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Thank you my classical music appreciating friend SGT (Join to see) for posting the stirring music video of Julia Fischer performing (Spring) from Antonio Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" in honor of the fact that on July 28, 1741 Italian Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi died at the age of 63.
Vivaldi CBC Documentary Steven Staryk Corey Cerovsek Ida Haendel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o3m7Pv6ZPc
Image
1. Antonio Vivaldi paining by Italian School
2. Antonio Vivaldi at his writing desk (engraving by François Morellon de La Cave (fr), from Michel-Charles Le Cène’s edition of Vivaldi’s Op. 8)
3. Venice Carnival Masques
4. Commemorative plaque beside the Ospedale della Pietà.
Background from {[https://www.baroquemusic.org/biovivaldi.html]}
BAROQUE COMPOSERS AND MUSICIANS
Antonio Vivaldi
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. A Venetian all his life, travelling but always returning, Vivaldi epitomizes Italian Baroque Music like no other composer.
But first, let us look briefly at Vivaldi's home City-State.
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.
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. 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. Having put down its main rival, Genoa, in the war of 1378-1381, Venice established its supremacy over the Adriatic, its 'home waters', and the northern Mediterranean. Further wars of conquest enabled Venice to acquire neighbouring territories, and by the late 15th century, the city-state was the leading maritime power in the Christian world.
Travel up and down the Croatian coast to see evidence everywhere of Venetian architecture, statues and city planning.
But by the mid 1600s Venice was losing its commercial power, as new trading routes opened, and new power structures developed in the Mediterranean. So Venice, undeterred, opened itself up to the newly travelling aristocracy as a tourist centre, with its Masqued Carnivals and Splendiferous Canal Processions set against the backdrop of its unique location and architecture.
In 1668, "An Italian Voyage" by Richard Lassels was published, and the institution of the Grand Tour of Europe was born. The Grand Tourist was typically a young man with a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin literature as well as leisure time, financial means, and some interest in art. London was a frequent starting point for Grand Tourists, and Paris a compulsory destination; many travelled to the Netherlands, some to Switzerland and Germany, and a very few adventurers to Spain, Greece, or Turkey.
The essential place to visit, however, was Italy. The British traveller Charles Thompson speaks for many Grand Tourists when he describes himself as "being impatiently desirous of viewing a country so famous in history, which once gave laws to the world; which is at present the greatest school of music and painting, contains the noblest productions of statuary and architecture, and abounds with cabinets of rarities, and collections of all kinds of antiquities."
Domestic music making among the wealthier families was a popular and highly prized art, and for many Grand Tourists the celebrated virtuosi, the concerts and compositions of baroque masters especially in Italy would have been a major focus of their travels. They would also bring back music scores or hand-written copies of the latest Italian compositions.
Within Italy, the great focus was Rome, whose ancient ruins and more recent achievements were shown to every Grand Tourist. Here too, it may be said that baroque music was born. During the first half of the 1700s, baroque music adopted the Italian forms of the concerto and sonata, and with them, much of the Italian baroque "vocabulary" together with the latest Italian compositions. In the north, Venice was also recognized as a great music centre both for its concerts and its operatic traditions. The violin was especially prized among Venetian composers, perhaps due to the proximity of eminent violin makers and families such as Amati and Stradivarius.
A fortuitous background indeed, into which Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice on March 4th, 1678. Though ordained a priest in 1703, according to his own account, within a year of being ordained Vivaldi no longer wished to celebrate mass because of physical complaints ("tightness of the chest") which pointed to angina pectoris, asthmatic bronchitis, or a nervous disorder. It is also possible that Vivaldi was simulating illness - there is a story that he sometimes left the altar in order to quickly jot down a musical idea in the sacristy.... In any event he had become a priest against his own will, perhaps because in his day training for the priesthood was often the only possible way for a poor family to obtain free schooling. In the event however, he was destined for a life of music, as he was employed for most of his working life by the Ospedale della Pietà, beginning right after his ordination in 1703, when he was appointed as violin teacher.
The reputation of baroque Venice as a musical centre was one of the highest in Europe, due largely to its four conservatories of music. Beginning as charitable foundations they developed gradually as seats of musical learning, and by the early 1700s their excellence was unrivalled. This was confirmed by Charles de Brosses, French Magistrate and President of the Parlement de Dijon, who visited Italy in 1739, reporting in his Lettres familières écrites d'Italie and published posthumously in 1799, that "the Ospedali have the best music here. There are four of them, all for illegitimate or orphaned girls whose parents cannot support them. These are brought up at the State's expense and trained exclusively in music. Indeed they sing like angels, play the violin, flute, organ, oboe, cello, bassoon... The performances are entirely their own and each concert is composed of about forty girls."
The Ospedale della Pietà however, where Vivaldi was employed for most of his working life as violin teacher and composer, stood above the rest. Often termed an "orphanage", this Ospedale was in fact a home for the female offspring of noblemen and their numerous dalliances with their mistresses. The Ospedale was thus well endowed by the "anonymous" fathers; its furnishings bordered on the opulent, the young ladies were well looked-after, and the musical standards among the highest in Venice.
Though Vivaldi composed many fine and memorable concertos, such as the Four Seasons and the Opus 3 for example, he also wrote many works which sound like exercises for students. And this is precisely what they were. Many of Vivaldi's concerti were indeed exercises which he would play with his many talented pupils. And the listener can only be impressed by the high technical standard they demand and imply. Indeed the Ospedale's orchestra was highly respected and in frequent demand for concerts outside the Ospedale.
Until 1709, Vivaldi's appointment with the Ospedale was renewed every year and again after 1711. Between 1709 and 1711 was not attached to the Ospedale; perhaps in this period he was already working for the Teatro Sant' Angelo, an opera theatre. He also became active as a composer - in 1711 twelve concertos he had written were published in Amsterdam by the music publisher Estienne Roger under the title l'Estro armonico (Harmonic Inspiration).
While maintaining his relationship with the Ospedale, Vivaldi also had a great interest in opera. In 1713 he was given a month's leave from the Ospedale in order to stage his first opera, Ottone in villa, in Vicenza. In the 1713-4 season he produced an opera by the composer Giovanni Alberto Rostori (1692-1753) for the Teatro Sant' Angelo.
As far as his theatrical activities were concerned, the end of 1716 was a high point for Vivaldi. In November, he managed to have the Ospedale della Pietà perform his first great oratorio, Juditha Triumphans devicta Holofernis barbaric. This work was an allegorical description of the victory of the Venetians (the Christians) over the Turks (the barbarians) in August 1716.
At the end of 1717 Vivaldi moved to Mantua for two years in order to take up a post as Chamber Capellmeister at the court of Landgrave Philip van Hessen-Darmstadt. His task there was to provide operas, cantatas, and perhaps concert music, too. His opera Armida had already been performed earlier in Mantua and in 1719 Teuzzone and Tito Manlio followed. On the score of the latter are the words: "music by Vivaldi, made in 5 days." In 1720 La Conduce o siano Li veri amici was also performed. In 172O Vivaldi returned to Venice where he again staged new operas written by himself in the Teatro Sant' Angelo.
In Mantua he had made the acquaintance of the singer Anna Giraud (or Giro), who had moved in to live with him. Vivaldi maintained that she was no more than a housekeeper and good friend, just like Anna's sister, Paolina, who also shared his house. In his Memoirs, the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni gave the following portrait of Vivaldi and Giraud: "This priest, an excellent violinist but a mediocre composer, has trained Miss Giraud to be a singer. She was young, born in Venice, but the daughter of a French wigmaker. She was not beautiful, though she was elegant, small in stature, with beautiful eyes and a fascinating mouth. She had a small voice, but many languages in which to harangue." Vivaldi stayed together with her until his death.
During the early 1720s Vivaldi was also active in Rome, where he found a patron in the person of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, a great music lover, who earlier had been the patron of Arcangelo Corelli. And if we can believe Vivaldi himself, the Pope asked him to come and play the violin for him at a private audience. Vivaldi also wrote works on commission from foreign rulers, such as the French king, Louis XV - the serenade La Sena festeggiante (Festival on the Seine), for example. This work cannot be dated precisely, but it was certainly written after 1720.
