The Four Seasons (Vivaldi)

The Four Seasons () is a group of four violin concerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, each of which gives musical expression to a season of the year. They were written around 1716–1717 and published in 1725 in Amsterdam, together with eight additional concerti, as ("The Contest Between Harmony and Invention").
"The Four Seasons" is the best known of Vivaldi's works. Though three of the concerti are wholly original, the first, "Spring", borrows patterns from a sinfonia in the first act of Vivaldi's contemporaneous opera "Il Giustino". The inspiration for the concertos is not the countryside around Mantua, as initially supposed, where Vivaldi was living at the time, since according to Karl Heller they could have been written as early as 1716–1717, while Vivaldi was engaged with the court of Mantua only in 1718.
They were a revolution in musical conception: in them Vivaldi represented flowing creeks, singing birds (of different species, each specifically characterized), a shepherd and his barking dog, buzzing flies, storms, drunken dancers, hunting parties from both the hunters' and the prey's point of view, frozen landscapes, and warm winter fires.
Unusual for the period, Vivaldi published the concerti with (possibly written by the composer himself) that elucidated what it was in the spirit of each season that his music was intended to evoke. The concerti therefore stand as one of the earliest and most detailed examples of what would come to be called program music—in other words, music with a narrative element. Vivaldi took great pains to relate his music to the texts of the poems, translating the poetic lines themselves directly into the music on the page. For example, in the middle section of "Spring", when the goatherd sleeps, his barking dog can be heard in the viola section. The music is elsewhere similarly evocative of other natural sounds. Vivaldi divided each concerto into three movements (fast–slow–fast), and, likewise, each linked sonnet into three sections.
Structure.
Vivaldi's arrangement is as follows:
A performance of all four concerti may take about 40–43 minutes. Approximate timings of the individual concerti:
Sonnets and allusions.
There is some debate as to whether the four concertos were written to accompany four sonnets or vice versa. Though it is not known who wrote the accompanying sonnets, the theory that Vivaldi wrote them is supported by the fact that each sonnet is broken into three sections, each neatly corresponding to a movement in the concerto. Regardless of the sonnets' authorship, "The Four Seasons" can be classified as program music, instrumental music intended to evoke something extra-musical, and an art form which Vivaldi was determined to prove sophisticated enough to be taken seriously.
In addition to these sonnets, Vivaldi provided instructions such as "The barking dog" (in the second movement of "Spring"), "Languor caused by the heat" (in the first movement of "Summer"), and "the drunkards have fallen asleep" (in the second movement of "Autumn").
A new translation of the sonnets into English by Armand D'Angour was published in 2019.
Recording history.
The date and personnel on the first recording of "The Four Seasons" are disputed. There is a compact disc of a recording made by the violinist Alfredo Campoli taken from acetates of a French radio broadcast; these are thought to date from early in 1939. The first proper electrical recording was made in 1942 by Bernardino Molinari; though his is a somewhat different interpretation from modern performances, it is clearly recognisable as "The Four Seasons". Molinari's recording was made for Cetra, and was issued in Italy and subsequently in the United States on six double-sided 78s, in the 1940s. It was then reissued on long-playing album in 1950, and, later, on compact disc.
The first American recording was made in the final week of 1947 by the violinist Louis Kaufman. The recording was made at Carnegie Hall in advance of a scheduled recording ban effective 1 January 1948. The performers were The Concert Hall Chamber Orchestra under Henry Swoboda, Edith Weiss-Mann (harpsichord) and Edouard Nies-Berger (organ). This recording helped the re-popularisation of Vivaldi's music in the mainstream repertoire of Europe and America following on the work done by Molinari and others in Italy. It won the French Grand Prix du Disque in 1950, was elected to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002, and was selected the following year for the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress. Kaufman, intrigued to learn that the four concertos were in fact part of a set of twelve, set about finding a full score and eventually recorded the other eight concertos in Zürich in 1950, making his the first recording of Vivaldi's complete Op. 8.
The ensemble I Musici recorded "The Four Seasons" several times, the debut recording in 1955 with Felix Ayo; a 1959 recording featuring Ayo again; and subsequent recordings featuring Roberto Michelucci (1969), Pina Carmirelli (1982), Federico Agostini (1990), and Mariana Sîrbu (1995). The 1969 Argo recording by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields conducted by Neville Marriner and featuring the soloist Alan Loveday sold over half a million copies; it became the ensemble's first gold record.
I Solisti di Zagreb, under the baton of Antonio Janigro with Jan Tomasow as violin soloist and Anton Heiller on harpsichord, followed in 1957 on the Vanguard label, further reissued under the Philips and other labels. Wilfrid Mellers, an English music critic, musicologist and composer wrote of this performance, "the soloists phrase their lyricism beautifully." John Thornton wrote about this recording, "Here is matchless ensemble playing, topped by Tomasow's secure playing. Janigro reveals his talent for conducting, which competes with his considerable talent for cello playing."
Ivan Supek wrote of this recording:
Paul Shoemaker wrote about this recording:
Nigel Kennedy's 1989 recording of "The Four Seasons" with the English Chamber Orchestra sold over copies, becoming one of the best-selling classical works ever. Gil Shaham and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra recorded "The Four Seasons" as well as a music video for the first movement of "Winter" that was featured regularly on The Weather Channel in the mid-1990s.
Surround sound versions of the piece have been issued on Super Audio CD by Richard Tognetti, Pinchas Zukerman, Jonathan Carney and Rachel Podger.
"The World's Encyclopedia of Recorded Music" in 1952 cites only two recordings of "The Four Seasons" – by Molinari and Kaufman. , approximately 1,000 recorded versions have been made since Campoli's in 1939.
Classical musicians have sought to distinguish their recordings of "The Four Seasons", with historically informed performances, and embellishments, to the point of varying the instruments and tempi, or playing notes differently from the listener's expectation (whether specified by the composer or not). It is said that Vivaldi's work presents such opportunities for improvisation.
Reception.
The Four Seasons was voted #67 in the Classic FM Hall of Fame. Three of the four concerti were included in the Classic 100 Concerto listing.
Derivative works.
Derivative works of these concerti include arrangements, transcriptions, covers, remixes, samples, and parodies in music—themes in theater and opera, soundtracks in films (or video games), and choreography in ballet (along with contemporary dance, figure skating, rhythmic gymnastics, synchronized swimming, etc.)—either in their entirety, single movements, or medleys. Antonio Vivaldi appears to have started this trend of adapting music from "The Four Seasons", and since then it has expanded into many aspects of the performing arts (as have other instrumental & vocal works by the composer). This "contest between harmony and invention" (as it were) now involves various genres around the world:
1775