Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, Op. 8 Nos. 1–4

The four solo violin concertos that make up Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (Le quattro staggioni) are, as the title suggests, musical depictions of sounds and experiences associated with the seasons of the year, with one concerto dedicated to each: spring, summer, winter, and fall. To make the story of each piece unmistakably clear, Vivaldi included, in addition to the programmatic titles, what he called “sonnet dimostrativo” (“illustrative sonnets”) for each season, with specific lines cued to corresponding musical passages in each movement. The compositional achievements in this collection represent Vivaldi at the height of his creative powers.

Introduction

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons were instantly popular after they were published in 1725, and following their 20th-century rediscovery, they are once again beloved—over 300 years later. Their presence in modern culture, especially in commercials, television, and film scores, make them among the most recognizable pieces in the classical canon. To be sure, they have aesthetically pleasing music, even if one does not know in detail their companion, season-inspired sonnets. Precise knowledge of what Vivaldi meant to express in the music can enhance the listening experience by adding to it an appreciation for the composer’s sonic imagination.

The set is remarkable for many reasons, not least of which is that it is an example of what later became known as “program music”: purely instrumental compositions intended to depict specific objects and ideas. While Vivaldi wrote many pieces with evocative titles, none of his other compositions are linked to a specific text. The poetry of The Four Seasons reflects on the human experience of nature’s yearly cycles; its music mimics representative sounds and weather events, while also conveying, movement by movement, the physical sensations of each season.

History

The history of Le quattro staggioni began about a dozen years before their 1725 publication. They were certainly completed much earlier because, sometime during the 1710s, Vivaldi sent them to a patron, Count Wenzel von Morzin, in fulfillment of a commission. That created a problem for Vivaldi when he later decided to offer them for sale: Morzin would have rightfully thought of them as his own property. Vivaldi, ever the shrewd businessman, got ahead of the problem by addressing it publicly, and head-on: he issued the set with a very flattering dedication to the Count, along with a printed letter of explanation. Vivaldi’s celebrity was such that the likely reach of a new volume of his works with the Count’s name attached would also bring fame to his noble patron.

In the letter to Morzin, Vivaldi revealed the music’s relationship to a set of sonnets. (Why the poetry was not included with the concertos when they were first sent, we do not know.) He explained to the Count that references in the music to specific lines of the poetry would make it clear what the associated music was about. The 1725 publication includes these sonnets in the solo violin part, which also contains alphabetical cues linking specific musical passages to their poetic inspiration. For example, the first two text references in the first movement of the first concerto (the Allegro from Spring) appear as: A. “Spring has arrived and merrily,” then, 14 measures later, B. “the birds hail her with happy song.” There are five such cues in the first movement alone (labeled A through E). The rest of the movements work the same way.

No one knows who composed the sonnets. The quality of the poetry indicates that it was probably not the work of a professional. Vivaldi himself might have written it in imitation of John Milton’s poems L’Allegro and Il penseroso (c. 1631–32). Whether the seasonally inspired music came before or after the sonnets cannot now be determined. We do know that the pieces originally sent to Count Morzin did not include text. The idea that they were composed abstractly, though, does not withstand scrutiny. The set’s many onomatopoeias (birds chirping, dogs barking, storms raging, etc.), and the corresponding twists in both text and musical form, could not have been anything other than scripted.

Because the concertos were initially a gift to a private patron, we also cannot know how the pieces were first received: there was no public concert, and there is no evidence of performance. Vivaldi and his publisher, Le Cène, had cause to believe they would be commercially successful, or the two would not have gone to the trouble of publication, which was an expensive gamble. After the concertos were released, they met with approval, especially in Paris. Once a city vehemently opposed to anything stylistically Italian—on political grounds—the French capital went positively mad for Vivaldi’s music. The Four Seasons were heard in court circles, and then in the public series of the Concert Spirituel. The “Spring” concerto (No. 1) emerged as the most popular of the set. It remained a showpiece for virtuoso violinists well into the second half of the 18th century.