Earlier, in the 1660's, musical life in Rome had been enormously stimulated by the presence in the city of Christina of Sweden. The "Pallas of the North," as she was called, abdicated from the Swedish throne in 1654. A few years later she moved to Rome and took up residence in the Palazzo Riario. There she organized musical events that were attended by composers such as Corelli and Scarlatti. Other composers, too, such as Geminiani and Handel worked in Rome for periods of time. Like them, Vivaldi profited from the favourable cultural climate in the city.
Despite his stay in Rome and other cities, Vivaldi remained in the service of the Ospedale della Pietà, which nominated him "Maestro di concerti." He was required only to send two concertos per month to Venice (transport costs were to the account of the client) for which he received a ducat per concerto. His presence was never required. He also remained director of the Teatro Sant' Angelo, as he did in the 1726, 7 and 8 seasons. Between 1725 and 1728 some eight operas were premiered in Venice and Florence. Abbot Conti wrote of his contemporary, Vivaldi: "In less than three months Vivaldi has composed three operas, two for Venice and a third for Florence; the last has given something of a boost to the name of the theater of that city and he has earned a great deal of money."
Between 1725 and 1728 Vivaldi was also extremely active in the field of concertos, encouraged, perhaps, by the establishment of improved engraving and distribution facilities in London and Amsterdam. In 1725 the publication Il Cimento dell' Armenia e dell'invenzione (The trial of harmony and invention), opus 8, appeared in Amsterdam. This consisted of twelve concertos, seven of which were descriptive: The Four Seasons, Storm at Sea, Pleasure and The Hunt. Vivaldi transformed the tradition of descriptive music into a typically Italian musical style with its unmistakable timbre in which the strings play a major role.
These concertos were enormously successful, particularly in France. In the second half of the 1700s there even appeared some remarkable adaptations of the Spring concerto: Michel Corrette (1709-1795) based his motet Laudate Dominum de coelis of 1765 on this concerto and, in 1775, Jean-Jacques Rousseau reworked it into a version for solo flute. "Spring" was also a firm favourite of King Louis XV, who would order it to be performed at the most unexpected moments, and Vivaldi received various commissions for further compositions from the court at Versailles.
In 1730 Vivaldi, his father, and Anna Giraud travelled to Prague. In this music-loving city (half a century later Mozart would celebrate his first operatic triumphs there) Vivaldi met a Venetian opera company which between 1724 and 1734 staged some sixty operas in the theater of Count Franz Anton von Sporck (for whom incidentally, Bach produced his Four Shorter Masses). In the 1730-1731 season, two new operas by Vivaldi were premiered there after the previous season had closed with his opera Farnace, a work the composer often used as his showpiece.
At the end of 1731 Vivaldi returned to Venice, but at the beginning of 1732 he left again for Mantua and Verona. In Mantua, Vivaldi's opera Semimmide was performed and in Verona, on the occasion of the opening of the new Teatro Filarmonico, La fida Ninfa, with a libretto by the Veronese poet and man of letters, Scipione Maffei, was staged.
After his stay in Prague, Vivaldi concentrated mainly on operas. No further collections of instrumental music were published. However Vivaldi continued to write instrumental music, although it was only to sell the manuscripts to private persons or to the Ospedale della Pietà, which after 1735 paid him a fixed honorarium of 100 ducats a year. In 1733 he met the English traveller, Edward Holdsworth, who had been commissioned to purchase a few of Vivaldi's compositions for the man of letters, Charles Jennens, author of texts for oratorios by Handel. Holdsworth wrote to Jennens: "I spoke with your friend Vivaldi today. He told me that he had decided to publish no more concertos because otherwise he can no longer sell his handwritten compositions. He earns more with these, he said, and since he charges one guinea per piece, that must be true if he finds a goodly number of buyers."
In 1738 Vivaldi was in Amsterdam where he conducted a festive opening concert for the 100th Anniversary of the Schouwburg Theatre. Returning to Venice, which was at that time suffering a severe economic downturn, Vivaldi at last resigned from the Ospedale in 1740, planning to move to Vienna under the patronage of his admirer Charles VI. His stay in Vienna was to be shortlived however, for he died aged 62 on July 28th 1741 "of internal fire" (probably the asthmatic bronchitis from which he suffered all his life) and, like Mozart fifty years later, received a modest burial. Anna Giraud returned to Venice, where she died in 1750.
Vivaldi's music became widely known, and performed, throughout Europe, due in large part to his publications with Estienne Roger of Amsterdam, whose distribution was well-organized. He had, for example, a distributor in Leipzig with whom Bach was in regular contact.
Bach indeed adapted a number of Vivaldi's works for organ and harpsichord, and as concertos for harpsichord and strings. He also included several of Vivaldi's works during the popular musical evenings which he organised during the 1730s at Zimmerman's Coffee House in Leipzig.
Today Vivaldi is perhaps best known for his Four Seasons. However students of individual orchestral instruments can be sure of finding challenging pieces which Vivaldi composed for his own students at the Venice Ospedale."
FYI COL Mikel J. BurroughsMSG Felipe De Leon Brown PO1 William "Chip" Nagel LTC Wayne Brandon Lt Col Charlie Brown SMSgt Lawrence McCarter PO2 (Join to see) SSG Michael Noll SSG Robert Mark Odom SGT Steve McFarland SPC Margaret Higgins SPC Nancy Greene Cynthia Croft SGT Denny Espinosa CW5 Jack Cardwell Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. SP5 Mark Kuzinski PO1 H Gene Lawrence COL (Join to see)
Vivaldi CBC Documentary Steven Staryk Corey Cerovsek Ida Haendel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o3m7Pv6ZPc
Image
1. Antonio Vivaldi paining by Italian School
2. Antonio Vivaldi at his writing desk (engraving by François Morellon de La Cave (fr), from Michel-Charles Le Cène’s edition of Vivaldi’s Op. 8)
3. Venice Carnival Masques
4. Commemorative plaque beside the Ospedale della Pietà.
Background from {[https://www.baroquemusic.org/biovivaldi.html]}
BAROQUE COMPOSERS AND MUSICIANS
Antonio Vivaldi
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. A Venetian all his life, travelling but always returning, Vivaldi epitomizes Italian Baroque Music like no other composer.
But first, let us look briefly at Vivaldi's home City-State.
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.
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. 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. Having put down its main rival, Genoa, in the war of 1378-1381, Venice established its supremacy over the Adriatic, its 'home waters', and the northern Mediterranean. Further wars of conquest enabled Venice to acquire neighbouring territories, and by the late 15th century, the city-state was the leading maritime power in the Christian world.
Travel up and down the Croatian coast to see evidence everywhere of Venetian architecture, statues and city planning.
But by the mid 1600s Venice was losing its commercial power, as new trading routes opened, and new power structures developed in the Mediterranean. So Venice, undeterred, opened itself up to the newly travelling aristocracy as a tourist centre, with its Masqued Carnivals and Splendiferous Canal Processions set against the backdrop of its unique location and architecture.
In 1668, "An Italian Voyage" by Richard Lassels was published, and the institution of the Grand Tour of Europe was born. The Grand Tourist was typically a young man with a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin literature as well as leisure time, financial means, and some interest in art. London was a frequent starting point for Grand Tourists, and Paris a compulsory destination; many travelled to the Netherlands, some to Switzerland and Germany, and a very few adventurers to Spain, Greece, or Turkey.
The essential place to visit, however, was Italy. The British traveller Charles Thompson speaks for many Grand Tourists when he describes himself as "being impatiently desirous of viewing a country so famous in history, which once gave laws to the world; which is at present the greatest school of music and painting, contains the noblest productions of statuary and architecture, and abounds with cabinets of rarities, and collections of all kinds of antiquities."
Domestic music making among the wealthier families was a popular and highly prized art, and for many Grand Tourists the celebrated virtuosi, the concerts and compositions of baroque masters especially in Italy would have been a major focus of their travels. They would also bring back music scores or hand-written copies of the latest Italian compositions.
Within Italy, the great focus was Rome, whose ancient ruins and more recent achievements were shown to every Grand Tourist. Here too, it may be said that baroque music was born. During the first half of the 1700s, baroque music adopted the Italian forms of the concerto and sonata, and with them, much of the Italian baroque "vocabulary" together with the latest Italian compositions. In the north, Venice was also recognized as a great music centre both for its concerts and its operatic traditions. The violin was especially prized among Venetian composers, perhaps due to the proximity of eminent violin makers and families such as Amati and Stradivarius.
