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VIVALDI, ANTONIO.

Life, career, influences, major works, style & forms of 18th Cent. Italian composer.

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Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) wrote nearly 500 concertos of various types, composed at least 50 operas and other vocal and instrumental pieces by the score, strongly influenced the direction of violin technique, and was a primary influence on Johann Sebastian Bach. His career was characterized by great fame as a violin virtuoso, "enormous productivity and [an] unusually wide circulation of his music" (Talbot 1). Yet for two centuries after his death Vivaldi and his music sank into "utter oblivion" and were only resurrected in the latter half of the twentieth century (Landon 7). Despite this long absence Vivaldi's reputation has revived swiftly. Although his vocal works and other instrumental pieces are not, as yet, well known, he was one of the primary innovators of the concerto form and, appropriately, his concertos, such as the suite of four known as

Only two important composers, Jean Aubert and Jean-MarieLeclair, wrote concertos, for example, and they derived their allegros fromthose of Vivaldi, but their slow movements were based on the Frenchtradition of the air tendre. Whilemany believe, like Moore, that this "assumes a more knowledgeable listenerthan appears plausible," the formulas of poetic texts are well known andthe degree of the relationship between this type of artistic shorthand anda similar type in music is inadequately understood--thus providing ampleground for musicians' investigations (15 ). Somis. 1999. Since Vivaldi didpublish the work with the lines of the poems keyed to the points in thescore "where the programmatic effect is occurring," it certainly seems thatthis sort of question, like the ones mentioned above, bears furtherinvestigation (Smeets). 1998: 223-24.Grout, Donald Jay. 28 Nov. . Works CitedBaroque Composers and Musicians. All-in-all the excellence of themusicians and the range of their accomplishments provided him with anunequaled standing orchestra and vocal choir with which to work. This was important becauseVivaldi needed a method that would not cause problems of form. Thisrecording also emphasized the programmatic aspects of the piece, sometimesneglected as a tired Baroque novelty in modern versions. He took Minor Orders atfifteen and was ordained ten years later in 17 3. Otherinstruments included the chalumeau, the viola all'inglese, the psaltery,the clarinet, and the transverse flute--all of which were introduced duringVivaldi's tenure at the orphanage. "The Solo Concerto." Concert Music (163 -175 ). Antonio Vivaldi. But he also hadconsiderable influence on every composer who wrote concertos--greater orless depending on the country the composers came from. Vivaldi wrote at leastthirty concertos that retained this older form and, as Talbot notes, theywere very often connected by title with the feast-day requirements of thePietà which seems to indicate that Vivaldi may have hoped "to add an extratouch of grandeur and solemnity by reverting to the four-movement cycle ofthe church sonata" (145). New York: Schocken, 1969.Kolneder, Walter. These combinations were enabled, of course, bythe Pietà women's range. The Baroque and Classical solo concertos were both combinations ofsolo instruments with orchestra, but they took different forms. Vivaldi. In the twentieth century Italian scholars,more sympathetic to the Venetian heritage, began to rediscover Vivaldi inearnest. Even the overwhelming popularity of a work such as The Four Seasonsdoes not mean that its potential is exhausted. His career wascharacterized by great fame as a violin virtuoso, "enormous productivityand [an] unusually wide circulation of his music" (Talbot 1). Eighteenth-century composers were expected to produce an immense amount of music andVivaldi was among the most prolific. When Vivaldi died, while living in Vienna, the word of his deathreached Venice in a notice that specified his many accomplishments butnoted that his "disorderly prodigality caused him to die a pauper" (quotedin Landon 166). Because his health wasnever very good Vivaldi was excused from attending the seminary (which waspossible in the eighteenth century) and within a few years of ordinationwas also allowed to stop celebrating the Mass (essentially ending hispriestly duties) because he was frequently taken ill with what is nowpresumed to have been acute asthma. The truth was, however, that Vivaldi had been somewhatsuperseded by the new fashions in music that built on his work and hisdescent into an unmarked grave was a token of sad loss of his work for twocenturies. But it was Vivaldi's themes, with their great simplicity, vigor, andthe strong rhythmic patterns