Governed effectively by its wealthy merchants with a focus on trade, Venice prospered the great houses, palaces, public buildings and statuary we enjoy today are the legacy of aristocratic wealth. The Crusades and the resulting development of trade with Asia and the Middle East led to the establishment of Venice as the greatest commercial centre for trade with the East and politically the strongest European power in the Mediterranean region. Situated on 120 islands formed by 177 canals in the lagoon between the mouths of the Po and Piave rivers at the northern extremity of the Adriatic Sea, Venice became known as the “Queen of the Adriatic” reflecting its historic role as a naval power and commercial centre. A Venetian all his life, travelling but always returning, Vivaldi epitomizes Italian Baroque Music like no other composer.īut first, let us look briefly at Vivaldi's home City-State. 4 in F minor, Op.Antonio Vivaldi was a virtuoso violinist, a virtuoso composer – at least in terms of quantity – and a virtuoso teacher, as clearly evidenced by the level of competence attained by his pupils. Adagio e piano – Presto e forte (in G minor).Largo e pianissimo sempre (in C ♯ minor).Vivaldi separated each concerto into three movements (fast–slow–fast), and, likewise, each linked sonnet into three sections. The music is elsewhere similarly evocative of other natural sounds. For example, in the middle section of the Spring concerto, where 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-i.e., 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 was probably the countryside around Mantua, where Vivaldi was living at the time. Though three of the concerti are wholly original, the first, “Spring”, borrows motifs 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 written around 1721 and were published in 1725 in Amsterdam, together with eight additional violin concerti, as Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (“The Contest Between Harmony and Invention”). The Four Seasons (Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a group of four violin concerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, each of which gives musical expression to a season of the year.
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