A fortuitous background indeed, into which Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice on March 4th, 1678. Though ordained a priest in 1703, according to his own account, within a year of being ordained Vivaldi no longer wished to celebrate mass because of physical complaints ("tightness of the chest") which pointed to angina pectoris, asthmatic bronchitis, or a nervous disorder. It is also possible that Vivaldi was simulating illness - there is a story that he sometimes left the altar in order to quickly jot down a musical idea in the sacristy.... In any event he had become a priest against his own will, perhaps because in his day training for the priesthood was often the only possible way for a poor family to obtain free schooling. In the event however, he was destined for a life of music, as he was employed for most of his working life by the Ospedale della Pietà, beginning right after his ordination in 1703, when he was appointed as violin teacher.
The reputation of baroque Venice as a musical centre was one of the highest in Europe, due largely to its four conservatories of music. Beginning as charitable foundations they developed gradually as seats of musical learning, and by the early 1700s their excellence was unrivalled. This was confirmed by Charles de Brosses, French Magistrate and President of the Parlement de Dijon, who visited Italy in 1739, reporting in his Lettres familières écrites d'Italie and published posthumously in 1799, that "the Ospedali have the best music here. There are four of them, all for illegitimate or orphaned girls whose parents cannot support them. These are brought up at the State's expense and trained exclusively in music. Indeed they sing like angels, play the violin, flute, organ, oboe, cello, bassoon... The performances are entirely their own and each concert is composed of about forty girls."
The Ospedale della Pietà however, where Vivaldi was employed for most of his working life as violin teacher and composer, stood above the rest. Often termed an "orphanage", this Ospedale was in fact a home for the female offspring of noblemen and their numerous dalliances with their mistresses. The Ospedale was thus well endowed by the "anonymous" fathers; its furnishings bordered on the opulent, the young ladies were well looked-after, and the musical standards among the highest in Venice.
Though Vivaldi composed many fine and memorable concertos, such as the Four Seasons and the Opus 3 for example, he also wrote many works which sound like exercises for students. And this is precisely what they were. Many of Vivaldi's concerti were indeed exercises which he would play with his many talented pupils. And the listener can only be impressed by the high technical standard they demand and imply. Indeed the Ospedale's orchestra was highly respected and in frequent demand for concerts outside the Ospedale.
Until 1709, Vivaldi's appointment with the Ospedale was renewed every year and again after 1711. Between 1709 and 1711 was not attached to the Ospedale; perhaps in this period he was already working for the Teatro Sant' Angelo, an opera theatre. He also became active as a composer - in 1711 twelve concertos he had written were published in Amsterdam by the music publisher Estienne Roger under the title l'Estro armonico (Harmonic Inspiration).
While maintaining his relationship with the Ospedale, Vivaldi also had a great interest in opera. In 1713 he was given a month's leave from the Ospedale in order to stage his first opera, Ottone in villa, in Vicenza. In the 1713-4 season he produced an opera by the composer Giovanni Alberto Rostori (1692-1753) for the Teatro Sant' Angelo.
As far as his theatrical activities were concerned, the end of 1716 was a high point for Vivaldi. In November, he managed to have the Ospedale della Pietà perform his first great oratorio, Juditha Triumphans devicta Holofernis barbaric. This work was an allegorical description of the victory of the Venetians (the Christians) over the Turks (the barbarians) in August 1716.
At the end of 1717 Vivaldi moved to Mantua for two years in order to take up a post as Chamber Capellmeister at the court of Landgrave Philip van Hessen-Darmstadt. His task there was to provide operas, cantatas, and perhaps concert music, too. His opera Armida had already been performed earlier in Mantua and in 1719 Teuzzone and Tito Manlio followed. On the score of the latter are the words: "music by Vivaldi, made in 5 days." In 1720 La Conduce o siano Li veri amici was also performed. In 172O Vivaldi returned to Venice where he again staged new operas written by himself in the Teatro Sant' Angelo.
In Mantua he had made the acquaintance of the singer Anna Giraud (or Giro), who had moved in to live with him. Vivaldi maintained that she was no more than a housekeeper and good friend, just like Anna's sister, Paolina, who also shared his house. In his Memoirs, the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni gave the following portrait of Vivaldi and Giraud: "This priest, an excellent violinist but a mediocre composer, has trained Miss Giraud to be a singer. She was young, born in Venice, but the daughter of a French wigmaker. She was not beautiful, though she was elegant, small in stature, with beautiful eyes and a fascinating mouth. She had a small voice, but many languages in which to harangue." Vivaldi stayed together with her until his death.
During the early 1720s Vivaldi was also active in Rome, where he found a patron in the person of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, a great music lover, who earlier had been the patron of Arcangelo Corelli. And if we can believe Vivaldi himself, the Pope asked him to come and play the violin for him at a private audience. Vivaldi also wrote works on commission from foreign rulers, such as the French king, Louis XV - the serenade La Sena festeggiante (Festival on the Seine), for example. This work cannot be dated precisely, but it was certainly written after 1720.
Earlier, in the 1660's, musical life in Rome had been enormously stimulated by the presence in the city of Christina of Sweden. The "Pallas of the North," as she was called, abdicated from the Swedish throne in 1654. A few years later she moved to Rome and took up residence in the Palazzo Riario. There she organized musical events that were attended by composers such as Corelli and Scarlatti. Other composers, too, such as Geminiani and Handel worked in Rome for periods of time. Like them, Vivaldi profited from the favourable cultural climate in the city.
Despite his stay in Rome and other cities, Vivaldi remained in the service of the Ospedale della Pietà, which nominated him "Maestro di concerti." He was required only to send two concertos per month to Venice (transport costs were to the account of the client) for which he received a ducat per concerto. His presence was never required. He also remained director of the Teatro Sant' Angelo, as he did in the 1726, 7 and 8 seasons. Between 1725 and 1728 some eight operas were premiered in Venice and Florence. Abbot Conti wrote of his contemporary, Vivaldi: "In less than three months Vivaldi has composed three operas, two for Venice and a third for Florence; the last has given something of a boost to the name of the theater of that city and he has earned a great deal of money."
Between 1725 and 1728 Vivaldi was also extremely active in the field of concertos, encouraged, perhaps, by the establishment of improved engraving and distribution facilities in London and Amsterdam. In 1725 the publication Il Cimento dell' Armenia e dell'invenzione (The trial of harmony and invention), opus 8, appeared in Amsterdam. This consisted of twelve concertos, seven of which were descriptive: The Four Seasons, Storm at Sea, Pleasure and The Hunt. Vivaldi transformed the tradition of descriptive music into a typically Italian musical style with its unmistakable timbre in which the strings play a major role.
These concertos were enormously successful, particularly in France. In the second half of the 1700s there even appeared some remarkable adaptations of the Spring concerto: Michel Corrette (1709-1795) based his motet Laudate Dominum de coelis of 1765 on this concerto and, in 1775, Jean-Jacques Rousseau reworked it into a version for solo flute. "Spring" was also a firm favourite of King Louis XV, who would order it to be performed at the most unexpected moments, and Vivaldi received various commissions for further compositions from the court at Versailles.
In 1730 Vivaldi, his father, and Anna Giraud travelled to Prague. In this music-loving city (half a century later Mozart would celebrate his first operatic triumphs there) Vivaldi met a Venetian opera company which between 1724 and 1734 staged some sixty operas in the theater of Count Franz Anton von Sporck (for whom incidentally, Bach produced his Four Shorter Masses). In the 1730-1731 season, two new operas by Vivaldi were premiered there after the previous season had closed with his opera Farnace, a work the composer often used as his showpiece.
At the end of 1731 Vivaldi returned to Venice, but at the beginning of 1732 he left again for Mantua and Verona. In Mantua, Vivaldi's opera Semimmide was performed and in Verona, on the occasion of the opening of the new Teatro Filarmonico, La fida Ninfa, with a libretto by the Veronese poet and man of letters, Scipione Maffei, was staged.
