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Antonio Vivaldi’s musical output was enormous. Twenty-one of his 56 operas

survive, as do dozens of cantatas and motets.Nonetheless, it is as a composer of instrumentalmusic that he made his most enduring mark. Hepenned more than 500 concertos spotlightingone or more players; most are for violin, but therest feature an astonishing variety of instru-ments. Some of these he devised for the musi-cally adventurous young ladies of the Ospedaledella Pietà, the most musical of Venice’sfoundling institutions, where he taught musicon and off over a period of nearly four decades,beginning in 1703. Others he crafted for his ownuse as a violin virtuoso, and some he wrote forpatrons in Italy or in lands to the north.

His group of four violin concertos popularlyknown as The Four Seasons represents the in-tersection of these last two types. Vivaldidoubtless wrote it to reflect his own technicalfacility, but it was also destined for a distant pa-tron, in this case the Bohemian Count Wenzelvon Morzin, whom he served in absentia formany years as “Music Master in Italy.” Theseare the first four concertos in a collection of 12,published in Amsterdam as Vivaldi’s Op. 8, theentire collection being presented under the titleIl cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (TheTrial of Harmony and Invention) and bearing anornate letter of dedication to the Count:

Pray do not be surprised if, among these fewand feeble concertos, Your Most IllustriousLordship finds the Four Seasons which haveso long enjoyed the indulgence of Your MostIllustrious Lordship’s kind generosity.

Those four concertos were clearly not newwhen they were published; the Count wouldhave known them from manuscript copies Vi-valdi had sent previously. The composer con-tinued by noting that he had updated them byadding “sonnets, very clear statement of all the

Le quattro stagioni (The Four Seasons)

Concerto in E major, Op. 8, No. 1, La primavera (Spring)

Concerto in G minor, Op. 8, No. 2, L’estate (Summer)

Concerto in F major, Op. 8, No. 3, L’autunno (Autumn)

Concerto in F minor, Op. 8, No. 4, L’inverno (Winter)

Antonio Vivaldi

IN SHORT

Born: March 4, 1678, in Venice, Italy

Died: July 27 or 28, 1741, in Vienna, Austria

Work composed: ca. 1715; published in 1725

World premiere: unknown

New York Philharmonic premieres: Springpremiered February 9, 1928, Arturo Toscanini,conductor, Scipione Guidi, soloist; Summer,March 10, 1955, Guido Cantelli, conductor, JohnCorigliano, Sr., soloist; Autumn and Winter, onAugust 8, 1928, Bernardino Molinari, conductor,Hans Lange, soloist

Most recent New York Philharmonic performances: Spring, on July 25, 2012, atBravo! Vail, in Colorado, Alan Gilbert, conductor,Sheryl Staples, soloist; Summer, on April 20,1982, Zubin Mehta, conductor, Charles Rex,soloist; Autumn, on May 4, 1982, Zubin Mehta,conductor, Charles Rex, soloist; Winter, on July25, 2012, at Bravo! Vail in Colorado, Alan Gilbert,conductor, Sheryl Staples, soloist

Estimated duration: ca. 40 minutes

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Sources and InspirationsThe sonnets that accompany each of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons concertos provide such a precise guide that listeners may want to consider them in connection with the music. The images in the poems follow the con-tours of the score practically point for point. To help listeners align the two, Vivaldi’s movement headings areinserted at the appropriate point of each text, although they were not printed in the original edition.

Spring

[Allegro]Springtime is upon us.The birds celebrate her return with festive song,and murmuring streams aresoftly caressed by the breezes.Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar,casting their dark mantle over heaven,then they die away to silence,and the birds take up their charming songs once more.

[Largo]On the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branchesrustling overhead, the goat-herd sleeps,his faithful dog beside him.

[Allegro]Led by the festive sound of rustic bagpipes,nymphs and shepherds lightly dancebeneath the brilliant canopy of spring.

