The
son of a baker, Antonio Vivaldi grew up in a simple Venetian home. His father,
Giovanni Battista, broke with the family tradition and gave up baking to become
a musician, and from 1685 was employed at St Mark's as a violinist.
A
career in the church was an attractive escape from poverty and Antonio began
training for the priesthood at the age of 15. He simultaneously developed his
own skills on the violin and occasionally deputized for his father at St Mark's.
In 1703 he took holy orders but after 1705, supposedly because of a chest
complaint, he no longer said Mass. (This was to cause him problems later on when
in 1737 a production of one of his operas was banned by the papal authorities,
describing the composer as a non-practicing priest who had an alleged
relationship with a female singer.) Also in 1703 Vivaldi became the Maestro di
Violino at the Pio Ospedale della Pieta, an orphanage for girls in Venice, where
music played an integral part in the curriculum. At the hospice he raised
musical standards to a high level; the regular concerts given by the hospice's
orchestra, per- formed behind a 'modesty' screen, were extremely popular and,
according to a contemporary account, the equal of any- thing in Paris. Writing
in 1740, the traveuer Charles de Brosses described the orphanage girls: 'They
are reared at public expense and trained solely to excel in music. And so they
sing like angels . . .'.
For
Vivaldi the appointment was a golden opportunity to develop the concerto form
and he produced a large number of works for unusual combinations of instruments
as aids to his teaching. Having established himself as a teacher and com- poser
with the publication in 1711 of L'estro armonico (Harmonic inspiration), a collection of concertos
for one, two and four solo violins, Vivaldi also garnered a reputation as a
virtuoso violinist of great energy and daring. He became interested in having
his works published and arranged for editions to be printed in Amsterdam to give
him a professional advantage in northern Europe. Vivaldi was quick to capitalize
on his new-found fame with a string of performances and compositions, sometimes
altering the dedication of works to flatter illustrious persons passing through
Venice. He stopped publishing music when he found it more lucrative to sell
direct to visitors.
In
1713 Vivaldi's first opera, Ottone in
villa, was performed in Vicenza. This was followed by Orlando, which opened the 1714-15 season at Sant' Angelo, Venice,
and subsequently by at least another 40 operas during his career. Around the
same time Vivaldi is believed to have composed his Gloria in D, one of a number of sacred works by this prolific
composer. Cast in nine movements, the Gloria
features solo voices and is full of contrasts in scoring, style, mood And
key.
Vivaldi's
one period of work away from Venice was between 1718 and 1720 in the employ of
Prince Philip of Hess- Darmstadt at Mantua. In the heartland of northern Italy
he worked in the extraordinary splendour of the court with its vast rooms
painted with murals, its elaborate Zodiac Hall, and Hall of Pivers. Undoubtedly
this environment, rather than the mudflats of the Venetian basin, was the
inspiration for le quattro stagioni (7'he
Four Seasons). This famous work is part of Vivaldi's Opus 8, which appeared
in 1725. Of Vivaldi's 500 concertos, more than 230 are for solo violin, and The
Four
Seasons
consists
of four of them. As in the Gloria, Vivaldi's variety of technique is given free rein. The piece
is an early example of programme music (where the music tells a story or depicts
a scene). In it Vivaldi employed various instruments to represent, for example,
birdsong, a sleeping shepherd and a barking sheepdog.
After Vivaldi's death his work suffered a rapid decline in popularity and for a long time he was remembered only as a virtuoso musician. In the nineteenth century, however, German research into J.S. Bach revealed that he had transcribed a number of Vivaldi's works for keyboard. Interest in Vivaldi's work was reawakened, and its rich variety and inventiveness became appreciated; in the late twentieth century his music is even more popular than when he was alive.
Baroque Choral and String Works
Baroque Guitar Quartets (other composers as well)
The Best of Baroque (Vivaldi et al.)
Classic Kennedy (Vivaldi et al.)
Gloria in D, RV589
Concerto in E, 'L'amoroso'
Stabat mater
Orlando
The Four Seasons