After his stay in Prague, Vivaldi concentrated mainly on operas. No further collections of instrumental music were published. However Vivaldi continued to write instrumental music, although it was only to sell the manuscripts to private persons or to the Ospedale della Pietà, which after 1735 paid him a fixed honorarium of 100 ducats a year. In 1733 he met the English traveller, Edward Holdsworth, who had been commissioned to purchase a few of Vivaldi's compositions for the man of letters, Charles Jennens, author of texts for oratorios by Handel. Holdsworth wrote to Jennens: "I spoke with your friend Vivaldi today. He told me that he had decided to publish no more concertos because otherwise he can no longer sell his handwritten compositions. He earns more with these, he said, and since he charges one guinea per piece, that must be true if he finds a goodly number of buyers."
In 1738 Vivaldi was in Amsterdam where he conducted a festive opening concert for the 100th Anniversary of the Schouwburg Theatre. Returning to Venice, which was at that time suffering a severe economic downturn, Vivaldi at last resigned from the Ospedale in 1740, planning to move to Vienna under the patronage of his admirer Charles VI. His stay in Vienna was to be shortlived however, for he died aged 62 on July 28th 1741 "of internal fire" (probably the asthmatic bronchitis from which he suffered all his life) and, like Mozart fifty years later, received a modest burial. Anna Giraud returned to Venice, where she died in 1750.
Vivaldi's music became widely known, and performed, throughout Europe, due in large part to his publications with Estienne Roger of Amsterdam, whose distribution was well-organized. He had, for example, a distributor in Leipzig with whom Bach was in regular contact.
Bach indeed adapted a number of Vivaldi's works for organ and harpsichord, and as concertos for harpsichord and strings. He also included several of Vivaldi's works during the popular musical evenings which he organised during the 1730s at Zimmerman's Coffee House in Leipzig.
Today Vivaldi is perhaps best known for his Four Seasons. However students of individual orchestral instruments can be sure of finding challenging pieces which Vivaldi composed for his own students at the Venice Ospedale."
FYI COL Mikel J. BurroughsMSG Felipe De Leon Brown PO1 William "Chip" Nagel LTC Wayne Brandon Lt Col Charlie Brown SMSgt Lawrence McCarter PO2 (Join to see) SSG Michael Noll SSG Robert Mark Odom SGT Steve McFarland SPC Margaret Higgins SPC Nancy Greene Cynthia Croft SGT Denny Espinosa CW5 Jack Cardwell Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. SP5 Mark Kuzinski PO1 H Gene Lawrence COL (Join to see)
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LTC Stephen F.
Antonio Vivaldi Documentary - Magic Violin
A documentary of Antonio Vivaldi, the story of his life, music and loves, with the history of the Republic of Venice featuring I Musici de Montréal Orchestra...
Antonio Vivaldi Documentary - Magic Violin
A documentary of Antonio Vivaldi, the story of his life, music and loves, with the history of the Republic of Venice featuring I Musici de Montréal Orchestra, Music Director Yuli Turovsky, with choreography by Danielle Tardif. An excellent production based around the Vivaldi's Oboe Concerto RV 477 and the Concerto for Two Violins and Cello RV 565.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjRwzb8MTIg
Image:
1. The church where Vivaldi was baptized - San Giovanni Battista in Bragora, Sestiere di Castello, Venice
2. First edition of Juditha triumphans
3. Caricature by P. L. Ghezzi, Rome (1723)
4. Frontispiece of Il teatro alla moda
Background from {[ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/musicappreciation_with_theory/chapter/vivaldi-his-life-and-legacy/]}
A. Vivaldi: His Life and Legacy
Introduction
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678–28 July 1741) was an Italian baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher and cleric. Born in Venice, he is recognized as one of the greatest baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. He is known mainly for composing many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons.
Many of his compositions were written for the female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children where Vivaldi (who had been ordained as a Catholic priest) was employed from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740. Vivaldi also had some success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua and Vienna. After meeting theEmperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, hoping for preferment. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi’s arrival, and Vivaldi himself died less than a year later in poverty.
Vivaldi’s Life
Childhood
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born in 1678 in Venice, then the capital of the Republic of Venice. He was baptized immediately after his birth at his home by the midwife, which led to a belief that his life was somehow in danger. Though not known for certain, the child’s immediate baptism was most likely due either to his poor health or to an earthquake that shook the city that day. In the trauma of the earthquake, Vivaldi’s mother may have dedicated him to the priesthood. Vivaldi’s official church baptism took place two months later.
Vivaldi’s parents were Giovanni Battista Vivaldi and Camilla Calicchio, as recorded in the register of San Giovanni in Bragora.Vivaldi had five siblings: Margarita Gabriela, Cecilia Maria, Bonaventura Tomaso, Zanetta Anna, and Francesco Gaetano. Giovanni Battista, who was a barber before becoming a professional violinist, taught Antonio to play the violin and then toured Venice playing the violin with his young son. Antonio was probably taught at an early age, judging by the extensive musical knowledge he had acquired by the age of 24, when he started working at the Ospedale della Pietà. Giovanni Battista was one of the founders of the Sovvegno dei musicisti di Santa Cecilia, an association of musicians.
The president of the Sovvegno was Giovanni Legrenzi, an early baroque composer and the maestro di cappella at St Mark’s Basilica. It is possible that Legrenzi gave the young Antonio his first lessons in composition. The Luxembourg scholar Walter Kolneder has discerned the influence of Legrenzi’s style in Vivaldi’s early liturgical work Laetatus sum(RV Anh 31), written in 1691 at the age of thirteen. Vivaldi’s father may have been a composer himself: in 1689, an opera titled La Fedeltà sfortunata was composed by a Giovanni Battista Rossi – the name under which Vivaldi’s father had joined the Sovvegno di Santa Cecilia.
Vivaldi’s health was problematic. His symptoms, strettezza di petto (“tightness of the chest”), have been interpreted as a form of asthma. This did not prevent him from learning to play the violin, composing or taking part in musical activities, although it did stop him from playing wind instruments. In 1693, at the age of fifteen, he began studying to become a priest. He was ordained in 1703, aged 25, and was soon nicknamed il Prete Rosso, “The Red Priest”. (Rosso is Italian for “red”, and would have referred to the color of his hair, a family trait.)
Not long after his ordination, in 1704, he was given a dispensation from celebrating Mass because of his ill health. Vivaldi only said Mass as a priest a few times and appeared to have withdrawn from priestly duties, though he remained a priest.
At the Conservatorio dell’Ospedale della Pietà
In September 1703, Vivaldi became maestro di violino (master of violin) at an orphanage called the Pio Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy) in Venice. While Vivaldi is most famous as a composer, he was regarded as an exceptional technical violinist as well. The German architect Johann Friedrich Armand von Uffenbach referred to Vivaldi as “the famous composer and violinist” and said that “Vivaldi played a solo accompaniment excellently, and at the conclusion he added a free fantasy [an improvised cadenza] which absolutely astounded me, for it is hardly possible that anyone has ever played, or ever will play, in such a fashion.”
Vivaldi was only twenty-five when he started working at the Ospedale della Pietà. Over the next thirty years he composed most of his major works while working there. There were four similar institutions in Venice; their purpose was to give shelter and education to children who were abandoned or orphaned, or whose families could not support them. They were financed by funds provided by the Republic. The boys learned a trade and had to leave when they reached fifteen. The girls received a musical education, and the most talented stayed and became members of the Ospedale’s renowned orchestra and choir.
Shortly after Vivaldi’s appointment, the orphans began to gain appreciation and esteem abroad, too. Vivaldi wrote concertos, cantatas and sacred vocal music for them. These sacred works, which number over 60, are varied: they included solo motets and large-scale choral works for soloists, double chorus, and orchestra. In 1704, the position of teacher of viola all’inglese was added to his duties as violin instructor. The position of maestro di coro, which was at one time filled by Vivaldi, required a lot of time and work. He had to compose an oratorio or concerto at every feast and teach the orphans both music theory and how to play certain instruments.
His relationship with the board of directors of the Ospedale was often strained. The board had to take a vote every year on whether to keep a teacher. The vote on Vivaldi was seldom unanimous, and went 7 to 6 against him in 1709. After a year as a freelance musician, he was recalled by the Ospedale with a unanimous vote in 1711; clearly during his year’s absence the board realized the importance of his role. He became responsible for all of the musical activity of the institution when he was promoted to maestro de’ concerti (music director) in 1716.
