56 pages • 1-hour read
The Instrumentalist
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Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section includes discussion of child death and sexual abuse.
Part 4: “Quattro”
Part 4, Chapter 22 Summary
Anna Maria angrily accuses Vivaldi of having stolen her compositions for years, and he responds with more vitriol than she has ever seen from him. He explains icily that as a woman she will never publish her work under her own name. He adds that he “created her” in his own image, honed her skills, and gave her opportunities she never would have had without his mentorship. When she rages back at him that he is just afraid because he has come to recognize her as both the superior musician and composer, he hisses at her that she should have been drowned in one of the canals, like the rest of the babies born to women like her mother.
Suddenly, her nightmares make sense. She is stricken and asks for her composition book. Vivaldi doesn’t respond. Rather, he looks at the fire. Anna Maria is without words: Years of compositions are going up in flames. She returns to her room in a panic. She fears that she will never be anything other than a “monster:” After all, her mother was the kind of monster who wanted to kill her child. She knows now that relationships are what matters most in life. Since she is a “monster” and because she listened to Vivaldi, who cares only for ambition, she ruined the only friendships she will ever have. She feels that she has nothing, and destroys all of the fine gifts that have been given to her by donors over the years.
Part 4, Chapter 23 Summary
Anna Maria runs from the Pietà without any clear idea of where she is headed. She has lived in Venice all her life, but she does not know the city. She has left the Pietà only for performances and a few other small errands with Vivaldi. She wonders if she could make her way to Rome or Paris to earn her living as a performer. That kind of plan will be difficult to execute, and she needs a room for the night. She pawns her necklace to pay for one, but leaves it when she hears the sound of beautiful music.
Part 4, Chapter 24 Summary
She has “entered the underland” (265). The tavern is full of people drinking, dancing, and doing all kinds of things Anna Maria has never seen before. Men kiss other men. Men play cards. Someone gives Anna Maria wine, and she spends the night drinking, waking the next morning with a headache. She stumbles outside and runs into Elizabetta Marcini. She has always disliked Elizabetta and is not pleased to see her. She vomits into the gutter, and Elizabetta moves to help her.
Together, they retrieve Anna Maria’s violin from the man whose room she rented. He never would have given it back to her without Elizabetta’s help, (and money) and Anna Maria is grudgingly grateful. Still, she does not want to be further indebted to Elizabetta, and she runs from her back into the city. As she flees, Elizabetta yells out her address, should Anna Maria need further help. After spending some frightening time alone, Anna Maria goes to Elizabetta’s.
There, the two talk. Elizabetta asks to hear Anna Maria’s story, and reluctantly Anna Maria begins to speak. When she reaches its conclusion, Elizabetta explains that “insecure” men like Vivaldi never let themselves be shown up by anyone, least of all a woman. She adds that in their society, there is no room for women’s success.
After Anna Maria shows Elizabetta the half-playing card her mother left and expresses her fear that she and her mother were both “monsters,” Elizabetta brusquely ushers her up, out of the house, and through the city. They enter a neighborhood of brothels, and Anna Maria is horrified. Elizabette explains that behind the glittering, gold Venice that Anna Maria knows, there is another city, one in which sex is always for sale and women’s lives are ruined. This, she asserts, is where Anna Maria is from.
Part 4, Chapter 25 Summary
They enter one of the brothels. Elizabetta donates food, money, and supplies to the women, and they seem to know her. They approach an older lady, Gertrude, who produces a large box. In it are scraps of cloth and other items. One of the items is the other half of Anna Maria’s playing card. She learns that her mother was a village girl named Amara who had beautiful eyes and saw the world in tastes and colors. The other girls liked her, and she was beautiful enough that she was able to pick her customers. She intended to raise the funds needed to support her child, but she sadly died of syphilis before she was able to go back to the Pietà to retrieve Anna Maria.
