Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice on 4 March 1678. According to tradition an earthquake shook the city that day, and the frail newborn was baptised at once by the midwife. His father, Giovanni Battista, a barber turned violinist at St Mark’s Basilica, taught him the violin. Like his father, Antonio had red hair, a feature that would earn him his nickname. Destined for the Church, he began his religious studies at fifteen while pursuing music.

Ordained priest in 1703, he was immediately nicknamed “il Prete rosso”, the Red Priest. But he stopped saying Mass almost at once, citing a “tightness of the chest”, probably a form of asthma, that kept him from standing long at the altar. That same year he was hired as violin master at the Ospedale della Pietà, one of the four great orphanages of Venice, which took in abandoned girls. The most gifted received a musical training of the highest level.

Vivaldi remained linked to the Pietà for nearly forty years, with interruptions. He taught there, led the orchestra and composed for the Sunday concerts, which drew visitors from all over Europe. The young musicians, hidden behind grilles, played every instrument with a virtuosity that astonished travellers. It was for them that Vivaldi wrote many of his concertos, for violin but also for cello, flute, oboe, bassoon, mandolin and viola d’amore.

In 1711 the publication in Amsterdam of L’estro armonico, Op. 3, a set of twelve concertos, brought him European fame. Johann Sebastian Bach transcribed several of them for harpsichord and organ. Vivaldi established the three-movement solo concerto, fast–slow–fast, with orchestral ritornellos alternating with virtuoso solo passages. This model was imitated throughout Europe.

Vivaldi also took up opera, beginning with Ottone in villa in 1713. By his own count he wrote some fifty — more than forty are documented — and became impresario of several Venetian theatres, including the Sant’Angelo. From 1718 to 1720 he was maestro di cappella to Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, governor of Mantua. He travelled to Rome, where he played for the pope, then to Vienna and Prague. He was often accompanied by the singer Anna Girò and her sister, which caused gossip, though Vivaldi insisted it was only friendship.

In 1725 Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione, Op. 8, appeared, opening with The Four Seasons. Each concerto comes with a sonnet, perhaps by Vivaldi himself, describing what the music imitates: birdsong in spring, the summer storm, the autumn hunt, the icy cold and chattering teeth of winter. It is one of the first famous examples of programme music. He also wrote sacred music, such as the Gloria RV 589 and the oratorio Juditha triumphans (1716).

In the 1730s fashions changed and Vivaldi’s style came to seem old-fashioned in Venice. In 1740 he left for Vienna, hoping for the protection of Emperor Charles VI, who had admired and honoured him. But the emperor died shortly after his arrival. Vivaldi died in poverty in Vienna on 28 July 1741 and was buried in a paupers’ cemetery. Forgotten for nearly two centuries, he was rediscovered in the twentieth, notably thanks to manuscripts found in Turin from 1926 onwards. The Four Seasons is now one of the most performed works in the world.