In 1705, the first collection (Connor Cassara) of his works was published by Giuseppe Sala: his Opus 1 is a collection of 12 sonatas for two violins and basso continuo, in a conventional style. In 1709, a second collection of 12 sonatas for violin and basso continuo appeared, his Opus 2. A real breakthrough as a composer came with his first collection of 12 concerti for one, two, and four violins with strings, L’estro armonico Opus 3, which was published in Amsterdam in 1711 by Estienne Roger, dedicated to Grand Prince Ferdinand of Tuscany. The prince sponsored many musicians including Alessandro Scarlatti and George Frideric Handel. He was a musician himself, and Vivaldi probably met him in Venice. L’estro armonico was a resounding success all over Europe. It was followed in 1714 by La stravaganza Opus 4, a collection of concerti for solo violin and strings, dedicated to an old violin student of Vivaldi’s, the Venetian noble Vettor Dolfin.
In February 1711, Vivaldi and his father traveled to Brescia, where his setting of the Stabat Mater (RV 621) was played as part of a religious festival. The work seems to have been written in haste: the string parts are simple, the music of the first three movements is repeated in the next three, and not all the text is set. Nevertheless, perhaps in part because of the forced essentiality of the music, the work is one of his early masterpieces.
Despite his frequent travels from 1718, the Pietà paid him two sequins to write two concerti a month for the orchestra and to rehearse with them at least five times when in Venice. The Pietà’s records show that he was paid for 140 concerti between 1723 and 1733.
Opera Impresario
In early eighteenth-century Venice, opera was the most popular musical entertainment. It proved most profitable for Vivaldi. There were several theaters competing for the public’s attention. Vivaldi started his career as an opera composer as a sideline: his first opera, Ottone in villa (RV 729) was performed not in Venice, but at the Garzerie Theater in Vicenza in 1713. The following year, Vivaldi became the impresario of the Teatro San Angelo in Venice, where his opera Orlando finto pazzo (RV 727) was performed. The work was not to the public’s taste, and it closed after a couple of weeks, being replaced with a repeat of a different work already given the previous year.
In 1715, he presented Nerone fatto Cesare (RV 724, now lost), with music by seven different composers, of which he was the leader. The opera contained eleven arias, and was a success. In the late season, Vivaldi planned to put on an opera composed entirely by him, Arsilda, regina di Ponto (RV 700), but the state censor blocked the performance. The main character, Arsilda, falls in love with another woman, Lisea, who is pretending to be a man. Vivaldi got the censor to accept the opera the following year, and it was a resounding success.
At this period, the Pietà commissioned several liturgical works. The most important were two oratorios. Moyses Deus Pharaonis, (RV 643) is lost. The second, Juditha triumphans (RV 644), celebrates the victory of the Republic of Venice against the Turks and the recapture of the island of Corfu. Composed in 1716, it is one of his sacred masterpieces. All eleven singing parts were performed by girls of the Pietà, both the female and male roles. Many of the arias include parts for solo instruments—recorders, oboes, violas d’amore, and mandolins—that showcased the range of talents of the girls.
Also in 1716, Vivaldi wrote and produced two more operas, L’incoronazione di Dario (RV 719) and La costanza trionfante degli amori e degli odi (RV 706). The latter was so popular that it performed two years later, re-edited and retitled Artabano re dei Parti (RV 701, now lost). It was also performed in Prague in 1732. In the following years, Vivaldi wrote several operas that were performed all over Italy.
His progressive operatic style caused him some trouble with more conservative musicians, like Benedetto Marcello, a magistrate and amateur musician who wrote a pamphlet denouncing him and his operas. The pamphlet, Il teatro alla moda, attacks Vivaldi without mentioning him directly. The cover drawing shows a boat (the Sant’Angelo), on the left end of which stands a little angel wearing a priest’s hat and playing the violin. The Marcello family claimed ownership of the Teatro Sant’Angelo, and a long legal battle had been fought with the management for its restitution, without success. The obscure writing under the picture mentions non-existent places and names: ALDIVIVA is an anagram of A. Vivaldi.
In a letter written by Vivaldi to his patron Marchese Bentivoglio in 1737, he makes reference to his “ninety-four operas.” Only around fifty operas by Vivaldi have been discovered, and no other documentation of the remaining operas exists. Although Vivaldi may have exaggerated, in his dual role of composer and impresario it is plausible that he may either have written or been responsible for the production of as many as ninety-four operas during a career which by then had spanned almost twenty-five years. While Vivaldi certainly composed many operas in his time, he never reached the prominence of other great composers like Alessandro Scarlatti, Johann Adolph Hasse, Leonardo Leo, and Baldassare Galuppi, as evidenced by his inability to keep a production running for any extended period of time in any major opera house.
His most successful operas were La costanza trionfante and Farnace which garnered six revivals each.
Mantua and the Four Seasons
In 1717 or 1718, Vivaldi was offered a new prestigious position as Maestro di Cappella of the court of prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, governor of Mantua. He moved there for three years and produced several operas, among which was Tito Manlio (RV 738). In 1721, he was in Milan, where he presented the pastoral drama La Silvia (RV 734, 9 arias survive). He visited Milan again the following year with the oratorio L’adorazione delli tre re magi al bambino Gesù (RV 645, also lost). In 1722 he moved to Rome, where he introduced his operas’ new style. The new pope Benedict XIII invited Vivaldi to play for him. In 1725, Vivaldi returned to Venice, where he produced four operas in the same year.
During this period Vivaldi wrote the Four Seasons, four violin concertos depicting scenes appropriate for each season. Three of the concerti are of original conception, while the first, “Spring”, borrows motifs from a Sinfonia in the first act of his contemporaneous opera “Il Giustino“. The inspiration for the concertos was probably the countryside around Mantua. They were a revolution in musical conception: in them Vivaldi represented flowing creeks, singing birds (of different species, each specifically characterized), barking dogs, buzzing mosquitoes, crying shepherds, storms, drunken dancers, silent nights, hunting parties from both the hunters’ and the prey’s point of view, frozen landscapes, ice-skating children, and warming winter fires. Each concerto is associated with a sonnet, possibly by Vivaldi, describing the scenes depicted in the music. They were published as the first four concertos in a collection of twelve, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione, Opus 8, published in Amsterdam by Michel-Charles Le Cène in 1725.
During his time in Mantua, Vivaldi became acquainted with an aspiring young singer Anna Tessieri Girò who was to become his student, protégée, and favorite prima donna. Anna, along with her older half-sister Paolina, became part of Vivaldi’s entourage and regularly accompanied him on his many travels. There was speculation about the nature of Vivaldi’s and Giro’s relationship, but no evidence to indicate anything beyond friendship and professional collaboration. Although Vivaldi’s relationship with Anna Girò was questioned, he adamantly denied any romantic relationship in a letter to his patron Bentivoglio dated 16 November 1737.
Later Life and Death
At the height of his career, Vivaldi received commissions from European nobility and royalty. The serenata (cantata) Gloria e Imeneo (RV 687) was commissioned in 1725 by the French ambassador to Venice in celebration of the marriage of Louis XV. The following year, another serenata, La Sena festeggiante (RV 694), was written for and premiered at the French embassy as well, celebrating the birth of the French royal princesses, Henriette and Louise Élisabeth. Vivaldi’s Opus 9, La Cetra, was dedicated to Emperor Charles VI. In 1728, Vivaldi met the emperor while the emperor was visiting Trieste to oversee the construction of a new port. Charles admired the music of the Red Priest so much that he is said to have spoken more with the composer during their one meeting than he spoke to his ministers in over two years. He gave Vivaldi the title of knight, a gold medal and an invitation to Vienna. Vivaldi gave Charles a manuscript copy of La Cetra, a set of concerti almost completely different from the set of the same title published as Opus 9. The printing was probably delayed, forcing Vivaldi to gather an improvised collection for the emperor.
Accompanied by his father, Vivaldi traveled to Vienna and Prague in 1730, where his opera Farnace (RV 711) was presented. Some of his later operas were created in collaboration with two of Italy’s major writers of the time. L’Olimpiade and Catone in Utica were written by Pietro Metastasio, the major representative of the Arcadianmovement and court poet in Vienna. La Griselda was rewritten by the young Carlo Goldoni from an earlier libretto by Apostolo Zeno.