commencing on an upbeat that had the greatestimmediate effect on other composers as everyone including Bach and Handelimitated this procedure (Harman & Milner 314). Although he counted 94 operas(probably including pasticcios and works by others that he arranged) in hisold age, the exact number he composed is uncertain. Although the institution was run alongconvent lines the girls progressed from pupils to teachers and were evenallowed to take outside students from the elite (a limitation imposed afterPietà tuition became so popular that commoners had to be cut out of therunning). But Vivaldi was also an innovator in formal terms. There is still much to hear and to understand in ItalianBaroque music and the Vivaldi revival will need another half century beforeit can be considered to be fully accomplished. In this musical city the most unusual institutions were the fourospedali (hospitals), pious charitable foundations established to houseorphans and illegitimate girls. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall, 1981.Smeets, Jos. Among German and Italian composers, however,"the imitation of L'estro armonico was almost de rigueur" (Talbot 166).This made it somewhat difficult to distinguish his personal influence fromthe retransmission of his ideas through others. As Vivaldi scholar Gian Francesco Malipiero noted, "they are full ofextraordinary beautiful music but . The rediscovery of his work is still in process, however, as thevocal music and hundreds of concertos are little known and others are onlypartially understood. But alternativeapproaches show that even this standard piece is not exhausted. L'estro armonico's grip on the imagination of the contemporary publichowever, owed as much to the concerto's rhythmic innovations as to thefreshness and variety of the concertos. But theBaroque solo concerto, which was "the principal form of the Baroqueperiod," was an entirely independent form that employed new structuralprinciples that were later applied in other kinds of music (Kolneder 3 3).According to Talbot's count, Vivaldi wrote some 478 concertos of which 329were for solo instrument with string orchestra and continuo and some 22 ofthese, naturally, were for violin. And inhis own concerto compositions Bach "leaned greatly upon Vivaldi for theforms and types of openings and slow movements" (Palisca 171). Unfortunately, as Bachspecialists with little knowledge of Italian late Baroque music, thesescholars tended to view Vivaldi's work as deviant from the style of Bach,"lines more scantily ornamented, inner parts simpler, fewer types ofdissonance," rather than the reverse (Talbot 5). London: J. Torelli would, inthe first movements (and sometimes in the finales), repeat the openingorchestral tutti "in different keys and with slight variations" and thesignificance of this ritornello, or return, of the tutti was increased inimportance by Vivaldi (Harman & Milner 314). . Vivaldi was a Venetian, born to one of the leading violinists at theBasilica of S. Dent and Sons, 1978. Man and His Music: Late Renaissance and Baroque Music. (Another 45were for pairs of solo instruments and were very similar in structure tothe solo concertos.) The solo concerto, as distinguished from the concertogrosso with its group of soloists, was pioneered by Giuseppe Torelli, atBologna, where he dropped the initial slow movement that had characterizedBolognese sonata forms and "established the typical three-movement form ofquick-slow-quick used by all later Italian composers" (Harman & Milner314). 1999. Vivaldi became "the greatest and most prolific writer of concertos"but his work was also transitional--incorporating the influence of the highBaroque in the early years and gradually tending toward "the preclassicaland galant style [in] some of the fruits of his old age" (Palisca 165).Some later works, such as the Concerto for Strings and Harpsichord in AMajor, display a tri-strophic form that is a common feature of earlyclassical sonatas, concertos, and symphonies and the "symmetricalphraseology" also looks forward to the later eighteenth century (Palisca171). Internet. 