Antonio
Vivaldi
Italian composer
Source: Michael TalbotThe Editors of Encyclopedia
Britannica
Antonio Vivaldi, in full Antonio Lucio
Vivaldi, (born March 4, 1678, Venice, Republic of Venice [Italy]—died July 28,
1741, Vienna, Austria), Italian composer and violinist who left a decisive mark
on the form of the concerto and the style of late Baroque instrumental music.
Life
Vivaldi’s main teacher was probably his
father, Giovanni Battista, who in 1685 was admitted as a violinist to the
orchestra of the San Marco Basilica in Venice. Antonio, the eldest child, trained
for the priesthood and was ordained in 1703. His distinctive reddish hair would
later earn him the soubriquet Il Prete Rosso (“The Red Priest”). He made his
first known public appearance playing alongside his father in the basilica as a
“supernumerary” violinist in 1696. He became an excellent violinist, and in
1703 he was appointed violin master at the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for
foundlings. The Pietà specialized in the musical training of its female wards,
and those with musical aptitude were assigned to its excellent choir and
orchestra, whose much-praised performances assisted the institution’s quest for
donations and legacies. Vivaldi had dealings with the Pietà for most of his
career: as violin master (1703–09; 1711–15), director of instrumental music
(1716–17; 1735–38), and paid external supplier of compositions (1723–29;
1739–40).
Soon after his ordination as a priest,
Vivaldi gave up celebrating mass because of a chronic ailment that is believed
to have been bronchial asthma. Despite this circumstance, he took his status as
a secular priest seriously and even earned the reputation of a religious bigot.
Vivaldi’s earliest musical compositions
date from his first years at the Pietà. Printed collections of his trio sonatas
and violin sonatas respectively appeared in 1705 and 1709, and in 1711 his
first and most influential set of concerti for violin and string orchestra
(Opus 3, L’estro armonico) was published by the Amsterdam music-publishing firm
of Estienne Roger. In the years up to 1719, Roger published three more
collections of his concerti (opuses 4, 6, and 7) and one collection of sonatas
(Opus 5).
Vivaldi made his debut as a composer of
sacred vocal music in 1713, when the Pietà’s choirmaster left his post and the
institution had to turn to Vivaldi and other composers for new compositions. He
achieved great success with his sacred vocal music, for which he later received
commissions from other institutions. Another new field of endeavour for him
opened in 1713 when his first opera, Ottone in villa, was produced in Vicenza.
Returning to Venice, Vivaldi immediately plunged into operatic activity in the
twin roles of composer and impresario. From 1718 to 1720 he worked in Mantua as
director of secular music for that city’s governor, Prince Philip of
Hesse-Darmstadt. This was the only full-time post Vivaldi ever held; he seems
to have preferred life as a freelance composer for the flexibility and
entrepreneurial opportunities it offered. Vivaldi’s major compositions in
Mantua were operas, though he also composed cantatas and instrumental works.
The 1720s were the zenith of Vivaldi’s career. Based once more in Venice,
but frequently traveling elsewhere, he
supplied instrumental music to patrons and customers throughout Europe. Between
1725 and 1729 he entrusted five new collections of concerti (opuses 8–12) to
Roger’s publisher successor, Michel-Charles Le Cène. After 1729 Vivaldi stopped
publishing his works, finding it more profitable to sell them in manuscript to individual
purchasers. During this decade he also received numerous commissions for operas
and resumed his activity as an impresario in Venice and other Italian cities.
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1678-1741
In 1726 the contralto Anna Girò sang for
the first time in a Vivaldi opera. Born in Mantua about 1711, she had gone to
Venice to further her career as a singer. Her voice was not strong, but she was
attractive and acted well. She became part of Vivaldi’s entourage and the
indispensable prima donna of his subsequent operas, causing gossip to circulate
that she was Vivaldi’s mistress. After Vivaldi’s death she continued to perform
successfully in opera until quitting the stage in 1748 to marry a nobleman.