Like many composers of the time, the final years of Vivaldi’s life found him in financial difficulties. His compositions were no longer held in such high esteem as they once were in Venice; changing musical tastes quickly made them outmoded. In response, Vivaldi chose to sell off sizable numbers of his manuscripts at paltry prices to finance his migration to Vienna. The reasons for Vivaldi’s departure from Venice are unclear, but it seems likely that, after the success of his meeting with Emperor Charles VI, he wished to take up the position of a composer in the imperial court. On his way to Vienna, Vivaldi may have stopped in Graz to see Anna Girò.
It is also likely that Vivaldi went to Vienna to stage operas, especially as he took up residence near the Kärntnertortheater. Shortly after his arrival in Vienna, Charles VI died, which left the composer without any royal protection or a steady source of income. Soon afterwards, Vivaldi became impoverished and died during the night of 27/28 July 1741, aged sixty-three, of “internal infection,” in a house owned by the widow of a Viennese saddle maker. On 28 July he was buried in a simple grave in a burial ground that was owned by the public hospital fund. Vivaldi’s funeral took place at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, but the young Joseph Haydn had nothing to do with this burial, since no music was performed on that occasion. The cost of his funeral with a “Kleingeläut” was nineteen Gulden forty-five Kreuzer, which was rather expensive for the lowest class of peal of bells.
He was buried next to Karlskirche, in an area which is now part of the site of the Technical Institute. The house where he lived in Vienna has since been destroyed; the Hotel Sacher is built on part of the site. Memorial plaques have been placed at both locations, as well as a Vivaldi “star” in the Viennese Musikmeile and a monument at the Rooseveltplatz.
Only three portraits of Vivaldi are known to survive: an engraving, an ink sketch and an oil painting. The engraving, by Francois Morellon La Cave, was made in 1725 and shows Vivaldi holding a sheet of music. The ink sketch, a caricature, was done by Ghezzi in 1723 and shows Vivaldi’s head and shoulders in profile. The oil painting, which can be seen in the Liceo Musicale of Bologna, gives us possibly the most accurate picture and shows Vivaldi’s red hair under his blonde wig.
Style and Influence
Vivaldi’s music was innovative. He brightened the formal and rhythmic structure of the concerto, in which he looked for harmonic contrasts and innovative melodies and themes; many of his compositions are flamboyantly, almost playfully, exuberant.
Johann Sebastian Bach was deeply influenced by Vivaldi’s concertos and arias (recalled in his St. John Passion, St Matthew Passion, and cantatas). Bach transcribed six of Vivaldi’s concerti for solo keyboard, three for organ, and one for four harpsichords, strings, and basso continuo (BWV 1065) based upon the concerto for four violins, two violas, cello, and basso continuo (RV 580).
Posthumous Reputation
During his lifetime, Vivaldi’s popularity quickly made him famous in other countries, including France, but after his death the composer’s popularity dwindled. After the baroque period, Vivaldi’s published concerti became relatively unknown and were largely ignored. Even Vivaldi’s most famous work, The Four Seasons, was unknown in its original edition during the Classical and Romantic periods.
During the early 20th century, Fritz Kreisler’s Concerto in C, in the Style of Vivaldi (which he passed off as an original Vivaldi work) helped revive Vivaldi’s reputation. This spurred the French scholar Marc Pincherle to begin an academic study of Vivaldi’s oeuvre. Many Vivaldi manuscripts were rediscovered, which were acquired by the Turin National University Library as a result of the generous sponsorship of Turinese businessmen Roberto Foa and Filippo Giordano, in memory of their sons. This led to a renewed interest in Vivaldi by, among others, Mario Rinaldi, Alfredo Casella, Ezra Pound, Olga Rudge, Desmond Chute, Arturo Toscanini, Arnold Schering and Louis Kaufman, all of whom were instrumental in the Vivaldi revival of the 20th century.
In 1926, in a monastery in Piedmont, researchers discovered fourteen folios of Vivaldi’s work that were previously thought to have been lost during the Napoleonic Wars. Some missing volumes in the numbered set were discovered in the collections of the descendants of the Grand Duke Durazzo, who had acquired the monastery complex in the eighteenth century. The volumes contained three hundred concertos, nineteen operas, and more than one hundred vocal-instrumental works.
The resurrection of Vivaldi’s unpublished works in the twentieth century is mostly due to the efforts of Alfredo Casella, who in 1939 organized the historic Vivaldi Week, in which the rediscovered Gloria (RV 589) and l’Olimpiade were revived. Since World War II, Vivaldi’s compositions have enjoyed wide success. Historically informed performances, often on “original instruments”, have increased Vivaldi’s fame still further.
Recent rediscoveries of works by Vivaldi include two psalm settings of Nisi Dominus (RV 803, in eight movements) and Dixit Dominus (RV 807, in eleven movements). These were identified in 2003 and 2005 respectively, by the Australian scholar Janice Stockigt. The Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot described RV 807 as “arguably the best nonoperatic work from Vivaldi’s pen to come to light since . . . the 1920s.” Vivaldi’s lost 1730 opera Argippo (RV 697) was rediscovered in 2006 by the harpsichordist and conductor Ondřej Macek, whose Hofmusici orchestra performed the work at Prague Castle on 3 May 2008, its first performance since 1730."
FYI PVT Mark Zehner Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth Maj Kim Patterson SFC Richard Williamson SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SFC John Lich MSG Andrew White SSG Stephen RogersonPO3 Phyllis MaynardSPC Chris Bayner-CwikTSgt David L.PO1 Robert GeorgeSGT Robert PryorGySgt Thomas VickMAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D.Cpl (Join to see)GySgt Gary Cordeiro1stsgt Glenn Brackin
A documentary of Antonio Vivaldi, the story of his life, music and loves, with the history of the Republic of Venice featuring I Musici de Montréal Orchestra, Music Director Yuli Turovsky, with choreography by Danielle Tardif. An excellent production based around the Vivaldi's Oboe Concerto RV 477 and the Concerto for Two Violins and Cello RV 565.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjRwzb8MTIg
Image:
1. The church where Vivaldi was baptized - San Giovanni Battista in Bragora, Sestiere di Castello, Venice
2. First edition of Juditha triumphans
3. Caricature by P. L. Ghezzi, Rome (1723)
4. Frontispiece of Il teatro alla moda
Background from {[ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/musicappreciation_with_theory/chapter/vivaldi-his-life-and-legacy/]}
A. Vivaldi: His Life and Legacy
Introduction
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678–28 July 1741) was an Italian baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher and cleric. Born in Venice, he is recognized as one of the greatest baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. He is known mainly for composing many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons.
Many of his compositions were written for the female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children where Vivaldi (who had been ordained as a Catholic priest) was employed from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740. Vivaldi also had some success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua and Vienna. After meeting theEmperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, hoping for preferment. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi’s arrival, and Vivaldi himself died less than a year later in poverty.
Vivaldi’s Life
Childhood
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born in 1678 in Venice, then the capital of the Republic of Venice. He was baptized immediately after his birth at his home by the midwife, which led to a belief that his life was somehow in danger. Though not known for certain, the child’s immediate baptism was most likely due either to his poor health or to an earthquake that shook the city that day. In the trauma of the earthquake, Vivaldi’s mother may have dedicated him to the priesthood. Vivaldi’s official church baptism took place two months later.
Vivaldi’s parents were Giovanni Battista Vivaldi and Camilla Calicchio, as recorded in the register of San Giovanni in Bragora.Vivaldi had five siblings: Margarita Gabriela, Cecilia Maria, Bonaventura Tomaso, Zanetta Anna, and Francesco Gaetano. Giovanni Battista, who was a barber before becoming a professional violinist, taught Antonio to play the violin and then toured Venice playing the violin with his young son. Antonio was probably taught at an early age, judging by the extensive musical knowledge he had acquired by the age of 24, when he started working at the Ospedale della Pietà. Giovanni Battista was one of the founders of the Sovvegno dei musicisti di Santa Cecilia, an association of musicians.
The president of the Sovvegno was Giovanni Legrenzi, an early baroque composer and the maestro di cappella at St Mark’s Basilica. It is possible that Legrenzi gave the young Antonio his first lessons in composition. The Luxembourg scholar Walter Kolneder has discerned the influence of Legrenzi’s style in Vivaldi’s early liturgical work Laetatus sum(RV Anh 31), written in 1691 at the age of thirteen. Vivaldi’s father may have been a composer himself: in 1689, an opera titled La Fedeltà sfortunata was composed by a Giovanni Battista Rossi – the name under which Vivaldi’s father had joined the Sovvegno di Santa Cecilia.
