Vivaldi: The Four Seasons

Introduction

The Four Seasons (Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a group of four violin concerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, each of which gives a musical expression to a season of the year. They were written about 1723 and were published in 1725 in Amsterdam, together with eight additional violin concerti, as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione ("The Contest Between Harmony and Invention").

The Four Seasons is the best known of Vivaldi's works. Unusually for the time, Vivaldi published the concerti with accompanying poems (possibly written by Vivaldi himself) that elucidated what it was about those seasons that his music was intended to evoke. It provides one of the earliest and most-detailed examples of what was later called program music—music with a narrative element.

Vivaldi took great pains to relate his music to the texts of the poems, translating the poetic lines themselves directly into the music on the page. In the middle section of the Spring concerto, where the goatherd sleeps, his barking dog can be marked in the viola section. Other natural occurrences are similarly evoked. Vivaldi separated each concerto into three movements, fast-slow-fast, and likewise each linked sonnet into three sections. His arrangement is as follows:

List of concertos and movements

• Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269, "La primavera" (Spring)
  1. Allegro (in E major)
  2. Largo e pianissimo sempre (in C-sharp minor)
  3. Allegro pastorale (in E major)
• Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 8, RV 315, "L'estate" (Summer)
  1. Allegro non molto (in G minor)
  2. Adagio e piano – Presto e forte (in G minor)
  3. Presto (in G minor)
• Concerto No. 3 in F major, Op. 8, RV 293, "L'autunno" (Autumn)
  1. Allegro (in F major)
  2. Adagio molto (in D minor)
  3. Allegro (in F major)
• Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 8, RV 297, "L'inverno" (Winter)
  1. Allegro non molto (in F minor)
  2. Largo (in E-flat major)
  3. Allegro (in F minor)

Sonnets and allusions

There is some debate as to whether the four concertos were written to accompany four sonnets or vice versa. Though it is not known who wrote these sonnets, there is a theory that Vivaldi wrote them himself, given that each sonnet is broken down into three sections, neatly corresponding to a movement in the concerto. Whoever wrote the sonnets, The Four Seasons may be classified as program music, instrumental music that intends to evoke something extra-musical and an art form which Vivaldi was determined to prove sophisticated enough to be taken seriously.

In addition to these sonnets, Vivaldi provided instructions such as "The barking dog" (in the second movement of "Spring"), "Languor caused by the heat" (in the first movement of "Summer"), and "the drunkards have fallen asleep" (in the second movement of "Autumn"). The Four Seasons is used in the 1981 film The Four Seasons along with other Vivaldi concertos for flute.