Form and Analysis

As was common at the time, Vivaldi published compositions in sets (opuses) of either six or 12 pieces. Some of these sets were designed around a common theme, while others were clearly an anthology of similar works. So it was with his Opus 8: a set of 12 concertos, the first four of which are The Four Seasons. Although these four share a premise and have some musical connections between them, the pieces also stand effortlessly on their own. They are each complete concertos comprising three movements (fast–slow–fast) that feature a virtuosic solo violin whose music is equal parts display and expression.

Concertos in this style operate on the principle of collaborative contrast. Usually, that contrast is between a soloist (or solo group) and an ensemble. The ensemble’s job is to provide a stable overall structure within which the soloist offers variations of material introduced by the ensemble, along with its own spectacular flights of fancy. Each fast movement has a distinct pool of melodies and rhythmic patterns (motives) that are introduced at the beginning and return, in part or in full, as the movement progresses (ritornello form). Coherence and accessibility are virtually guaranteed by the built-in repetition scheme, which contains an ever-renewing, enticingly varied collection of motives tied to forward-moving harmonies.

During these fast movements, musical ideas introduced at the beginning become familiar enough that even casual listeners can appreciate their transformations as the movement progresses through new variations and distant keys—all before returning to the original material in the original key. All the outer movements in Vivaldi’s mature concertos work along this same principle. What is special about The Four Seasons is that they also offer a compelling narrative on top of this framework.

The slow internal movements are constructed differently. They tend to be lyrical, and do not feature the same kind of systematic repetition or driving rhythms as the outer movements. In The Four Seasons, each concerto’s middle movement is a little portrait of seasonally-specific repose. The natural features of each season receive their own special attention from the composer, who seems to find spring and fall particularly agreeable, summer and winter punishing.

Vivaldi: Concerto in E major for Violin, Strings, and Continuo, RV 269, Op. 8, No. 1, "Spring" from The Four Seasons

I. La primavera (Spring)

Spring opens with a spritely first movement (Allegro). Its sonnet celebrates the joy of the season’s arrival, and Vivaldi’s music takes the cue. The pulse is lively, the key is major, the themes rise happily and fall predictably in balanced, regular patterns. Almost immediately the texture is decorated with the solo violin’s imitations of birdsong, then gentle, undulating breezes, and, finally, murmuring streams. There is a slight disturbance in the middle of the movement, as a little storm passes through, but then the skies clear, the birds return to chirping, and all is well again. In the middle movement (“Largo e pianissimo sempre”), the scene shifts to a goatherd’s springtime nap in a flowery meadow. In the viola, we hear the sound of his trusty canine companion waking and barking. Musically, the goal seems to be a general feeling of tranquility and safety among the blossoms. The closing movement (Allegro) is a rustic country dance, ascribed in the poetry to frolicking shepherds and nymphs, to whom the season and all its natural joys belong.

Vivaldi: Concerto in G minor for Violin, Strings, and Continuo, RV 315, Op. 8, No. 2, "Summer" from The Four Seasons

II. L’estade (Summer)

Summer contains little of Spring’s gentleness. The music is now minor, its themes restless, chromatic, and concerned. There are still birds (cuckoos, turtledoves, goldfinches) and breezes, but the breezes have become ill-winds that portend raging storms. The first movement closes with the story of a shepherd, weepy over the fears of the coming storms and the fate that awaits him. He is so troubled that he cannot rest. His anxious struggle is the topic of the second movement (Adagio). The music alternates between lyrical soliloquy and menacing interruptions representing both storm and swarms of insects. We discover in the third movement (Presto) that the shepherd was right to be concerned: heavy weather does indeed arrive, battering crops and emotions alike.