3 3-76.Landon, H. 1 , a concerto for strings and harpsichord, which begins with "analmost bewildering series of forceful rhythms" starting from the regularrepetitions of the first solo violin that take place as a second soloviolin establishes a compelling, equally forceful counter-rhythm, then,after a few bars, a third counter rhythm is added (44). On the average, as set by the institution's regulations, the activemembers of the Pietà's choir included 18 singers, 8 string players, 2organists, 2 soloists, a female director for each of the sections (vocaland instrumental), 14 initiates who served as assistants and deputies, andwas frequently "reinforced, especially by wind instruments," bringing thetotal to around 4 musicians, as contemporary observers noted (Talbot 2 ).The groundbreaking L'estro armonico, published in Amsterdam in 1711 by theinventive publishing entrepreneur Estienne Roger, consisted of a set of"twelve magnificent concertos for sometimes extremely odd combinations ofinstruments" (Landon 42). S.Bach was unmistakable. But in order to do this it wasnecessary that he have "a technique which did not have to worry aboutproblems [of form] and could work quickly" and this practical requirementaffected not only the structures of ritornellos but of whole movements aswell (Kolneder 316). But his influence on J. . Marco where the Cappella, despite the fact that it was notthe city's cathedral church, "became early on the focal point of [Venice's]ceremonial sacred music" (Talbot 17). It has been suggested that he studied at Rome withArcangelo Corelli, whose music was an important early influence, and/or atTurin with the violinist and composer B. During hislifetime the Venetian opera houses mounted more productions of works byVivaldi than by any other composer. Baroque Music. Other solo concertos were written forviola d'amore, cello, mandolin, and various wind instruments. In the mid-nineteenth century Bach scholars began to try to trackdown the Vivaldi originals that Bach had arranged. "Vivaldi: Concertos and Cantatas." American Record Guide May-Jun. Yet for twocenturies after his death Vivaldi and his music sank into "utter oblivion"and were only resurrected in the latter half of the twentieth century(Landon 7). Robbins. Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) wrote nearly 5 concertos of varioustypes, composed at least 5 operas and other vocal and instrumental piecesby the score, strongly influenced the direction of violin technique, andwas a primary influence on Johann Sebastian Bach. In addition to a distinctive tradition in sacred music,the city had "pioneered the opening of opera, hitherto the preserve ofcourts, to the general public" and throughout the eighteenth century therewere never fewer than six opera houses in Venice, which went through asmany as ten operas in a season (Talbot 25). Vivaldi kept the ritornelloslively and interesting by means of "variation, transformation, curtailment,and compression," and did so in a fashion that made it clear that heconceived of the whole as "something whose component parts areinterchangeable" (Kolneder 315). Reviewers complain that thework is terribly over-recorded and over-performed. Little is known of Vivaldi's life in the ten years of his progresstoward ordination. Despite this long absence Vivaldi's reputation has revivedswiftly. 28 Nov. At a time when women had no access to the musical professions (otherthan, sometimes, as singers) the Pietà was able to tap a valuable resourceby training women musicians. The works in L'estro armonico represented the concerto form "at itsmost balanced and typical moment" with only three retaining the old-fashioned slow movement at the beginning and the others in the quick-slow-quick form pioneered by Torelli (Palisca 165). Some of the concerto's require as many as foursolo violins and, in general, "the many multiple concertos suggest team-work of a Pietà-like organization and significance" (Landon 42). TheClassical form was essentially a sonata for soloist and orchestra. Internet. More intimate forms of musicwere presented at the accademie (academies), the unusual term for "privatesoirées or private concerts" which were quite frequent and on which, as acontemporary observed, the general public eavesdropped, "rush[ing] out ontothe canal to listen to it with as much keenness as if it were for the firsttime" (quoted in Talbot 28). M. Thedistinctiveness of his rhythmic invention extended not only throughout thatsingle work but to Opus 3 as a whole and became one of the marks by whichVivaldi's music was known. Today, however, asLandon concluded after reviewing all the extant works in 196 with a viewto possible production, the operas were so much "of another age and time"that it seemed highly unlikely that a revival along the lines of the Haydnopera revival or even the less popular Handel revival could take place(4 ). Online. Landon offers the example of Opus3, No. