Antonio Vivaldi

Italian composer

• Born: March 4, 1678
• Birthplace: Venice (now in Italy)
• Died: July 28, 1741
• Place of death: Vienna, Austria

As the most influential and original Italian composer of the early eighteenth century, Vivaldi developed the basic form of the Baroque concerto and made it the standard for instrumental music throughout much of Europe. He was a pioneer of program music, and his techniques of orchestration and lyrical violin style anticipated the Romanticism of the nineteenth century.

Early Life

Antonio Vivaldi (ahn-TAWN-yoh vee-VAHL-dee) was the eldest of six children born to Giovanni Battista Vivaldi, the son of a baker from the town of Brescia. After his father’s death in 1666, Giovanni Battista was taken to Venice, where he eventually worked, at least part-time, as both a baker and a barber. In 1685, however, he was hired as a violinist at the Cathedral of St. Mark, which, like most larger churches in Europe, had its own orchestra. He achieved a certain amount of local fame as a musician, opera manager, and composer under the surname Rossi (Italian for “red”), apparently because of his red hair. Antonio Vivaldi was later to be known by the sobriquet “Il Prete Rosso” (“the red priest”) for the same reason.

When Antonio was born, the midwife who delivered him performed an emergency baptism because of a pericolo di morte, or “risk of death.” What exactly this risk was is unclear; a likely explanation is that the serious ailment that Vivaldi claimed afflicted him throughout his life had appeared at birth. The composer himself called his condition a strettezza di petto, or a “tightness of the chest,” and various diagnoses, from asthma to angina pectoris, have been offered by historians.

Very little else is known about Vivaldi’s childhood. He was probably taught to play the violin by his father. By age ten, he is reputed to have played in the cathedral orchestra whenever his father was occupied elsewhere. It was decided at some point that Vivaldi would be trained for the priesthood, since this was the only way for a commoner to achieve upward social mobility. Thus, in 1693, Vivaldi was tonsured and took minor orders. He received his instruction from the clergy of two local churches, and he was allowed to live at home, either because of his illness or to allow him to continue studying the violin. He was ordained, after ten years of training, in 1703.

Within months of becoming a priest, Vivaldi received his first professional appointment, as maestro di violino (violin instructor) at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà, one of four Venetian orphanages that specialized in the musical training of abandoned or indigent girls. He thereupon ceased to say masses, though he always remained outwardly pious and wrote a large quantity of splendid religious music. He later defended his decision by claiming that his chest ailment made him unable to perform the ceremony. It is equally likely that he simply preferred not to be distracted from his musical activities. Until the nineteenth century, it was not at all unusual for priests to engage in secular professions, especially in Italy.

Life’s Work

In eighteenth century Venice, the four musical orphanages, and especially the Pietà, were so renowned for the quality of their instrumental and vocal instruction that their religious services had become great social affairs, much more like public concerts, with a wide variety of secular and religious music being performed. A visit to at least one of these services was considered essential by tourists, and the Pietà’s chapel was always filled to capacity.

Vivaldi’s position was therefore extremely important. He was required not only to provide competent instruction, to rehearse the orchestra, and to purchase and maintain its stringed instruments but also to compose a constant supply of new music for its performances. In fact, his first published works, a set of twelve trio sonatas (Op. 1), were completed in his first year on the job. Within a few more years, he wrote a set of violin sonatas (Op. 2) and a variety of concerti for various solo instruments and strings.

These concerti, and those that followed, had an immediate and dramatic impact on the European music scene. In Germany, especially, they achieved great popularity. In 1711, Vivaldi’s most influential work, L’estro armonico (Op. 3), was published, and Johann Sebastian Bach transcribed several of its twelve violin concerti for harpsichord and strings. Other composers also copied Vivaldi’s style, and several, such as Gottfried Stölzel, went to Venice to seek him out. Vivaldi is credited with having reformed the concerto by standardizing a three-movement, fast-slow-fast structure and creating thematically distinct solo parts alternating with full-ensemble ritornellos (refrains in different keys).