Summer

[Allegro non molto]Under a hard Season, fired up by the Sunlanguishes man, languishes the flock, and burns the pine.We hear the cuckoo’s voice;then sweet songs of the turtledove and finch are heard.Soft breezes stir the air, but threatening,the North Wind sweeps them suddenly aside.The shepherd trembles,fearing violent storms and his fate.

[Adagio]The fear of lightning and fierce thunderrobs his tired limbs of restas gnats and flies buzz furiously around.

[Presto]Alas, his fears were justified.The Heavens thunder and roar and with hailcuts the head off the wheat and damages the grain.

(continued)

Spring, Giuseppe Archimboldo, 1563, part of aseries portraying the four seasons through imagesincorporating natural elements

Summer, Giuseppe Archimboldo, 1563

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Autumn

[Allegro]Celebrates the peasant, with songs and dances,the pleasure of a bountiful harvest.And fired up by Bacchus’s liquor,many end their revelry in sleep.

[Adagio molto]Everyone is made to forget their cares and to sing and danceby the air which is tempered with pleasureand by the season that invites so many, manyout of their sweetest slumber to fine enjoyment.

[Allegro]The hunters emerge at the new dawn,and with horns and dogs and guns depart upon their hunting.The beast flees and they follow its trail;terrified and tired of the great noiseof guns and dogs, the beast, wounded, threatenslanguidly to flee, but harried, dies.

Winter

[Allegro non molto]To tremble from cold in the icy snow,in the harsh breath of a horrid wind;to run, stamping one’s feet every moment,our teeth chattering in the extreme cold.

[Largo]Before the fire to pass peaceful,Contented days while the rain outside pours down.

[Allegro]We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously,for fear of tripping and falling.Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and,rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.We feel the chill north winds course through the homedespite the locked and bolted doors …this is winter, which nonethelessbrings its own delights.

Autumn, Giuseppe Archimboldo, 1572

Winter, Giuseppe Archimboldo, 1563

Sources and Inspirations (continued)

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things that unfold in them, so that I am surethey will appear new to you.”

It seems clear that the music came first andthe sonnets later. As literary specimens of Ital-ian Baroque sonnets, they are not very impres-sive. That, combined with the fact that theydisplay some linguistic usages that point to Ve-netian dialect, suggests that Vivaldi may havewritten them himself. Even without the sonnetsattached, it would have been evident that thefour concertos were illustrative, since theircharacter changes markedly, often many timeswithin an individual movement.

The sonnets unquestionably provide the keyto interpreting their “program.” In the originaledition, they appear at the beginning of thesolo violin part, and lines from them are alsointerlaced within the musical notation to showexactly which poetic descriptions relate towhich musical phrases. The musical score evenadds a few extra bits of explanatory text toimpart yet greater specificity. In the Autumn

concerto, for example, the sonetto dimostrativo

(explanatory sonnet) reveals that the firstmovement has to do with peasants celebratingthe harvest, and that “fired up by Bacchus’sliquor, / many end their revelry in sleep.” In themusical part, the spirited first movement is interrupted a couple of times by “staggering”music — lurching arpeggios and sweepingscales, and then by a passage that slows downalmost to a halt; at both points, Vivaldi bluntlyinserts the indication l’ubriaco (the drunkard).

Vivaldi had already gained renown throughfour earlier collections of concerti grossi, allpublished in Amsterdam — particularly hisOp. 3, titled L’estro armonico (Harmonic Inspi-ration), which appeared in 1711. While Op. 3seems to have been composed as a collectionand arranged according to a carefully deter-mined key scheme, Op. 8 appears to be a selec-tion of pre-existing pieces grouped together inlooser fashion, at least following the first fourconcertos, which obviously stand as a unit.

Instrumentation: string orchestra, and harp-sichord, in addition to the solo violin.

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Fashionable SeasonsVivaldi’s The Four Seasons becamehugely popular as soon as they werepublished, particularly in France. The con-certos became fixtures of Parisian con-cert life and their music was evenadapted for other settings, such as MichelCorrette’s 1765 motet Laudate dominum,which bizarrely assigns a Psalm text tothe Spring concerto.

A Paris salon concert, ca. 1755

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