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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, Italian Le quattro stagioni, 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 1720 and were published in 1725 ( Amsterdam ), together with eight additional violin concerti, as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione ('The Contest Between Harmony and Invention'). Vivaldi was capable of great harmonic (and contrapuntal) sophistication when it suited his purpose, and there are passages in the Four Seasons that could easily be mistaken for something written a century after his death. The second movement depicts the gentle, buzzing insects, and the shepherd listening with apprehension to distant thunder.
- Play The Four Seasons By Vivaldi Songs
- Four Seasons Vivaldi Music
- Vivaldi Four Seasons Full
- The Four Seasons Vivaldi History
- Four Seasons By Vivaldi Spring
At-A-Glance
About this Piece
By 1725, when Vivaldi published his Opus 8, a set of 12 concertos entitled The Contest between Harmony and Invention, he may well have been the most famous musician in Europe, and the first four concertos of the set, named Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, were already well known from circulating manuscript copies.
Part of their appeal would doubtless have been their extra-musical content. Vivaldi was hardly the first composer to depict nature and human activities in instrumental music, but no one had conjured the physical world quite so vividly and concisely with violins before. He wrote a sonnet for each concerto explaining what was going on, intended not only as description, but as instruction for performance: the sonnet verses are printed not only as prefaces to each concerto, but also in all the instrumental parts, in the midst of tempo markings and performance directions.
In Spring's first movement, we hear the arrival of Spring, the birds greeting it (first solo), brooks and breezes, and a quick thunderstorm. In the slow movement, a goatherd sleeps under a tree while the second violins represent 'the murmuring branches and leaves' and the viola's repeated notes represent his 'faithful dog' (whining or barking, depending on how violists understand the word 'grida' written in their part). The finale is a big dance accompanied by bagpipes, which are represented by droning basses.
In Summer, the opening bars present the 'merciless summer sun' and 'man and flock' sweltering under it. In the first solo, the violin is an ornamented cuckoo — it's the soloist's task to make the cuckoo's notes distinct in a barrage of 16th-notes. The second solo depicts the turtledove and goldfinch, and rustling of the gentle Zephyr breeze, which is joined by the violent north wind. The wind subsides long enough to let us hear how it makes a shepherd fear a coming storm, his agitated state depicted in a sequence of chromatically descending diminished chords — dissonances that lead to other dissonances instead of resolving. Vivaldi was capable of great harmonic (and contrapuntal) sophistication when it suited his purpose, and there are passages in the Four Seasons that could easily be mistaken for something written a century after his death. The second movement depicts the gentle, buzzing insects, and the shepherd listening with apprehension to distant thunder. In the third movement we get thunder, lightning, and hail.
Autumn begins with a celebration of the harvest in a vigorous dance that loses its energy as the peasants get drunk and fall asleep. In the slow movement the sonnet speaks of revelers enjoying 'sweet sleep' in the 'mild and pleasant' air, but the music is mysterious and dreamlike: virtually the entire movement is another sequence of unresolved dissonances. The physical world, and the aristocracy, barge in with the horn calls of a hunt in the third movement. We hear the prey flee from gunshots and barking hounds, and finally tire and die.
Winter depicts shivering (yet another remarkable chain of dissonances), chattering teeth, and 'running and stamping your feet every moment' to keep warm in snow and biting wind. Venice, at about the same latitude as Portland or Minneapolis, can get serious winter weather. The slow movement is a cozy indoor scene by the fire 'while the rain drenches everyone outside,' the raindrops in pizzicato under the solo violin's melody. The finale begins by painting a picture of trying to walk on ice without slipping, not always successfully, and concludes with the onslaught of 'Sirocco, Boreas and the other winds at war.'
For those with enough skill, the four concertos are great fun to play, which would have ensured popularity in the 18th century, when instrumental proficiency was common among people with money. Of course, not everyone liked them. Geminiani, the Corellian conservative, complained that 'Imitating the Cock, Cuckoo, Owl and other birds, and also sudden Shifts of the Hand from one extremity of the Finger-board to the other,' were 'Tricks that rather belong to the Professors of Legerdemain and Posture-makers than to the art of Musick.' Geminiani inveighing against Vivaldi sounds not unlike the 19th-century classicists inveighing against Wagner and Liszt, and just as ineffectively.
By 1725, when Vivaldi published his Opus 8, a set of 12 concertos entitled The Contest between Harmony and Invention, he may well have been the most famous musician in Europe, and the first four concertos of the set, named Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, were already well known from circulating manuscript copies.
Part of their appeal would doubtless have been their extra-musical content. Vivaldi was hardly the first composer to depict nature and human activities in instrumental music, but no one had conjured the physical world quite so vividly and concisely with violins before. He wrote a sonnet for each concerto explaining what was going on, intended not only as description, but as instruction for performance: the sonnet verses are printed not only as prefaces to each concerto, but also in all the instrumental parts, in the midst of tempo markings and performance directions.
In Spring's first movement, we hear the arrival of Spring, the birds greeting it (first solo), brooks and breezes, and a quick thunderstorm. In the slow movement, a goatherd sleeps under a tree while the second violins represent 'the murmuring branches and leaves' and the viola's repeated notes represent his 'faithful dog' (whining or barking, depending on how violists understand the word 'grida' written in their part). The finale is a big dance accompanied by bagpipes, which are represented by droning basses.