Vivaldi’s health was problematic. His symptoms, strettezza di petto (“tightness of the chest”), have been interpreted as a form of asthma. This did not prevent him from learning to play the violin, composing or taking part in musical activities, although it did stop him from playing wind instruments. In 1693, at the age of fifteen, he began studying to become a priest. He was ordained in 1703, aged 25, and was soon nicknamed il Prete Rosso, “The Red Priest”. (Rosso is Italian for “red”, and would have referred to the color of his hair, a family trait.)
Not long after his ordination, in 1704, he was given a dispensation from celebrating Mass because of his ill health. Vivaldi only said Mass as a priest a few times and appeared to have withdrawn from priestly duties, though he remained a priest.
At the Conservatorio dell’Ospedale della Pietà
In September 1703, Vivaldi became maestro di violino (master of violin) at an orphanage called the Pio Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy) in Venice. While Vivaldi is most famous as a composer, he was regarded as an exceptional technical violinist as well. The German architect Johann Friedrich Armand von Uffenbach referred to Vivaldi as “the famous composer and violinist” and said that “Vivaldi played a solo accompaniment excellently, and at the conclusion he added a free fantasy [an improvised cadenza] which absolutely astounded me, for it is hardly possible that anyone has ever played, or ever will play, in such a fashion.”
Vivaldi was only twenty-five when he started working at the Ospedale della Pietà. Over the next thirty years he composed most of his major works while working there. There were four similar institutions in Venice; their purpose was to give shelter and education to children who were abandoned or orphaned, or whose families could not support them. They were financed by funds provided by the Republic. The boys learned a trade and had to leave when they reached fifteen. The girls received a musical education, and the most talented stayed and became members of the Ospedale’s renowned orchestra and choir.
Shortly after Vivaldi’s appointment, the orphans began to gain appreciation and esteem abroad, too. Vivaldi wrote concertos, cantatas and sacred vocal music for them. These sacred works, which number over 60, are varied: they included solo motets and large-scale choral works for soloists, double chorus, and orchestra. In 1704, the position of teacher of viola all’inglese was added to his duties as violin instructor. The position of maestro di coro, which was at one time filled by Vivaldi, required a lot of time and work. He had to compose an oratorio or concerto at every feast and teach the orphans both music theory and how to play certain instruments.
His relationship with the board of directors of the Ospedale was often strained. The board had to take a vote every year on whether to keep a teacher. The vote on Vivaldi was seldom unanimous, and went 7 to 6 against him in 1709. After a year as a freelance musician, he was recalled by the Ospedale with a unanimous vote in 1711; clearly during his year’s absence the board realized the importance of his role. He became responsible for all of the musical activity of the institution when he was promoted to maestro de’ concerti (music director) in 1716.
In 1705, the first collection (Connor Cassara) of his works was published by Giuseppe Sala: his Opus 1 is a collection of 12 sonatas for two violins and basso continuo, in a conventional style. In 1709, a second collection of 12 sonatas for violin and basso continuo appeared, his Opus 2. A real breakthrough as a composer came with his first collection of 12 concerti for one, two, and four violins with strings, L’estro armonico Opus 3, which was published in Amsterdam in 1711 by Estienne Roger, dedicated to Grand Prince Ferdinand of Tuscany. The prince sponsored many musicians including Alessandro Scarlatti and George Frideric Handel. He was a musician himself, and Vivaldi probably met him in Venice. L’estro armonico was a resounding success all over Europe. It was followed in 1714 by La stravaganza Opus 4, a collection of concerti for solo violin and strings, dedicated to an old violin student of Vivaldi’s, the Venetian noble Vettor Dolfin.
In February 1711, Vivaldi and his father traveled to Brescia, where his setting of the Stabat Mater (RV 621) was played as part of a religious festival. The work seems to have been written in haste: the string parts are simple, the music of the first three movements is repeated in the next three, and not all the text is set. Nevertheless, perhaps in part because of the forced essentiality of the music, the work is one of his early masterpieces.
Despite his frequent travels from 1718, the Pietà paid him two sequins to write two concerti a month for the orchestra and to rehearse with them at least five times when in Venice. The Pietà’s records show that he was paid for 140 concerti between 1723 and 1733.
Opera Impresario
In early eighteenth-century Venice, opera was the most popular musical entertainment. It proved most profitable for Vivaldi. There were several theaters competing for the public’s attention. Vivaldi started his career as an opera composer as a sideline: his first opera, Ottone in villa (RV 729) was performed not in Venice, but at the Garzerie Theater in Vicenza in 1713. The following year, Vivaldi became the impresario of the Teatro San Angelo in Venice, where his opera Orlando finto pazzo (RV 727) was performed. The work was not to the public’s taste, and it closed after a couple of weeks, being replaced with a repeat of a different work already given the previous year.
In 1715, he presented Nerone fatto Cesare (RV 724, now lost), with music by seven different composers, of which he was the leader. The opera contained eleven arias, and was a success. In the late season, Vivaldi planned to put on an opera composed entirely by him, Arsilda, regina di Ponto (RV 700), but the state censor blocked the performance. The main character, Arsilda, falls in love with another woman, Lisea, who is pretending to be a man. Vivaldi got the censor to accept the opera the following year, and it was a resounding success.
At this period, the Pietà commissioned several liturgical works. The most important were two oratorios. Moyses Deus Pharaonis, (RV 643) is lost. The second, Juditha triumphans (RV 644), celebrates the victory of the Republic of Venice against the Turks and the recapture of the island of Corfu. Composed in 1716, it is one of his sacred masterpieces. All eleven singing parts were performed by girls of the Pietà, both the female and male roles. Many of the arias include parts for solo instruments—recorders, oboes, violas d’amore, and mandolins—that showcased the range of talents of the girls.
Also in 1716, Vivaldi wrote and produced two more operas, L’incoronazione di Dario (RV 719) and La costanza trionfante degli amori e degli odi (RV 706). The latter was so popular that it performed two years later, re-edited and retitled Artabano re dei Parti (RV 701, now lost). It was also performed in Prague in 1732. In the following years, Vivaldi wrote several operas that were performed all over Italy.
His progressive operatic style caused him some trouble with more conservative musicians, like Benedetto Marcello, a magistrate and amateur musician who wrote a pamphlet denouncing him and his operas. The pamphlet, Il teatro alla moda, attacks Vivaldi without mentioning him directly. The cover drawing shows a boat (the Sant’Angelo), on the left end of which stands a little angel wearing a priest’s hat and playing the violin. The Marcello family claimed ownership of the Teatro Sant’Angelo, and a long legal battle had been fought with the management for its restitution, without success. The obscure writing under the picture mentions non-existent places and names: ALDIVIVA is an anagram of A. Vivaldi.
In a letter written by Vivaldi to his patron Marchese Bentivoglio in 1737, he makes reference to his “ninety-four operas.” Only around fifty operas by Vivaldi have been discovered, and no other documentation of the remaining operas exists. Although Vivaldi may have exaggerated, in his dual role of composer and impresario it is plausible that he may either have written or been responsible for the production of as many as ninety-four operas during a career which by then had spanned almost twenty-five years. While Vivaldi certainly composed many operas in his time, he never reached the prominence of other great composers like Alessandro Scarlatti, Johann Adolph Hasse, Leonardo Leo, and Baldassare Galuppi, as evidenced by his inability to keep a production running for any extended period of time in any major opera house.
His most successful operas were La costanza trionfante and Farnace which garnered six revivals each.
Mantua and the Four Seasons
In 1717 or 1718, Vivaldi was offered a new prestigious position as Maestro di Cappella of the court of prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, governor of Mantua. He moved there for three years and produced several operas, among which was Tito Manlio (RV 738). In 1721, he was in Milan, where he presented the pastoral drama La Silvia (RV 734, 9 arias survive). He visited Milan again the following year with the oratorio L’adorazione delli tre re magi al bambino Gesù (RV 645, also lost). In 1722 he moved to Rome, where he introduced his operas’ new style. The new pope Benedict XIII invited Vivaldi to play for him. In 1725, Vivaldi returned to Venice, where he produced four operas in the same year.
