The Vivaldi Church
a novel by Gregory Spatz
Preorders available soon— coming 10/6/2026
Retailer/reviewer information
“... like the music it celebrates, this book is a restorative balm for our times. Bravo!”
What people are saying about The Vivaldi Church:
“Spatz has done the impossible. He has written a novel about music that celebrates its intricate powers—how it can inspire, heal, transport, and glorify, how it connects us with the past and holds us in the present—that sings on the page”
“ Music from the past has a way of reaching across centuries. It speaks through the voices of instruments long silent, through melodies carried forward by generations, through the stubborn miracle that beauty can outlive its makers. Appropriately baroque in its detail, The Vivaldi Church gives voice to that enduring truth. A rich and lush novel about music, but also about memory, devotion, and the rare virtuosi who appear across time like bright constellations, reminding us that great art never truly belongs to the past. It simply waits for someone to once again pick up the instrument.”
“The Vivaldi Church gives us the story of characters whose lives and fates are interwoven through a love of music. Moving, vivid, insightful, and full of surprises — like the music it celebrates, this book is a restorative balm for our times. Bravo!”
Music is the common language for three young people, even though one is contemporary, one is coming of age in the late 1990s, and one in the 1700s.
In the late 1700s, Chiara dal Violino is one of the last great soloists of the Ospedali Grandi, the all-female orchestra/choir housed within Venice’s asylums for the orphaned, abandoned, destitute, and incurably ill. Chiara, deposited there as an infant, trained under Antonio Vivaldi to become a celebrated violin virtuoso. Through her eyes we discover a woman who must be heard but never seen, playing out the sight for the rich and powerful, never to even have a last name.
In the 1990s, 13-years-old Peter discovers his aunt, his lifelong caretaker since the death of his mother, dead on the floor. He is lost—no relatives, no resources, not even a clean change of clothes. His attempts to attach himself emotionally to his orchestra teacher, who, while well-meaning, may not be up to keeping the promises she makes. But he does have one hope—his interest in the violin, if not the playing, in the building.
It’s 2019, and Rose, a twenty-one-year-old violinist, is visiting Venice for her first time as a featured soloist with her college orchestra. Rose is there to learn about and from the Ospedali Grandi. But neither her studies nor changing continents means Rose can escape her growing estrangement with her boyfriend back home, nor their budding triangular relationship with her friend and new, exciting but confusing, lover. Nor does it erase the self-doubts that cloud her as she prepares to perform a piece written by Vivaldi for Chiara dal Violino.
All three lives intertwine, and ultimately ask: can music help two young women and a young man, years apart, find a sense of belonging in the world?
A portion of the proceeds from The Vivaldi Church go to LSF-USA, providing repair services for stringed instruments to musicians, orchestras and ensembles in areas where no local services are available.
Gregory Spatz