Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Vivaldi

Italian composer and violinist Antonio Vivaldi standardized the concerto (a musical piece with three contrasting movements), which influenced later composers. His The Four Seasons (1725) is one of the first examples of orchestral program music.

(1678-1741), Italian musician, the most influential composer and violinist of his age. A prolific composer, he wrote nearly 500 concertos and established the concerto form for the baroque period. Vivaldi’s best-known concertos are The Four Seasons (1725).

Vivaldi was born in Venice and trained by his father, a violinist at Saint Mark’s Cathedral. Ordained a priest in 1703, Vivaldi began teaching that year at the Ospedale della Pietà, a conservatory that trained musically talented orphaned girls. He remained associated with the Pietà until 1740, at first as a teacher of violin and composition and from 1716 on as music director, although he traveled widely and was often absent. In addition to training the students, he composed concertos and oratorios for weekly concerts, and established an international reputation. From 1713 on, Vivaldi was active as an opera composer and producer in Venice and traveled to Rome, Mantua, and elsewhere to oversee performances of his operas. In 1740 he traveled to Vienna, Austria. He died in poverty in Vienna the following year.

COMPOSITIONS

Vivaldi’s output was enormous. His instrumental works include nearly 500 concertos and more than 70 sonatas written for an astonishing variety of instruments. About half of the concertos are for violin; others were composed for bassoon, cello, oboe, flute, mandolin, and various lesser-known instruments. Some are concerti grossi—compositions for a small group of soloists and a larger orchestral ensemble. A few are ripieno concertos—that is, for a full, though small, orchestra without soloists.

To make his orchestration more interesting, Vivaldi wrote for less common instruments such as the theorbo, a kind of lute, and for unusual combinations of instruments, such as two violins and two organs, lute and violin, or viola d’amore and lute. In a number of works he gave the solo part to instruments traditionally used for accompaniment, such as the bassoon or cello. His sonatas and concertos for cello contributed to the instrument’s growing popularity. He was the first to write for the chalumeau, an ancestor of the clarinet.

Vivaldi’s sense of instruments produced sound color and musical effects of great beauty, as in the slow movement of the Concerto for Four Violins in B minor from Opus 3. He wrote with great brilliance and charm for the flute. The concertos for bassoon demand great virtuosity and fully realize the lyrical powers of the instrument. The opening themes of many of his concertos are bold and striking, but of all his gifts the most enduringly attractive is his lyricism. His slow movements, especially in the violin concertos, are like short operatic arias, with the instrument appearing to sing.

Vivaldi also composed vocal music, both religious and secular (nonreligious). His numerous choral works for churches include masses, psalms, motets, and oratorios. Among his best-known religious compositions are the Gloria in D (1708), the Stabat Mater (1712), and the oratorio Juditha triumphans (1716). His secular vocal music includes cantatas and operas. Vivaldi claimed to have written more than 90 operas but only about 20 have survived, among them Giustino (Justinian, 1724), Orlando furioso (The Mad Roland, 1727), and L’Olimpiade (The Olympiad, 1734). In general the operas take their themes from ancient history and mythology.

INNOVATIONS AND INFLUENCE

Method of Composing

Johann Sebastian Bach

II LIFE

Early Life
Arnstadt: 1703-1707
Mühlhausen: 1707-1708
Weimar: 1708-1717
Köthen: 1717-1723

Leipzig: 1723-1750

III WORKS

Cantatas

Motets
Oratorios and Passions
Magnificat and B-Minor Mass
Organ Work
Clavier Works
Works for Solo Instruments
Works for Instrumental Ensemble
Musical Offering, Canonic Variations, Art of Fugue

Method of Composing

As a composer living in an age when new music was required on a weekly—if not daily—basis, Bach was accustomed to writing works with great speed. On good days he appears to have been able to compose highly refined masterpieces without the aid of sketches or drafts—almost as one would write a letter. Because Bach was under pressure to produce vast quantities of music, he often pulled a previously written piece off the shelf and revised it for a new occasion. Thus violin concertos from Köthen reappear in Leipzig as harpsichord concertos, or secular birthday cantatas resurface, with new words, as Sunday church music. The B-Minor Mass, for instance, appears to consist almost wholly of revised cantata movements from earlier periods. This procedure, which might be viewed as plagiarism in modern times, was accepted as a practical recycling process in the Baroque era, and Bach frequently used it to update early works and bring the music they contained to an even higher state of beauty.

IV THE REVIVAL OF BACH’S MUSIC

Musical Offering, Canonic Variations, Art of Fugue

Johann Sebastian Bach

II LIFE

Early Life
Arnstadt: 1703-1707
Mühlhausen: 1707-1708
Weimar: 1708-1717
Köthen: 1717-1723

Leipzig: 1723-1750

III WORKS

Cantatas

Motets
Oratorios and Passions
Magnificat and B-Minor Mass
Organ Work
Clavier Works
Works for Solo Instruments
Works for Instrumental Ensemble

Musical Offering, Canonic Variations, Art of Fugue

In the last decade of his life Bach demonstrated his consummate achievements as a master of counterpoint in three works devoted to the craft of strict fugue and canon. The Musical Offering, BWV 1079, based on a theme proposed by Frederick the Great during Bach’s 1747 visit to Berlin, contains two large ricercares (old-fashioned fugues in Renaissance vocal style), a trio sonata, and a sequence of puzzle canons (canons that need to be solved). In 1747 Bach also composed the Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel Hoch, BWV 769, to mark his entry into the Society of Musical Sciences, whose select membership of 20 composers and theorists included George Frideric Handel and Georg Philipp Telemann. Based on the Christmas chorale “From heaven above to earth I come,” the variations present a sequence of five elaborate canons for an organ with two manuals and pedal.

Die Kunst der Fuge (“The Art of Fugue”), BWV 1080, once thought to date from Bach’s final year, is now known to have been compiled over a period of a decade or more. Around 1740 Bach assembled the core of the collection: a series of fugues and canons of increasing complexity, all based on the same principal theme. In the first version of the collection, the fugues include pieces for one, two, and three subjects. At the very end of his life Bach picked up the collection once again, this time with an eye to publishing it, perhaps as yet another part of the Clavierübung series. He revised and expanded the music, and added a climactic concluding fugue for four subjects, the last of which spelled in music his own name: B A C H (with B as B-flat and H as B-natural in the German scale). Bach died before bringing the gigantic quadruple fugue to an end, however, and the music breaks off, unfinished, in the 239th measure. The incomplete collection was printed after his death by members the family. Although The Art of Fugue is commonly performed on various combinations of instruments—strings, brass, woodwinds, full orchestra, or even saxophone quartet—it is clear that Bach intended the piece for keyboard (harpsichord or possibly organ).

Method of Composing

IV THE REVIVAL OF BACH’S MUSIC