The Salesians obliged and several crates arrived. He asked for a list and suggested that the material be sent to Turin so that he could inspect it carefully. Alberto Gentili, professor of music history at Turin University. They called upon the National Library in Turin to value the material to give them some idea of the price which prospective dealers would have to pay. In the autumn of 1926 a boarding school in Piedmont run by Salesian Fathers discovered in their archives a large amount of old volumes which the administrators, no doubt short of funds as religious boarding schools often are, wanted to sell to antique dealers. So we move now to the story of Vivaldi's 20th century rediscovery, a tale with its own drama and several tense moments for the key players. And where more likely than another religious establishment, which could be relied upon to continue their safekeeping? It may reasonably be speculated that the Ospedale's remaining priests would have sought a safe depository for Vivaldi's, and other valuable documents in their library.
What then of its extensive, and valuable collection of original Vivaldi manuscripts? They would surely not have been unceremoniously discarded. At some time, therefore, and probably well after Vivaldi's death, the Ospedale, for whatever reason, would have closed. Once again however, we draw a blank in Vivaldi's case, for the ancient Ospedale della Pieta is long since gone, with only a guess, albeit reasonably precise, as to its original location. Churches and Palaces with which individual baroque composers were associated, remain to this day. The same applies to Vivaldi's main place of employment. Although, centuries later, some of Vivaldi's music had been brought out in modern reprints, the name of Vivaldi had little or no meaning to the general public or the average musician. Although a substantial amount of his work had been printed during his lifetime, mostly by the Amsterdam printer Estienne Roger, only a few copies of these editions had survived, these in libraries and private collections, known only to musicologists and scholars. All of the currently familiar names in baroque music have been known continuously since their lifetimes, albeit with degrees of popularity varying from age to age.
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