When they leave, Anna Maria tells Elizabetta that she feels broken. Elizabetta speaks sternly: Anna Maria’s mother could have had a much worse life in a much worse brothel. Anna Maria herself could have suffered a terrible fate. She was given a home and music, and music saved her. She is powerful now in her new role as a young, female maestro.
Elizbetta claims that Anna Maria has the power to shape her own life. Anna Maria tries to see herself in this light. She realizes that she is famous and that the figlie di coro will take her back if she wants. She hopes, too, to save her broken relationship with Paulina and Chiara. She asks Elizabetta to arrange for a concert: She, Chiara, and Paulina will perform.
Part 4, Chapter 26 Summary
Anna Maria and Elizabetta return to the Pietà. Anna Maria finds and apologizes to Chiara first. Chiara is gracious, and Anna Maria feels a burning shame: Chiara has always been a good person. Anna Maria was wrong to characterize her as ambitious. She learns that Paulina gave birth to a girl, and she is in the nursery. No one knows yet what will become of her.
Paulina is not happy to see Anna Maria. She explains that she had her child alone, that Sister Madalena found her, and that she is now responsible for nursing all of the Pietà’s newest orphans. She still wears the bloody clothes in which she delivered her baby. Anna Maria swears that she will help her. Paulina explains that she does not want Anna Maria’s help.
Anna Maria apologizes to Vivaldi, who appreciates the flattery, and resumes her work in the figlie di coro. She, Chiara, and several of Chiara’s friends begin working together on a composition of their own. Noticing a new, young girl in the orchestra, Anna Maria asks about her. Her name is Anna, and she is Vivaldi’s new protégé. He plans to leave the Pietà soon and take her on tour. Anna Maria approaches Anna and warns her. She explains that Vivaldi’s mentorship is not without costs, and if Anna wants a friend, she has one in Anna Maria.
Elizabetta organizes the concert, and Paulina agrees to play. Before the concert begins, Anna Maria addresses the crowd: She explains that she and the other musicians deserve their places in the figlie di coro because of their hard work. Their skill and dedication merit recognition.
Part 4, Chapter 27 Summary
When Vivaldi raises his baton, he is shocked. The girls are not playing the agreed-upon piece, but one of their own composition. Working together, they have created a work about what it means to be a woman in a world of men. The audience is captivated, and the applause afterwards is thunderous.
Vivaldi takes credit for the new work, but when he confronts Anna Maria when the guests have left, she explains to him that she does not care. She knows what she and the other girls accomplished together, and so does he: He will have to live with one of the greatest performances of his life having been the work of someone else. Before she leaves, she asks him to reconsider taking Anna with him on tour: It would be most inappropriate for a man to travel with a young, unmarried woman. It would ruin Anna’s reputation and her life.
Soon after their conversation, Vivaldi leaves with Anna. Sister Clara confirms that because of the impropriety of this arrangement, Anna will not ever be welcomed back to the Pietà. Vivaldi’s departure means that the Master of Music position is open. Anna Maria talks her way into the role, much to the chagrin of Sister Madalena.
She happily shares the news with Elizabetta, but is saddened to learn that Paulina has left. Elizabetta helped her leave with her baby. She hopes to find her a position as a governess. She did not want to say goodbye to Anna Maria. Anna Maria wonders why Elizabetta helps the Pietà girls, and Elizabetta shares her story: She once had a child, born of abuse and incest and gave her up to the Pietà. By the time she tried to get her back, she had died. She vowed then to help as many women as she could.
Anna Maria asks to have access to the money she has earned these years as first violinist in the figlie di coro. She returns to the violin maker who made her instrument and asks to pay him. She would like the Pietà and Vivaldi to be refunded. Then, she plays a song for him and the other workers in his shop and returns to the Pietà. As Master of Music, she knows that her name will be remembered.
Part 4 Analysis
The confrontation between Anna and Vivaldi at the beginning of Part 4 adds to the author’s characterization of Vivaldi and furthers The Complexity of Mentor-Protégé Dynamics. The cruelty with which he treats Anna Maria during their argument, especially his assertion that she should have been drowned in a canal, reveals his real nature. Anna Maria realizes that his interest in her was largely ego-driven: He knew that nurturing her talent would ultimately help him to further his own career.