Vivaldi continued to compose instrumental works throughout his life; ultimately, these totaled more than five hundred inventive, deftly orchestrated concerti and sinfonias, and more than ninety sonatas. Perhaps the most famous of his works, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (twelve concerti, Op. 8), appeared in about 1725. Its first four concerti, which have been immortalized as The Four Seasons, contain probably the most clearly articulated program music of the Baroque era. The listener can easily visualize the bubbling brook of “Spring,” the hot sun of “Summer,” and other images these concerti evoke.

Long before this, however, Vivaldi had already embarked upon a career in opera. His first known stage work was produced in May, 1713, and several more were performed in Venice in the years following. From 1718 to 1726, he was usually on the road in Mantua and Rome, producing and directing new operas. While in Rome, he also performed twice for the pope, and, in 1719, he received a new appointment (in addition to his position at the Pietà) as court composer to the governor of Mantua. In 1727, he dedicated a set of twelve concerti, La cetra (Op. 9), to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, who was said to have given Vivaldi a considerable amount of money, a golden chain and medallion, and a knighthood.

As his reputation spread far and wide, so also did Vivaldi’s travels. In 1729, he visited Vienna, where his father, who had accompanied him, is believed to have died. In 1730, he may also have gone to Prague, where an Italian company staged two of his new operas. Vivaldi always preferred to oversee productions of his works himself, and he often blamed his few failures on changes made by others. In 1733, he returned temporarily to Venice, but after 1735 he chose to produce new operas in other cities of Italy, especially Ferrara.

While at Ferrara, Vivaldi got into a dispute over a singer’s contract and his choice of operas for performance. This may have reflected a decline in his popularity there. Three of his works were box-office failures, but Vivaldi nevertheless insisted upon receiving the maximum payment stipulated in his agreement with the theater managers. These problems evidently led the cardinal of Ferrara (which was a papal domain), in 1737, to censure Vivaldi and forbid him to enter the city. The composer was accused of having illicit relations with Anna Giraud, a famous contralto who was a member of his entourage, in addition to refusing to say Mass. Vivaldi vehemently denied the first accusation, and he blamed his failure to conduct masses on his disease. Nevertheless, his last opera written for Ferrara was performed without his supervision and was a conspicuous flop. Vivaldi, however, turned the situation to good account: He was now free to journey to Amsterdam to conduct several performances of his instrumental music.

Naturally, all of this traveling affected his work for the Pietà, and his relations with the board of governors were occasionally stormy. In 1716, he had been promoted to maestro de’ concerti, but his travels prevented him from sustained teaching, and he often had to send new compositions to the Pietà by mail. Even so, he was promoted to maestro di cappella in 1735, only to be fired three years later. He continued to supply the Pietà with occasional concerti, and even directed performances there, as late as 1740.

In that year, or possibly early in 1741, Vivaldi undertook a mysterious journey to Vienna, the purpose of which is still unclear. It is known that he sold a group of concerti manuscripts there and that he was in dire financial straits. When he died, on July 28, 1741, of what was called an “internal inflammation,” he was living in the house of a saddler’s widow. Like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart fifty years later, he was given a pauper’s funeral.

Significance

Few known portraits of Antonio Vivaldi exist, and these differ vastly from one another. A famous caricature, sketched by Pier Leone Ghezzi in 1723, gives him a long nose, a jutting chin, and a look of avidity, while a contemporary anonymous painting makes him appear fragile and pensive. These conflicting images reflect the difficulty in evaluating his personality. His lifestyle was extravagant, flamboyant, and unconventional, and he had many enemies. He was notorious for his vanity and sensitivity to criticism, and was more highly regarded by his Italian contemporaries for his skills as a violinist than for his originality as a composer.

Vivaldi also had a reputation as a hard bargainer, and his concern with money may have been excessive. Some of the personal pettiness and greed that Vivaldi occasionally displayed may have been a reaction to the fact that his disease disabled him. Moreover, traveling with a large entourage, including a nurse, was very expensive. None of his critics, however, questioned Vivaldi’s tremendous, almost fanatic, dedication to music, or the virtuosity of his violin technique. Though the fame of his operas evaporated almost immediately after his death, the emotional force and energy of his instrumental works continued to be acknowledged for several decades.

