In the US, everyone thinks St Martin-in-the-Fields is an orchestra. In the UK, everyone thinks it’s a homeless shelter. Underneath, in the crypt, the church runs a thriving café and shop. The church’s commercial operations have made it a substantial employer and centre of hospitality.

The question is, what have these three significant parts of the church’s life got in common, and how do they embody the congregation’s vision?

As part of our new ReSound summer concert series, St Martin’s Voices and Players will be performing a concert, both live in-person and streamed on demand, entitled Vivaldi and the Osperia della Pietá. Antonio Vivaldi’s joyous Gloria was famously composed for the all-female musicians of the Ospedale della Pietà orphanage in Venice. Similarly, the Baroque composers Porpora and Hasse who also feature in this programme were high-profile teachers who wrote choral works for their Ospedale pupils in Naples and Venice, combining social enterprise and musical excellence in a way that resonates powerfully with the ethos of St Martin’s today.

St Martin’s Voices: following in Vivaldi's spirit

How did Vivaldi earn a living? When he wrote his Gloria he was working as choirmaster at an institution known as Pietà. This was a charitable home for foundlings. Now, one may say an orphanage was pretty lucky to acquire the services of one of the greatest composers of the Western European musical tradition. But look more closely. How did the orphanage fund its work? It had a fascinating and brilliant business model. It trained its orphans to sing for their supper. Vivaldi’s job was to compose pieces of music and train his choir of young orphans to sing them, so as to attract to chapel services a wealthy congregation who would, through their donations and bequests, support and finance the institution. And there’s another dimension: Catholic Europe did not countenance mixed church choirs in the early 18th century. The boys would leave the orphanage and enter apprenticeships. It was left to the girls to make up the choir. So, although Vivaldi wrote his famous Gloria for solo voices and mixed choir, it is likely that it was performed at the girls’ orphanage with female voices only.

If you look at one of Vivaldi’s other masterpieces written for the orphanage – the Magnificat – and focus on the words of the canticle, you realise the significance of what Vivaldi was doing. Lowly young girls, with no hopes, prospects, or protectors, were taken up, given a song to sing, and offered a chance to bring about their own redemption and the liberation of others like them. They were truly singing Mary’s song. Through their efforts the humble and meek were exalted, and the rich sent away a good deal emptier.

It’s a model that’s been replicated elsewhere. Thirty years ago, the African Children’s Choir took up Vivaldi’s mantle and began training orphans from Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and elsewhere to sing, and over three decades has taken groups on countless tours, many of North America, and raised large sums to finance orphanages, schools, and other institutions.

Notice the ways this business model marks the Pietà and its imitators out as a dynamic form of social enterprise. It doesn’t depend on pity; it doesn’t begin with scarcity. It starts with people’s talents and promise, not their neediness and suffering. It doesn’t assume the people with the money have the answers and the solutions while the people without the money have the problems and the tragedy. It is a philosophy of abundance. But neither is it naïve: the children are not the finished article – they need training, like anyone else; and they need to sing really good music – so people come to hear lively music, not to patronise the poor. But in learning to be a choir, the children learn the skills to be a human being: partnership, discipline, teamwork, training – and, yes, business sense and entrepreneurial imagination.

St Martin-in-the-Fields sits amid an unusual convergence of cultural, charitable, and commercial cultures. In Antonio Vivaldi we seem to have hit upon an individual who embodied all three – while at the same time being a priest. He really did have a vision of how to harmonise those sometimes discordant melodies. I wonder whether we can too.

Revd Dr Sam Wells is the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields. The venue’s ReSound summer concert series is set across six themed weekends running until 30 June 2021, and offers a mix of live in-person audience events together with online provision. For tickets and further information visit: https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/about-our-music/resound/