Because Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra regularly performs Handel’s Messiah, and they recently performed Holst’s The Planets, it is irresistible to try to place another of the eternal “hits” of the Classical music world, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, in relation to those other “blockbusters.” Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) published The Four Seasons in 1725 (i.e., almost two decades before the 1742 premiere of Messiah). Yet, while Messiah became a concert staple within a decade of its premiere – indeed the first piece to be established in the classical cannon -- it wasn’t until 1947 that the first popular recording of The Four Seasons was made. That was its start. Vivaldi was not established in the classical cannon until well after Handel, Bach, and even Monteverdi and Purcell were.
The path of The Four Seasons into the hearts of concert goers was a long and winding road. After their publication in 1725, The Four Seasons were initially quite popular as performed by Vivaldi, himself, as soloist and with “Spring” given in different arrangements in Paris shortly after its publication. Yet, Vivaldi’s concerto music went out of favor, and Vivaldi died impoverished and buried in a pauper’s grave in Vienna in 1741.
Although Vivaldi was an ordained priest, his musical training and interest was distinctly secular. His father, Giovanni Battista Vivaldi was principal violinist (he started professional life as a barber) at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, the city of Antonio’s birth. Giovanni was likely his son’s only violin teacher and the two red-headed violinists were quite an audio-visual feature of musical life in Venice when they played as a duo. Vivaldi was known as the “Red Priest.” The legend is he was forced by the Inquisition to stop saying Mass due to his bolting from the altar to go to the sacristy to write down a fugue subject that came into his head. Likely, it was Vivaldi’s life-long asthma (“chest tightness”) that prevented him from completing the Mass on several occasions, which caused him to be dismissed as a celebrant.
In September of 1703 he joined the staff of the Pio Ospedale della Pietà (a Venetian orphanage for girls) as violin teacher and later as concert director. (Remember that Holst, composer of The Planets, also taught music at an all-girls school.) As sometime composer-in-residence, Vivaldi had to turn out a constant stream of new music. His tally of concertos for violin alone reaches more than 220! Both at the Pietà and elsewhere, Vivaldi also composed sacred music, oratorios, and operas in great numbers despite his health challenges. He received outside commissions, reflecting his fame, such as a Te Deum to be performed at the residence of the French ambassador in Venice to celebrate the birth of twin daughters to Louis XIV.
Though Vivaldi reached a pinnacle of fame and influenced most of his contemporaries, by the time of his death even his concertos fell into an oblivion from which they would not emerge until the 20th century when a trove of his manuscripts was found in a monastery near Turin while the other half of the manuscripts were in the hands of a private collector in Genoa. Painful litigation was required to unite and free the scores for musical performance and consumption. Earlier in the 19th century, Vivaldi’s reputation among scholars received a boost from the study of the works of J.S. Bach who had (ahem) repurposed several Vivaldi compositions (a well-accepted practice of the Baroque period). These were only later discovered to be not original Bach but his arrangements of Vivaldi (e.g., The Concerto for Four Harpsichords BWV 1065 was derived from Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins Op. 3 No.10).
The 12 concertos of opus 3 “L’estro armónico” (The Harmonic Inspiration) were revolutionary and established the Vivaldi method of concertos based on “ritornellos,” which are the attractive orchestral refrains which repeatedly return in a concerto movement. The ritornellos frame the episodes of individual virtuosic playing of the soloists. There are often passages of “sequences” where the soloist, or sometimes the orchestra, play phrases which are repeated on different tones of the established scale accompanied by the harmonies based on those tones. It is embarrassing how psychologically pleasing this seemingly simple device is to the listener. From the predictability of the use of these techniques comes the quip that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto 500 times. Of course, this is a gross slander -- almost like saying that J.S. Bach’s music is just an endless stream of 16th notes. One has to pick out the splendid features of the individual trees from the forest
The Four Seasons is from the Op. 8 collection of Vivaldi which contains 12 violin concertos. It is titled “Il Cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione” (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention). Knowing the music of The Four Seasons, it is easy to imagine why Vivaldi gave his set that title. The Harmony is the basic ritornello technique that structures the concertos, but the Inventions are the astoundingly original and attractive ways that Vivaldi alters the phrasing, textures, tempos, and articulations to provide the pictorial illustrations that represent the scenes particular to each season. Did Vivaldi write cookie-cutter creations? NO!
Yes, there are the usual musically programed birdsongs, storms, babbling brooks, and peasant dances evoked in The Four Seasons (cue Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony). But with Vivaldi there is so much more. And we know exactly what he was expressing because each season is preceded by a sonnet with the detailed descriptions of the subsequent passages. And the individual passages are often cued, in the score, by the verbal descriptions from the sonnets. Spring’s slow second movement has the solo violin representing the “sleeping goatherd” while the violins express, “the leaves sweetly rushing” and the violas the barking of the dog -- this latter according to Gerard Schwartz – though to this listener, the dog is snoring. The languor of “Summer” is expressed in the most relaxed, unconventional ritornello. And the storm has not just wind but swarms of hornets and flies. While in “Autumn,” the harvest-celebrating peasants get drunk and have to sleep off their intoxication. But they get their energy back in the final movement enough to hunt with horns, guns, and dogs, an animal to its death. “Winter” has the most astonishing “inventioni.” The opening icy cold is expressed by the most dissonant grace notes -- seemingly anticipating the 20th century liberation of dissonance. There are chattering teeth. There are icy drops melting by the warm hearth. There is a running slip on the ice which cracks. And finally, a reprise of “Summer” before the North Wind wins the battle.
VIDEO BONUS
In the early 18th century, Antonio Vivaldi composed music for La Pieta in Venice, a home for children who were abandoned at birth. The institution had its own all-female orchestra and choir who provided entertainment in the church for visiting tourists. The film Vivaldi's Women tells the story of that extraordinary partnership through the eyes of a modern group of female singers and musicians as they travel to Venice to recreate Vivaldi's music in the Pieta as it sounded 300 years ago. BBCFour program of Vivaldi's Gloria performed by an all-female orchestra and choir in the Pieta in Venice. Complementary to the BBC4 programme Vivaldi and the Women of the Pieta.
CLICK HERE to see the video.
Program Note by IPO Board Member
Charles Amenta, M.D