There is some debate as to whether the four concertos were written to accompany four sonnets or vice versa. Vivaldi divided each concerto into three movements (fast–slow–fast), and, likewise, each linked sonnet into three sections.Īll performed by the Wichita State University Chamber Players, an ensemble of the Wichita Symphony Orchestra The music is elsewhere similarly evocative of other natural sounds. For example, in the middle section of "Spring", when the goatherd sleeps, his barking dog can be heard in the viola section. Vivaldi took great pains to relate his music to the texts of the poems, translating the poetic lines themselves directly into the music on the page. The concerti therefore stand as one of the earliest and most detailed examples of what would come to be called program music-in other words, music with a narrative element. Unusually for the period, Vivaldi published the concerti with accompanying sonnets (possibly written by the composer himself) that elucidated what it was in the spirit of each season that his music was intended to evoke. They were a revolution in musical conception: in them Vivaldi represented flowing creeks, singing birds (of different species, each specifically characterized), a shepherd and his barking dog, buzzing flies, storms, drunken dancers, hunting parties from both the hunters' and the prey's point of view, frozen landscapes, and warm winter fires. The inspiration for the concertos is not the countryside around Mantua, as initially supposed, where Vivaldi was living at the time, since according to Karl Heller they could have been written as early as 1716–1717, while Vivaldi was engaged with the court of Mantua only in 1718. Though three of the concerti are wholly original, the first, "Spring", borrows patterns from a sinfonia in the first act of Vivaldi's contemporaneous opera Il Giustino. The Four Seasons is the best known of Vivaldi's works. They were published in 1725 in Amsterdam, together with eight additional concerti, as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione ( The Contest Between Harmony and Invention). These were composed around 1718−1720, when Vivaldi was the court chapel master in Mantua. The Four Seasons ( Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a group of four violin concertos by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, each of which gives musical expression to a season of the year. And they evoke the whole compass of existence, from the beauty of nature to great Moghuls from the East.Antonio Vivaldi (engraving by François Morellon de La Cave, from Michel-Charles Le Cène's edition of Vivaldi's Op. But the vast majority are for his own instrument, the violin. For example, Vivaldi was the first composer to treat the cello as a serious solo instrument. These concertos champion all sorts of instruments. They were a great influence on music all over Europe. They’re dazzling to listen to and performers relish them. He brought drama, excitement and a sense of story to them. But his real legacy are his 500 or so instrumental concertos, and maybe it’s Vivaldi’s prowess as an opera composer that is the secret to how affecting they are. ![]() Doesn’t that change how you feel about him?Īs a priest, Vivaldi wrote many religious works, and during his life, he was best known as a composer of operas, not instrumental works. But Vivaldi, he was teacher, and a great number of his compositions were for his students in an orphanage. Secondly, Vivaldi lived in an age when music was written either for the Church, or for noblemen and royalty. He’s known as the Red Priest, on account of his hair, which was, well, red. In fact it was touch and go when he was a baby, so much so that when he pulled through, his mother pledged that he would become a priest, and he did. There are two important pieces of information about Vivaldi, which I feel you should know.įirstly, he suffered from poor health his whole life - we think it was probably chronic asthma. There’s a lot to this composer that is easily missed to our modern ears. ![]() In fact, people who aren’t fans of his describe his music as being "cookie-cutter" or "samey." There’s even the joke that he composed just one concerto, 500 times!īut I want to make a case for Vivaldi as being much more than a purveyor of fluffy concertos. If music was a numbers game, this composer would be the undisputed greatest.
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