Hey, it's Amper's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Synesthesia is that phenomenon of

someone's brain mixing up sensory inputs. So people with this condition might seem to smell a sound

at the same time as they hear it. For debut novelist Harriet Constable, synesthesia was the

solution to a writing problem. How do you

write about the beauty of music? In her novel, The Instrumentalist, her main character, Anna Maria,

is the brains behind the enduring works of composer Antonio Vivaldi. And Anna Maria can also see music. It

comes to her in the form of colors.

Harriet spoke with NPR Scott Simon about why this was the route she took and also how we should understand Vivaldi today.

That's ahead.

The Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi has been famed for centuries.

Anna Maria della Pieta has not. In a new novel, she is the

musician behind Vivaldi's more enduring works, including the four seasons. The Great Constable's debut novel is the instrumentalist.

It begins in Venice.

Around 1695 as the infant Anna Maria is abandoned by her mother, who is a prostitute

outside of a girl's orphanage called De Pieta, and that's

where she gets her name, De La Pieta.

The orphanage has an elite

orchestra, and as Anna Maria grows up,

so does her musical talent.

She catches the ear

of Antonio Vivaldi, and later

she becomes a violin virtuoso.

...