In the 1730s Vivaldi’s career gradually
declined. The French traveler Charles de Brosses reported in 1739 with regret
that his music was no longer fashionable. Vivaldi’s impresarial forays became
increasingly marked by failure. In 1740 he traveled to Vienna, but he fell ill
and did not live to attend the production there of his opera L’oracolo in
Messenia in 1742. The simplicity of his funeral on July 28, 1741, suggests that
he died in considerable poverty.
After Vivaldi’s death, his huge collection
of musical manuscripts, consisting mainly of autograph scores of his own works,
was bound into 27 large volumes. These were acquired first by the Venetian
bibliophile Jacopo Soranzo and later by Count Giacomo Durazzo, Christoph
Willibald Gluck’s patron. Rediscovered in the 1920s, these manuscripts today
form part of the Foà and Giordano collections of the National Library in Turin.
Instrumental music of Antonio
Vivaldi
Almost 500 concerti by Vivaldi survive.
More than 300 are concerti for a solo instrument with string orchestra and
continuo. Of these, approximately 230 are written for solo violin, 40 for
bassoon, 25 for cello, 15 for oboe, and 10 for flute. There are also concerti
for viola d’amore, recorder, mandolin, and other instruments. Vivaldi’s
remaining concerti are either double concerti (including about 25 written for
two violins), concerti grossi using three or more soloists, concerti ripieni
(string concerti without a soloist), or chamber concerti for a group of
instruments without orchestra.
Vivaldi perfected the form of what would
become the classical three-movement concerto. Indeed, he helped establish the
fast-slow-fast plan of the concerto’s three movements. Perhaps more
importantly, Vivaldi was the first to employ regularly in his concerti the
ritornello form, in which recurrent restatements of a refrain alternate with
more episodic passages featuring a solo instrument. Vivaldi’s bold
juxtapositions of the refrains (ritornelli) and the solo passages opened new
possibilities for virtuosic display by solo instrumentalists. The fast
movements in his concerti are notable for their rhythmic drive and the boldness
of their themes, while the slow movements often present the character of arias
written for the solo instrument.
The energy, passion, and lyricism of
Vivaldi’s concerti and their instrumental colour and simple dramatic effects
(which are obtained without recourse to contrapuntal artifice) rapidly passed
into the general language of music. His concerti were taken as models of form
by many late Baroque composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach, who
transcribed 10 of them for keyboard instruments. The highly virtuosic style of
Vivaldi’s writing for the solo violin in his concerti reflects his own renowned
technical command of that instrument.
Four Stations
Several of Vivaldi’s concerti have
picturesque or allusive titles. Four of them, the cycle of violin concerti
entitled The Four Seasons (Opus 8, no. 1–4), are programmatic in a
thoroughgoing fashion, with each concerto depicting a different season of the
year, starting with spring. Vivaldi’s effective representation of the sounds of
nature inaugurated a tradition to which works such as Ludwig van Beethoven’s
Pastoral Symphony belong. Vivaldi also left more than 90 sonatas, mainly for
stringed instruments. Their form and style are conventional by comparison with
the concerti, but they contain many fluent, attractive works.
Public Advertising
Vocal music
More than 50 authentic sacred vocal
compositions by Vivaldi are extant. They range from short hymns for solo voices
to oratorios and elaborate psalm settings in several movements for double choir
and orchestra. Many of them exhibit a spiritual depth and a command of
counterpoint equal to the best of their time. The mutual independence of voices
and instruments often anticipates the later symphonic masses of Joseph Haydn
and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As more of this repertory becomes available in
modern editions, its reputation seems likely to rise.
The reception of Vivaldi’s secular vocal
works has been more problematic. Nearly 50 operas by him have been identified,
and 16 survive complete. In their time they were influential works with
appealing melodies and inventive orchestral accompaniments. Nevertheless, the
general unfamiliarity of 20th-century audiences with Baroque poetry and
dramaturgy, which often appear stilted and artificial, has in the past
inhibited their appreciation among nonspecialists. Nonetheless, Vivaldi’s
Orlando furioso was successfully revived by the Dallas Civic Opera (now Dallas
Opera) in 1980 and was issued in CD recording. Vivaldi’s cantatas, numbering
nearly 40 works, are more suitable candidates for general revival, though their
quality is variable.
Vienna Austria
With affection,
Ruben
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