Anna Maria’s ambition has been central to the novel, but here it becomes apparent that Vivaldi’s ambition exceeds Anna Maria’s. She also realizes that he is arrogant enough to expect gratitude from her. He asserts: “I honed you in my image, gave you opportunities the likes of which most would never dream of” (250). The broader implication here is that their relationship was transactional: Vivaldi trained a pupil who would help increase his renown, and as a result an orphaned child was able to escape her grim destiny. Since Anna Maria did not view their relationship through that framework, she feels an acute sense of betrayal.
This scene contains one of the novel’s most significant symbols of The Erasure of Women’s Creative Labor: Vivaldi burning Anna Maria’s composition book. He is perfectly happy to let her continue to assist with his compositions, but he stifles her individual creativity. Here, too, Anna Maria has important realizations about her long-trusted mentor that lead to a moment of painful growth: She understands that Vivaldi is threatened by her genius. He does not want to compete with her, and so he has long relegated her to an unequal position. He also embodies the sexism of the day in the way that he excludes women from success in the world of professional music. He feels entitled to his role as a virtuoso in part because of his talent, but also in part because he is a man. He does not think that women are as capable, competent, or deserving as their male counterparts.
Although a background figure in the novel’s previous sections, Elizabetta Marcini moves to the foreground in Part 4, helping to change Anna Maria’s perspective of Ambition and Drive Versus Friendship and Loyalty. Her role in the narrative is in part to highlight the importance of female friendships and collaborations. Elizabetta helps Anna Maria in her time of need, listens to her story, and then gives her the double gift of better understanding of her roots and helping her to restore her fractured friendships at the Pietà.
In so doing, she provides a new kind of mentorship model to Anna Maria, one rooted in genuine caring rather than ambition and exploitation. She shows kindness to Anna Maria, but also encourages Anna Maria to show kindness to others. Elizabetta is also important for the way that she speaks to the novel’s gender politics: She, too, was once a woman in dire straits in a patriarchal society. As a sexual abuse and incest survivor, she was forced to give up her daughter. She helps women in difficult circumstances now because she knows what it is like to be disempowered.
The introduction that Elizabetta organizes between Anna Maria and the women in her mother’s former brothel is important for the way that it empowers Anna Maria. Anna Maria learns that she shares synesthesia with her mother, that her mother was well-liked, that her mother loved her, and that her mother wanted her to have more success than is possible for most women. After Vivaldi made her realize that she was nearly a drowning victim, Anna Maria worried that she and her mother were both “monsters,” incapable of love. Both Elizabetta and her mother’s story help her to see that Vivaldi was the one encouraging her to be a “monster,” and that she has always, underneath her ambition, valued loved and friendship.
Armed with Elizabetta’s kindness and her new self-knowledge, Anna Maria resolves to re-orient her priorities and to help herself and her friends. She embodies Elizabetta’s spirit of kindness and support first in the warning she gives to Vivaldi’s new, young protégé. She tells the girl: “When I was your age I needed a friend and didn’t have one, so I would like to be a friend to you now” (296). Although she does not heed Anna Maria’s advice, Anna Maria has at least tried to put her new set of values into practice. Anna Maria also shows her newfound dedication to supporting women in her willingness to work with Chiara and the other members of the figlie di coro on a collaborative composition. She no longer sees her fellow musicians as competition—rather, she understands that they are all colleagues and that these women are all she has in the world.
That their composition is a resounding success and Anna Maria obtains the role of Master of Music speaks to the importance of friendship and relationships to holistic, individual success. Vivaldi’s ethics are proven inferior, as the members of the figlie di coro achieve more together than Anna Maria could have done alone. Although she is not able to fully repair her bond with Paulina, Anna Maria does go on to nurture new generations of female talent. She emerges at the end of the novel as a character who understands that ambition is only one of the tools in a musician’s arsenal.
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