THE FOUR SEASONS

The opening bars of The Four Seasons are among the most famous "classical" music ever written. For that reason it is astounding to realize that for the next two hundred years, almost no one heard it, or anything else Vivaldi wrote.

In the 1930s, large, unorganized collections of handwritten scores were acquired by the University of Turin and attributed by musicologists to an obscure Venetian priest-composer of the eighteenth century. In some cases these scores were linked and dated largely by the fact that they had obviously been written on paper purchased in a batch.

The first recording of The Four Seasons was made in the 1950s, so it is only in the last half-century that Vivaldi has taken his place as one of the greatest composers of all time. It has taken longer for appreciation by the general public to go much further than The Four Seasons and a few other works, but today his sonatas and concertos are standards in chamber music repertoires. His operas have not met with much success in revivals, although during his lifetime they were the biggest part of his livelihood. Though they contain a great deal of memorable music, like many other operatic composers from that period, Vivaldi had to compose very quickly, and as a result the works seem formulaic, and not well plotted or well dramatized by today's standards.

Still largely unexplored and underappreciated is Vivaldi's work for the solo female voice. Obviously the appeal to him of writing this type of music came from the women of the Pieta, who gave him such beautiful instruments to work with. Recently several choirs specializing in Vivaldi's work for the Pieta have emerged, perhaps the most notable of which, the Schola Pietatis Antonio Vivaldi, is in Oxford, England. A recording of music for the chapel of the Pieta is also available from La Serenissima (Adrian Chandler, Director). More information can be found on the "Recommended Listening" page of this site.