Antonio Vivaldi The Four Seasons
Reading Time: 3minutes
Further information: The Four Seasons (Vivaldi) In 1717 or 1718, Vivaldi was offered a prestigious new position as Maestro di Cappella of the court of prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, governor of Mantua, in the northwest of Italy. He moved there for three years. Vivaldi's Four Seasons was my serious introduction to Classical Music. At the time, I did not know that it was Baroque and that there would be a difference in my taste and choice. Since then, my choice of music has been the Baroque Era music. The instruments, the pomp and charm keep me riveted.
The Four Seasons, the most popular Baroque music in history, was composed by Antonio Vivaldi in 1723. He was an Italian Baroque composer who was born in 1678 in Venice. Tony toutouni twitter. He is known mainly for composing instrumental concertos, especially for the violin. While I was researching The Four seasons, the beautiful melody and themes entranced me. He seemed to express the characteristics of four seasons.
Each season has specific theme as it goes as along with four sonnets, which makes his music classified as program music (music that intends to evoke something extra musical). There is a theory that Vivaldi wrote music with sonnets and given that each sonnet; spring, summer, fall or winter, is broken down into three sections. Each movement has slow movement between two faster ones which is pretty obcious if you listen carefuly.
[youtube l-dYNttdgl0]The first movement, which is called spring, starts with the song and dance of the birds. But then suddenly, tension is created as if there’s a thunder-storm from the sky nominated for the spring (music 3:30). The bird’s song and dance continues after it stops. Then the music slows down into Largo. In this section, the music created is a more curious and mysterious mood. The melody seems softer and calmer and there is less tension, according to slow movement. Then it turns faster again into Allegro as if the shepherd who was asleep suddenly awakes and dances. (music 5:30)
[youtube 8BsBbtp4gW4]Antonio Vivaldi The Four Seasons Dvd
The next movement is summer. The start of this section is slow but has high tension according to summer’s hot weather which express that the people and the animals are all exhausted under the sun. When the tension suddenly changes as the music goes faster, it shows that the birds are crying and the wind is blowing because of the summer storm. Then the music turns into Adagio which presents the fear of mosquitoes after the storm is gone(music 5:27). Then the last section of the summer is the speed of presto which is pretty fast to express the violence of the supper. (music 7:38)
[youtube QOSg7LFgt6Y]The third movement, Fall, starts with peaceful melody as all the villagers are having a party to celebrate the fruitful year. The tension is getting higher as people get drunk. But suddenly it slows down into calm because the people are all invited to fall asleep. (music 2:23-3:10) However all of a sudden, the music suddenly changes speed as if people are awake in the morning and hunters are go hunting with their dogs and chasing the animals. (music 8:00)
[youtube nGdFHJXciAQ]In the last movement of the four seasons, winter, the music starts with high tension from the beginning as if the people are trembling in the cold snow (like us this week.!) Since the winter is the most dangerous season in the year, it creates the most interesting melody in this music. On the first section, Vivaldi shows that the cold wind is blowing and people are stamping their feet from the cold and shivering. In the middle, the music shows that people are having a nice time beside the stove with beautiful violin melody. (music 3:10) Then the speed changes as usual like the people are walking on the ice with caution and a violent wind is coming through the chink of the door.(music 5:50)
Enjoy =D
Antonio Vivaldi The Four Seasons
At-A-Glance
About this Piece
By 1725, when Vivaldi published his Opus 8, a set of 12 concertos entitled The Contest between Harmony and Invention, he may well have been the most famous musician in Europe, and the first four concertos of the set, named Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, were already well known from circulating manuscript copies.
Part of their appeal would doubtless have been their extra-musical content. Vivaldi was hardly the first composer to depict nature and human activities in instrumental music, but no one had conjured the physical world quite so vividly and concisely with violins before. He wrote a sonnet for each concerto explaining what was going on, intended not only as description, but as instruction for performance: the sonnet verses are printed not only as prefaces to each concerto, but also in all the instrumental parts, in the midst of tempo markings and performance directions.
Four Seasons Summer Vivaldi
In Spring’s first movement, we hear the arrival of Spring, the birds greeting it (first solo), brooks and breezes, and a quick thunderstorm. In the slow movement, a goatherd sleeps under a tree while the second violins represent “the murmuring branches and leaves” and the viola’s repeated notes represent his “faithful dog” (whining or barking, depending on how violists understand the word “grida” written in their part). The finale is a big dance accompanied by bagpipes, which are represented by droning basses.
In Summer, the opening bars present the “merciless summer sun” and “man and flock” sweltering under it. In the first solo, the violin is an ornamented cuckoo — it’s the soloist’s task to make the cuckoo’s notes distinct in a barrage of 16th-notes. The second solo depicts the turtledove and goldfinch, and rustling of the gentle Zephyr breeze, which is joined by the violent north wind. The wind subsides long enough to let us hear how it makes a shepherd fear a coming storm, his agitated state depicted in a sequence of chromatically descending diminished chords — dissonances that lead to other dissonances instead of resolving. Vivaldi was capable of great harmonic (and contrapuntal) sophistication when it suited his purpose, and there are passages in the Four Seasons that could easily be mistaken for something written a century after his death. The second movement depicts the gentle, buzzing insects, and the shepherd listening with apprehension to distant thunder. In the third movement we get thunder, lightning, and hail.