Vivaldi: Concerto in F major for Violin, Strings, and Continuo, RV 293, Op. 8, No. 3, "Autumn" from The Four Seasons

III. L’autunno (Autumn)

Autumn, in contrast, brings only the joy of the harvest and satisfied repose, until the third movement, in which a successful hunt fells a poor beast. In the first movement (Allegro), the music obligingly depicts drunken, happy peasants celebrating the season until they finally fall asleep, deep into their cups. The second movement (“Adagio molto”) is the soundtrack of contented, drunken slumber under the refreshing chill of an autumn evening. The next morning brings the thrill of the chase (“Allegro ‘La caccia’”). The solo violin imitates hunting horns, the baying of the hounds, the pursuit of prey, its fruitless attempts to escape, and, finally, its demise.

Vivaldi: Concerto in F minor for Violin, Strings, and Continuo, RV 297, Op. 8, No. 4, "Winter" from The Four Seasons

IV. L’inverno (Winter)

Winter is once again a study in contrast. The first movement (“Allegro non molto”) is all about depicting the body’s response to cold. Its opening bars are in a chilly minor, punctuated by quick, nattering string passages meant to represent shivering caused by cold temperatures and icy snows. We also hear the stamping of frozen feet and the chattering of teeth. There is some relief in the second movement (Largo), which offers the smug warmth of sitting indoors and the fireside, while the cold torments those who have to be in it. The final movement (Allegro) navigates the treachery of ice, tracing careful steps over dangerous ground. Slips are inevitable, as are rapidly spreading cracks—but according to the sonnet, these are the brutal joys of the season.

The concertos of The Four Seasons are often heard performed by chamber orchestra, even though the original scoring called only for solo violin, first violin, second violin, viola, and basso continuo (lower-range instrument and keyboard). The works can therefore be performed by as few as six players, although they can certainly be effective with larger forces. 18th-century convention was, in many cases, more flexible in this regard than later repertories.

A peculiarity of Winter’s original publication history continues to impact modern performances of the work. Vivaldi wrote a special cello part for the slow movement (Largo) that is sometimes mistakenly left out. This happened because, in the work’s early publication history, the cello part was printed on a separate page that got lost. (It was not bound together with the combined part labeled “organo e violoncello.”) Editions based on the surviving early copies initially looked complete but actually were not.

Critical Thoughts

As with other classical works that have been successfully integrated into mass culture, it can be easy to overlook what is extraordinary about The Four Seasons: they not only exemplify Vivaldi’s fully mature compositional style, but are also a virtual dictionary of how to understand what Baroque music means. Each concerto is cued to the composer’s own explanation of how he has translated specific sounds, feelings, and natural events into the era’s dominant musical language. What is even more remarkable is that 300 years later, and in a completely foreign cultural context (ours), his musical texts continue to communicate.

That said, these concertos are often performed without detailed reference to their sonnets, leaving only their titles to suggest what they are about. Some listeners do not have even that guidance, yet they still find the music meaningful. The poetry certainly offers one plausible narrative for each movement—one that the composer himself endorsed—but to suggest there are no other valid ways of hearing the music might well be doing it an injustice.

Legacy

Unlike Romantic composers, Baroque (as well as Classical) composers sought to be clearly understood, ideally upon first hearing. The ease with which Vivaldi’s music can be appreciated has sometimes been packaged as a negative, when really, by the standards of his own time, it was an overwhelming success. Despite Vivaldi’s international celebrity during his life, and the ubiquity of The Four Seasons today, his music was totally unknown for the two centuries following his death, in 1741. The current performance history of these concertos only goes back to the 1940s. Their rediscovery and subsequent recording helped to spark modern interest in the composer. Vivaldi’s popular reputation now rests mainly on his instrumental music—particularly The Four Seasons—but he was also an astonishingly good opera composer. The fertility of his imagination and the range of his talent are certainly represented in the concertos of Op. 8, but the impact of his other publications on the compositional style of his age was profound. The Four Seasons are really just the beginning.

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Article by Ellen Exner