In Summer, the opening bars present the 'merciless summer sun' and 'man and flock' sweltering under it. In the first solo, the violin is an ornamented cuckoo — it's the soloist's task to make the cuckoo's notes distinct in a barrage of 16th-notes. The second solo depicts the turtledove and goldfinch, and rustling of the gentle Zephyr breeze, which is joined by the violent north wind. The wind subsides long enough to let us hear how it makes a shepherd fear a coming storm, his agitated state depicted in a sequence of chromatically descending diminished chords — dissonances that lead to other dissonances instead of resolving. Vivaldi was capable of great harmonic (and contrapuntal) sophistication when it suited his purpose, and there are passages in the Four Seasons that could easily be mistaken for something written a century after his death. The second movement depicts the gentle, buzzing insects, and the shepherd listening with apprehension to distant thunder. In the third movement we get thunder, lightning, and hail.
Autumn begins with a celebration of the harvest in a vigorous dance that loses its energy as the peasants get drunk and fall asleep. In the slow movement the sonnet speaks of revelers enjoying 'sweet sleep' in the 'mild and pleasant' air, but the music is mysterious and dreamlike: virtually the entire movement is another sequence of unresolved dissonances. The physical world, and the aristocracy, barge in with the horn calls of a hunt in the third movement. We hear the prey flee from gunshots and barking hounds, and finally tire and die.
Winter depicts shivering (yet another remarkable chain of dissonances), chattering teeth, and 'running and stamping your feet every moment' to keep warm in snow and biting wind. Venice, at about the same latitude as Portland or Minneapolis, can get serious winter weather. The slow movement is a cozy indoor scene by the fire 'while the rain drenches everyone outside,' the raindrops in pizzicato under the solo violin's melody. The finale begins by painting a picture of trying to walk on ice without slipping, not always successfully, and concludes with the onslaught of 'Sirocco, Boreas and the other winds at war.'
For those with enough skill, the four concertos are great fun to play, which would have ensured popularity in the 18th century, when instrumental proficiency was common among people with money. Of course, not everyone liked them. Geminiani, the Corellian conservative, complained that 'Imitating the Cock, Cuckoo, Owl and other birds, and also sudden Shifts of the Hand from one extremity of the Finger-board to the other,' were 'Tricks that rather belong to the Professors of Legerdemain and Posture-makers than to the art of Musick.' Geminiani inveighing against Vivaldi sounds not unlike the 19th-century classicists inveighing against Wagner and Liszt, and just as ineffectively.
Did you know that the music of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons is based on four poems written by Antonio Vivaldi? In the music, each 'Season' consists of a three-movement concerto. Two quick-tempo outer movements frame a central slow-tempo movement. The sonnets included in the score provide a specific description of each movement. A prose translation of the original Italian is provided below.La Primavera (Spring)
Opus 8, No. 1, in E Major
I. Allegro--
Festive Spring has arrived,
The birds salute it with their happy song.
And the brooks, caressed by little Zephyrs,
Flow with a sweet murmur.
The sky is covered with a black mantle,
And thunder, and lightning, announce a storm.
When they are silent, the birds
Return to sing their lovely song.
II. Largo e pianissimo sempre--
And in the meadow, rich with flowers,
To the sweet murmur of leaves and plants,
The goatherd sleeps, with his faithful dog at his side.
III. Danza pastorale. Allegro--
To the festive sound of pastoral bagpipes,
Dance nymphs and shepherds,
At Spring's brilliant appearance.
L'Estate (Summer)
Opus 8, No. 2, in G minor
I. Allegro non molto--
Under the heat of the burning summer sun,
Languish man and flock; the pine is parched.
The cuckoo finds its voice, and suddenly,
The turtledove and goldfinch sing.
A gentle breeze blows,
But suddenly, the north wind appears.
The shepherd weeps because, overhead,
Lies the fierce storm, and his destiny.
II. Adagio; Presto--
His tired limbs are deprived of rest
By his fear of lightning and fierce thunder,
And by furious swarms of flies and hornets.
III. Presto--
Alas, how just are his fears,
Thunder and lightening fill the Heavens, and the hail
Slices the tops of the corn and other grain.
L'Autunno (Autumn)
Opus 8, No. 3, in F Major
I. Allegro--
The peasants celebrate with dance and song,
The joy of a rich harvest.
And, full of Bacchus's liquor,
They finish their celebration with sleep.
II. Adagio molto--
Each peasant ceases his dance and song.
The mild air gives pleasure,
And the season invites many
To enjoy a sweet slumber.
III. Allegro--
The hunters, at the break of dawn, go to the hunt.
With horns, guns, and dogs they are off,
The beast flees, and they follow its trail.
Already fearful and exhausted by the great noise,
Of guns and dogs, and wounded,
The exhausted beast tries to flee, but dies.
L'Inverno (Winter)
I. Allegro non molto--
Frozen and trembling in the icy snow,
In the severe blast of the horrible wind,
As we run, we constantly stamp our feet,
And our teeth chatter in the cold.
II. Largo--
To spend happy and quiet days near the fire,
Play The Four Seasons By Vivaldi Songs
While, outside, the rain soaks hundreds.
III. Allegro--
We walk on the ice with slow steps,
And tread carefully, for fear of falling.
Symphony, If we go quickly, we slip and fall to the ground.
Four Seasons Vivaldi Music
Again we run on the ice,
Vivaldi Four Seasons Full
Until it cracks and opens.The Four Seasons Vivaldi History
We hear, from closed doors,Sirocco, Boreas, and all the winds in battle.
Four Seasons By Vivaldi Spring
This is winter, but it brings joy.