During this period Vivaldi wrote the Four Seasons, four violin concertos depicting scenes appropriate for each season. Three of the concerti are of original conception, while the first, “Spring”, borrows motifs from a Sinfonia in the first act of his contemporaneous opera “Il Giustino“. The inspiration for the concertos was probably the countryside around Mantua. They were a revolution in musical conception: in them Vivaldi represented flowing creeks, singing birds (of different species, each specifically characterized), barking dogs, buzzing mosquitoes, crying shepherds, storms, drunken dancers, silent nights, hunting parties from both the hunters’ and the prey’s point of view, frozen landscapes, ice-skating children, and warming winter fires. Each concerto is associated with a sonnet, possibly by Vivaldi, describing the scenes depicted in the music. They were published as the first four concertos in a collection of twelve, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione, Opus 8, published in Amsterdam by Michel-Charles Le Cène in 1725.
During his time in Mantua, Vivaldi became acquainted with an aspiring young singer Anna Tessieri Girò who was to become his student, protégée, and favorite prima donna. Anna, along with her older half-sister Paolina, became part of Vivaldi’s entourage and regularly accompanied him on his many travels. There was speculation about the nature of Vivaldi’s and Giro’s relationship, but no evidence to indicate anything beyond friendship and professional collaboration. Although Vivaldi’s relationship with Anna Girò was questioned, he adamantly denied any romantic relationship in a letter to his patron Bentivoglio dated 16 November 1737.
Later Life and Death
At the height of his career, Vivaldi received commissions from European nobility and royalty. The serenata (cantata) Gloria e Imeneo (RV 687) was commissioned in 1725 by the French ambassador to Venice in celebration of the marriage of Louis XV. The following year, another serenata, La Sena festeggiante (RV 694), was written for and premiered at the French embassy as well, celebrating the birth of the French royal princesses, Henriette and Louise Élisabeth. Vivaldi’s Opus 9, La Cetra, was dedicated to Emperor Charles VI. In 1728, Vivaldi met the emperor while the emperor was visiting Trieste to oversee the construction of a new port. Charles admired the music of the Red Priest so much that he is said to have spoken more with the composer during their one meeting than he spoke to his ministers in over two years. He gave Vivaldi the title of knight, a gold medal and an invitation to Vienna. Vivaldi gave Charles a manuscript copy of La Cetra, a set of concerti almost completely different from the set of the same title published as Opus 9. The printing was probably delayed, forcing Vivaldi to gather an improvised collection for the emperor.
Accompanied by his father, Vivaldi traveled to Vienna and Prague in 1730, where his opera Farnace (RV 711) was presented. Some of his later operas were created in collaboration with two of Italy’s major writers of the time. L’Olimpiade and Catone in Utica were written by Pietro Metastasio, the major representative of the Arcadianmovement and court poet in Vienna. La Griselda was rewritten by the young Carlo Goldoni from an earlier libretto by Apostolo Zeno.
Like many composers of the time, the final years of Vivaldi’s life found him in financial difficulties. His compositions were no longer held in such high esteem as they once were in Venice; changing musical tastes quickly made them outmoded. In response, Vivaldi chose to sell off sizable numbers of his manuscripts at paltry prices to finance his migration to Vienna. The reasons for Vivaldi’s departure from Venice are unclear, but it seems likely that, after the success of his meeting with Emperor Charles VI, he wished to take up the position of a composer in the imperial court. On his way to Vienna, Vivaldi may have stopped in Graz to see Anna Girò.
It is also likely that Vivaldi went to Vienna to stage operas, especially as he took up residence near the Kärntnertortheater. Shortly after his arrival in Vienna, Charles VI died, which left the composer without any royal protection or a steady source of income. Soon afterwards, Vivaldi became impoverished and died during the night of 27/28 July 1741, aged sixty-three, of “internal infection,” in a house owned by the widow of a Viennese saddle maker. On 28 July he was buried in a simple grave in a burial ground that was owned by the public hospital fund. Vivaldi’s funeral took place at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, but the young Joseph Haydn had nothing to do with this burial, since no music was performed on that occasion. The cost of his funeral with a “Kleingeläut” was nineteen Gulden forty-five Kreuzer, which was rather expensive for the lowest class of peal of bells.
He was buried next to Karlskirche, in an area which is now part of the site of the Technical Institute. The house where he lived in Vienna has since been destroyed; the Hotel Sacher is built on part of the site. Memorial plaques have been placed at both locations, as well as a Vivaldi “star” in the Viennese Musikmeile and a monument at the Rooseveltplatz.
Only three portraits of Vivaldi are known to survive: an engraving, an ink sketch and an oil painting. The engraving, by Francois Morellon La Cave, was made in 1725 and shows Vivaldi holding a sheet of music. The ink sketch, a caricature, was done by Ghezzi in 1723 and shows Vivaldi’s head and shoulders in profile. The oil painting, which can be seen in the Liceo Musicale of Bologna, gives us possibly the most accurate picture and shows Vivaldi’s red hair under his blonde wig.
Style and Influence
Vivaldi’s music was innovative. He brightened the formal and rhythmic structure of the concerto, in which he looked for harmonic contrasts and innovative melodies and themes; many of his compositions are flamboyantly, almost playfully, exuberant.
Johann Sebastian Bach was deeply influenced by Vivaldi’s concertos and arias (recalled in his St. John Passion, St Matthew Passion, and cantatas). Bach transcribed six of Vivaldi’s concerti for solo keyboard, three for organ, and one for four harpsichords, strings, and basso continuo (BWV 1065) based upon the concerto for four violins, two violas, cello, and basso continuo (RV 580).
Posthumous Reputation
During his lifetime, Vivaldi’s popularity quickly made him famous in other countries, including France, but after his death the composer’s popularity dwindled. After the baroque period, Vivaldi’s published concerti became relatively unknown and were largely ignored. Even Vivaldi’s most famous work, The Four Seasons, was unknown in its original edition during the Classical and Romantic periods.
During the early 20th century, Fritz Kreisler’s Concerto in C, in the Style of Vivaldi (which he passed off as an original Vivaldi work) helped revive Vivaldi’s reputation. This spurred the French scholar Marc Pincherle to begin an academic study of Vivaldi’s oeuvre. Many Vivaldi manuscripts were rediscovered, which were acquired by the Turin National University Library as a result of the generous sponsorship of Turinese businessmen Roberto Foa and Filippo Giordano, in memory of their sons. This led to a renewed interest in Vivaldi by, among others, Mario Rinaldi, Alfredo Casella, Ezra Pound, Olga Rudge, Desmond Chute, Arturo Toscanini, Arnold Schering and Louis Kaufman, all of whom were instrumental in the Vivaldi revival of the 20th century.
In 1926, in a monastery in Piedmont, researchers discovered fourteen folios of Vivaldi’s work that were previously thought to have been lost during the Napoleonic Wars. Some missing volumes in the numbered set were discovered in the collections of the descendants of the Grand Duke Durazzo, who had acquired the monastery complex in the eighteenth century. The volumes contained three hundred concertos, nineteen operas, and more than one hundred vocal-instrumental works.
The resurrection of Vivaldi’s unpublished works in the twentieth century is mostly due to the efforts of Alfredo Casella, who in 1939 organized the historic Vivaldi Week, in which the rediscovered Gloria (RV 589) and l’Olimpiade were revived. Since World War II, Vivaldi’s compositions have enjoyed wide success. Historically informed performances, often on “original instruments”, have increased Vivaldi’s fame still further.
Recent rediscoveries of works by Vivaldi include two psalm settings of Nisi Dominus (RV 803, in eight movements) and Dixit Dominus (RV 807, in eleven movements). These were identified in 2003 and 2005 respectively, by the Australian scholar Janice Stockigt. The Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot described RV 807 as “arguably the best nonoperatic work from Vivaldi’s pen to come to light since . . . the 1920s.” Vivaldi’s lost 1730 opera Argippo (RV 697) was rediscovered in 2006 by the harpsichordist and conductor Ondřej Macek, whose Hofmusici orchestra performed the work at Prague Castle on 3 May 2008, its first performance since 1730."
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MSG Felipe De Leon Brown
Thanks Steve for sharing the history blurb. Be honest, you also like the music of Antonio Vivaldi, right?
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