Oddly enough, it was probably these very qualities that led to Vivaldi’s subsequent oblivion. The classical period had little use, on one hand, for what was characterized as the “wild and irregular” emotionalism of his concerti, while, on the other, he was reproached for churning out too many routine works pandering to mediocre public tastes. Like many Baroque composers, he fell into obscurity until the Bach revival that took place in the 1840’s. Even then, however, he was simply regarded as one of Bach’s precursors. His contributions to the development of the concerto form, and Bach’s imitation of it, were not acknowledged until the beginning of the twentieth century.

Studies of Vivaldi were given a great boost by the discovery of his personal collection of manuscripts in the 1920’s, but it was not until the Turin musicologist Alberto Gentili obtained a vast, previously unknown collection of his works in 1930 that Vivaldi’s importance began to be truly realized. His reputation was fully rehabilitated by the first publication of his collected works in 1947 and by a famous study of the composer by the French musicologist Marc Pincherle. In the years since, enthusiasm for the music of Vivaldi has continued to grow: Thousands of Vivaldi recordings have been issued, especially of The Four Seasons, and these concerti and others have provided background music for many popular films. Millions of people who would otherwise have no interest in, or awareness of, Baroque music thus have been attracted to its beauties. Beyond Vivaldi’s contributions to the development of the concerto form and his innovations in orchestration and violin technique, this is perhaps his most important achievement.

Bibliography

Arnold, Denis. “Vivaldi.” In The New Grove Italian Baroque Masters, edited by Denis Arnold et al. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. An excellent concise biography, one of seven included in this volume, all by noted musical scholars. Discusses Vivaldi’s life, music, and influence on other composers. Contains an updated catalog of Vivaldi’s works, as well as a comprehensive bibliography.

Barbier, Patrick. Vivaldi’s Venice: Music and Celebration in the Baroque Era. Translated from the French by Margaret Crosland. London: Souvenir, 2003. In the years Vivaldi grew up and lived in Venice, the city was filled with music at concerts, the theater, carnivals, and other events attended by those of all social classes. Barbier describes the city, its people, and the various types of music that were popular during Vivaldi’s lifetime.

Borroff, Edith. The Music of the Baroque. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1970. A brief introduction to Baroque music for students with little musical background. Provides many musical examples that are explained sufficiently to allow beginning students to learn a substantial amount of music theory. Profusely illustrated. An outstanding feature is the inclusion of brief discographies for each type and area of music discussed.

Kolneder, Walter. Antonio Vivaldi: His Life and Work. Translated by Bill Hopkins. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. Kolneder has replaced Pincherle as the standard full-length biography of Vivaldi. Extremely well written, but difficult for those without a solid background in music theory. In addition to an extensive, but unclassified, bibliography, Kolneder provides many musical examples.

Landon, H. C. Robbins. Vivaldi: Voice of the Baroque. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993. Concise popular biography drawing upon newly discovered correspondence and documents. Landon explains why, with the exception of The Four Seasons and the Second Gloria in D, Vivaldi’s music is generally ignored.

Pincherle, Marc. Vivaldi, Genius of the Baroque. Translated by Christopher Hatch. New York: W. W. Norton, 1957. Pincherle was the scholar primarily responsible for the post-World War II Vivaldi revival. In addition to this seminal study, Pincherle also published the first comprehensive catalog of Vivaldi’s works. Although this work has been superseded by later research, it is still excellent reading and a good source for the nonspecialist.

Selfridge-Field, Eleonor. Venetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi. Edited by F. W. Sternfield. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1975. An outstanding study of the Venetian Baroque, including a full analysis of many of Vivaldi’s works, as well as those of his Venetian contemporaries. Suggests that Vivaldi’s legacy to later composers may have been greater than is generally acknowledged. Surveys the history of Venetian musical practice and organizations and includes an excellent glossary of Baroque musical terms and instruments.

Talbot, Michael. Vivaldi. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1978. Reprint. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. The best all-around discussion of Vivaldi’s life, works, and impact. Among other features, it includes a complete list of Vivaldi’s works, a chronological outline, and an extensive bibliography. A scholarly work with abundant evidence of original research (including excerpts from many of Vivaldi’s extant letters), well written, and entertaining. Highly recommended.