relate to what life might have been like in 18th-century
Italy.
PBH is a very clean
book even though it is romantic. There wasn’t one heaving bosom! Please tell us
how you developed the romance and if 21st century attitudes crept in your
earlier drafts.
Well, the greater challenge was to avoid the “heaving
bosoms” often found in stories—both fiction and true—set in 18th-century
Europe. From what I’ve read, much of the upper-class lived rather licentiously
at that time, especially in the Republic of Venice. However, based on what I
read about the Duchy of Milan and in Mazzotti’s book, the girls in the Agnesi
household lived sheltered lives, so I used that as the foundation for the
depictions of romance in my novel.
Your formal training
is in mathematics. Do you play any musical instruments? Your depictions of the
music really capture the spirit? I’m fishing for tips J
I’ve always loved music. When I was six, we moved into a
house that had an old upright piano in the basement. I used to pick out simple
tunes on it, like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” I longed to study piano, but
that wasn’t one of the instruments my Catholic elementary school offered for
instruction. Instead, I studied the clarinet. I played clarinet in high school
marching band and orchestra, but haven’t touched it in decades. I never lost my
desire to learn piano though, and even considered studying it as an adult. But
I never did.
To connect with my character Emilia, I tapped into the
longing I’d felt as a young girl wanting to learn how to play the piano. I
imagined that Emilia had a similar longing to play the harpsichord. And after
she suffers a terrible loss, she turns to composing music for consolation in
the same way I sometimes do with writing. Emilia is a singer, too. I could
relate to that since I sang in our church choir during my teen and young adult
years. I used to make up my own songs, too, though I never wrote them down. In
a way, writing Emilia’s story allowed me to indulge my fantasy of being a keyboard
musician and composer.
That's really lovely. I know that PBH came
about because you were working on a biography of the older sister, Maria
Gaetana Agnesi and became interested in the younger one’s life story. Are you
close to finishing those projects? I, for one, would love to see picture book
biographies of these amazing women.
At this point, I wouldn’t attempt a biography of composer
Maria Teresa Agnesi because too little is known about her. I do have a solid
draft of a biography of her older sister, mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi,
and a publisher has said they’d be interested in seeing a revision based on
some specific guidelines. Working on that revision is high on my to-do list
right now.
Your first book, Rosa
Sola, has a new edition. Please tell us how you went about it.
Rosa, Sola was originally
published by Candlewick Press in hardback only. When the book went out of print,
I got the rights back. After researching self-publishing and cover design, I
hired a designer to create a new cover and a professional formatter to format
the book for both ebook and print. I added a “Discussion Questions” section for
classroom use and self-published the new edition in paperback and ebook format
in 2016. That edition won a Catholic Press Association Award in the Children’s
Books category.
Thank you for your
time and for writing such a wonderful book that will be an inspiration to girls
everywhere to follow their calling. Is there anything else you would like your
readers to know?
Thanks so much for this opportunity, Vijaya. Your questions
really made me think!
Readers might like to also know that I’m currently working
on a short story set in the same world as
Playing
by Heart that I plan to give away to my Creativity Newsletter subscribers.
The monthly newsletter includes updates about my publishing news and writing
classes as well as creativity tips. I invite readers to subscribe to the
newsletter via the box in the right sidebar of the home page of my website:
www.carmelamartino.com . They’ll also
find a link there to my last newsletter if they’d like to read a sample first.
Readers can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and
Instagram. Those links can be found in the left sidebar of the same page.
Finally, if readers are looking for other engaging
young-adult books that feature Catholic characters and themes, I encourage them
to visit the
CatholicTeenBooks website. A number of
our books, including my own
Playing by
Heart, are recommended reads in the Virtue Works Media TOTALLY Feminine
GENIUS (TFG) Generations Book Club™ Guide:
http://catherinecgilmore.com/virtue-mentoring-for-teen-girls/
Some linkylove:
Aren't they all? You might walk in with some trepidation*, yet you walk out of the confessional light and carefree, pure and holy (if only for several moments), all fear and sorrow gone, with the resolve and the grace to amend your life knowing ALL your sins are forgiven.**