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993.Moore, Catherine. Italian music hadconsiderable influence on the direction taken by French composers but their"strong native tradition preserved them from being dominated by it" (Harman& Milner 317). Moore, reviewing recordings of Vivaldi concertos andcantatas, noted that musicians are interested in exploring the expressivequalities of Vivaldi's instrumental music which some musicologists hold wasenhanced by the coded meanings adhering to certain musical formulas. Althoughthe majority of the school's male teachers were regarded "as a necessaryevil," to be dropped as quickly as possible once the women were themselvesproficient enough to teach technique in unfamiliar instruments, Vivaldi'sposition was consistently important from 17 3 to 174 (with only one briefbreak in service) because he provided the Pietà with new music--essentialfor any musical activity in the eighteenth century (but especially for onethat made money, as the Pietà did) when new pieces were rapidly devouredand, often, as rapidly forgotten (Talbot 23). C. Vivaldi: Voice of the Baroque. But it is also entirelypossible that he remained at home and still received a superb musicaleducation because the Venetian Republic was one of the great musicalcenters of Europe. Although L'estro armonico and Vivaldi's other concertos wereextremely important factors in his contemporary reputation he was equallyhonored as a violin virtuoso and a composer of vocal works. A History of Western Music. In ritornellos the parts are grouped insuch a way that they could be rearranged without causing substantive damageto the integrity of the structure of the whole. Vivaldi's reputation didnot flourish in this somewhat hostile atmosphere but there was enoughinterest that his manuscripts and published works were casually sought outand began to be republished. 1993: 149-5 .Palisca, Claude V. Vivaldi's greatest influence derived from the fact that through hismany concertos he "more than any other single composer . Other musical works, such as the oratorioJuditha triumphans, "an allegorical description of the Venetians over theTurks in August 1716," might, as Handel's oratorios have done for him,start a revival Vivaldi's reputation as a composer of vocal music (BaroqueMusic). The young Vivaldi studied violinwith his father and was trained in music, perhaps, by Giovanni Legrenzi.But "as the eldest son of a poor family," Vivaldi was also destined for thepriesthood, "where he might be expected to achieve more than would bepossible in a more humble profession" (Landon 16). modern, twentieth-century audiencescould [not] put up with three hours of static, non-dramatic music likethat" (quoted in Landon 39). New York: Norton, 196 .Harman, Alec, & Anthony Milner. Available http://www.islandnet.com/~arton/bqxvivaldi.htmlCrawford, Ardella. "Antonio Vivaldi." Online. B. "Vivaldi: Concertos, Multiple Instruments." American Record Guide Mar.-Apr. In onerecent review, for example, Crawford noted that a performance on periodinstruments with the Harp Consort providing "a very convincing bassocontinuo [gives] the entire work a force and aggressive quality notimparted by the more conventional harpsichord or organ" (223). Available http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/jsmeets/v/vivaldi.htmTalbot, Michael. The Ospedale della Pietà, which was to beVivaldi's musical home, was the most prominent and was a major conservatoryof music. The range of instruments studied by the Pietà musicians wasfrequently commented on, as in the remarks of the great observer ofVenetian life the President de Brosses who wrote that "[they] play theviolin, the recorder, the organ, the cello, the bassoon; in short, there isno instrument large enough to frighten them" (quoted in Talbot 22). impressed onthe eighteenth century the idea of an instrumental sound in which theeffect of solo-tutti contrast was important" (Grout 375). But, unlike the more sober magnificence of aCorelli concerto grosso or even Torelli's three-movement solo concertos,all of Vivaldi's writing in these early concertos unleashed a "torrent ofemotions" that was "unlike anything ever written or at least publishedbefore" (Landon 43). Although his vocal works and other instrumental pieces are not,as yet, well known, he was one of the primary innovators of the concertoform and, appropriately, his concertos, such as the suite of four known asLe Stagione (The Four Seasons), are among the most popular of all Baroqueand classic music today. . Here the commoners among the girls were given a solid educationbut the illegitimate daughters of the upper classes received thoroughtraining in music and their concerts were a leading attraction in the city,thereby providing an income for the ospedale and for the girls as well as"a highly favorable environment for any composer" (Grout 37 ). While in Weimar in 1714-1717 Bach arranged nineVivaldi concertos for solo organ or for harpsichord with orchestra. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986. 2nd ed. Indeed, although they were always referred to as the "girls,"many of the women opted to remain at the Pietà even into middle age, ratherthan marrying or joining a religious order, because, having come to rank"with the foremost virtuosi of their time in the opinion of connoisseurs,"they could not have pursued these careers elsewhere (Talbot 21).

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