Autumn begins with a celebration of the harvest in a vigorous dance that loses its energy as the peasants get drunk and fall asleep. In the slow movement the sonnet speaks of revelers enjoying “sweet sleep” in the “mild and pleasant” air, but the music is mysterious and dreamlike: virtually the entire movement is another sequence of unresolved dissonances. The physical world, and the aristocracy, barge in with the horn calls of a hunt in the third movement. We hear the prey flee from gunshots and barking hounds, and finally tire and die.
Winter depicts shivering (yet another remarkable chain of dissonances), chattering teeth, and “running and stamping your feet every moment” to keep warm in snow and biting wind. Venice, at about the same latitude as Portland or Minneapolis, can get serious winter weather. The slow movement is a cozy indoor scene by the fire “while the rain drenches everyone outside,” the raindrops in pizzicato under the solo violin’s melody. The finale begins by painting a picture of trying to walk on ice without slipping, not always successfully, and concludes with the onslaught of “Sirocco, Boreas and the other winds at war.” Activation office 2019 crack.
For those with enough skill, the four concertos are great fun to play, which would have ensured popularity in the 18th century, when instrumental proficiency was common among people with money. Of course, not everyone liked them. Geminiani, the Corellian conservative, complained that “Imitating the Cock, Cuckoo, Owl and other birds, and also sudden Shifts of the Hand from one extremity of the Finger-board to the other,” were “Tricks that rather belong to the Professors of Legerdemain and Posture-makers than to the art of Musick.” Geminiani inveighing against Vivaldi sounds not unlike the 19th-century classicists inveighing against Wagner and Liszt, and just as ineffectively.
By 1725, when Vivaldi published his Opus 8, a set of 12 concertos entitled The Contest between Harmony and Invention, he may well have been the most famous musician in Europe, and the first four concertos of the set, named Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, were already well known from circulating manuscript copies.
Part of their appeal would doubtless have been their extra-musical content. Vivaldi was hardly the first composer to depict nature and human activities in instrumental music, but no one had conjured the physical world quite so vividly and concisely with violins before. He wrote a sonnet for each concerto explaining what was going on, intended not only as description, but as instruction for performance: the sonnet verses are printed not only as prefaces to each concerto, but also in all the instrumental parts, in the midst of tempo markings and performance directions.
In Spring’s first movement, we hear the arrival of Spring, the birds greeting it (first solo), brooks and breezes, and a quick thunderstorm. In the slow movement, a goatherd sleeps under a tree while the second violins represent “the murmuring branches and leaves” and the viola’s repeated notes represent his “faithful dog” (whining or barking, depending on how violists understand the word “grida” written in their part). The finale is a big dance accompanied by bagpipes, which are represented by droning basses.
In Summer, the opening bars present the “merciless summer sun” and “man and flock” sweltering under it. In the first solo, the violin is an ornamented cuckoo — it’s the soloist’s task to make the cuckoo’s notes distinct in a barrage of 16th-notes. The second solo depicts the turtledove and goldfinch, and rustling of the gentle Zephyr breeze, which is joined by the violent north wind. The wind subsides long enough to let us hear how it makes a shepherd fear a coming storm, his agitated state depicted in a sequence of chromatically descending diminished chords — dissonances that lead to other dissonances instead of resolving. Vivaldi was capable of great harmonic (and contrapuntal) sophistication when it suited his purpose, and there are passages in the Four Seasons that could easily be mistaken for something written a century after his death. The second movement depicts the gentle, buzzing insects, and the shepherd listening with apprehension to distant thunder. In the third movement we get thunder, lightning, and hail.
Autumn begins with a celebration of the harvest in a vigorous dance that loses its energy as the peasants get drunk and fall asleep. In the slow movement the sonnet speaks of revelers enjoying “sweet sleep” in the “mild and pleasant” air, but the music is mysterious and dreamlike: virtually the entire movement is another sequence of unresolved dissonances. The physical world, and the aristocracy, barge in with the horn calls of a hunt in the third movement. We hear the prey flee from gunshots and barking hounds, and finally tire and die. Save twitter video.
Winter depicts shivering (yet another remarkable chain of dissonances), chattering teeth, and “running and stamping your feet every moment” to keep warm in snow and biting wind. Venice, at about the same latitude as Portland or Minneapolis, can get serious winter weather. The slow movement is a cozy indoor scene by the fire “while the rain drenches everyone outside,” the raindrops in pizzicato under the solo violin’s melody. The finale begins by painting a picture of trying to walk on ice without slipping, not always successfully, and concludes with the onslaught of “Sirocco, Boreas and the other winds at war.”
For those with enough skill, the four concertos are great fun to play, which would have ensured popularity in the 18th century, when instrumental proficiency was common among people with money. Of course, not everyone liked them. Geminiani, the Corellian conservative, complained that “Imitating the Cock, Cuckoo, Owl and other birds, and also sudden Shifts of the Hand from one extremity of the Finger-board to the other,” were “Tricks that rather belong to the Professors of Legerdemain and Posture-makers than to the art of Musick.” Geminiani inveighing against Vivaldi sounds not unlike the 19th-century classicists inveighing against Wagner and Liszt, and just as ineffectively.