The Summer concerto is the only one to make extensive use of parallel octaves between the lowest two voices, a sonority often thought to be comparatively hollow due to the use of a single pitch class.Footnote "useRatesEcommerce": false To counteract the lively rhythms of the obbligato cello, Vivaldi uses the viola to create a sostenuto line of the utmost simplicity: a harmonic backdrop not unlike some of the horn and oboe writing found in orchestral music from a few decades later, sometimes referred to as the wind organ effect.Footnote Likewise, by using sonnets to explicate the concertos narrative content, Vivaldi was employing one of the Arcadians favoured poetic genres to enhance the narrative's accessibility while offering the concertos as an example of the new Italian aesthetic of good taste. In the middle section of the Spring concerto, where the goatherd sleeps, his barking dog can be marked in the viola section. 35 Instead of physical labour and a bountiful harvest, Vivaldi focuses attention on the physical violence of natural forces and a person's inner turmoil, turning a traditionally positive image of summer into a scene of fear and oppression; even the negative portrayal of extreme heat was an unusual contribution. Emily I. Dolan has argued that awareness and exploitation of orchestral sonorities really began during Haydn's career, as commentators began specifically to address, however briefly, the variety of sounds produced by the orchestra.Footnote 13/1 (1973), 127133, especially 128Google Scholar. While no evidence has emerged of Vivaldi's membership in any such academy, their ideas were highly influential, thanks to the efforts of important writers such as Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Gian Gioseffo Orsi, Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina, Eustachio Manfredi, Scipione Maffei and Apostolo Zeno, the last two being authors of librettos that Vivaldi set to music. La primavera, "Spring," the first of these, was the best known during his lifetime. These possibilities allowed Vivaldi to highlight the challenges and rewards of using the concerto genre to suggest narrative content. However, he became highly skilled as a violinist and composer, and in 1703 he took the position of violin master at a local orphanage, the Devout Hospital of Mercy (Italian: Ospedale della Piet; note that Hospital at this time does not indicate a center for medical care). At least two girls who studied at the orphanage, Anna Bon and Vincenta Da Ponte, went on to become composers. On the multiple traditions portraying the seasons as a consequence of the fall of Adam and Eve, see Janet Levy suggests that part of its expressive agency comes from a sense of forced conformity fear generated by the loss of self-determination.Footnote It is also significant that Vivaldi opted to use the emerging genre of the concerto, since there had been a long history of using dance suites and sonatas for descriptive music. Many of these alternations occur in rapid succession, conveying a sense of confusion and loss of reason appropriate to a musical representation of inebriation. 22 See Purcell personifies or anthropomorphizes each season, Spring is "grateful to Phoebus" and Winter is "pale, meagre and old," Purcell definitely uses the seasons as a metaphor for human life. Brover-Lubovsky, Bella, Tonal Space in the Music of Antonio Vivaldi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 249 8, was eventually dedicated to Count Vclav Morzin (16761737), and Vivaldi's letter of dedication mentions that The Four Seasons were familiar to the count prior to their publication, we do not know if they were written for a particular patron or event. 37 } hasContentIssue false, SONNETS, VERISIMILITUDE AND ARCADIAN REFORM, REPRESENTING NATURE, INVOKING THE SUBLIME, Copyright Cambridge University Press, 2017. 69/1 (2016), 118 This narrative is mirrored in the first movement of the Summer concerto, where the oppressive heat is temporarily made more tolerable through the welcome appearance of gentle zephyrs (bars 7889). See 27 51 Homophony means there are two different melodies played at the same time, polyphony meaning many sounds happening at the same time. 32 3 - 1st movementHome analysisEnglish Chamber O. . The textural resemblances extend even further, as both passages are essentially built upon a two-line framework, with a harmonically enriched melody in the violins (travelling in parallel thirds) and a simpler bassetto line in the viola part an example of what I term a unison bassetto, where any number of instruments can be assigned to play a bassetto line in unison.Footnote For example, lines 18 of Spring (see Table 1) describe how the natural world forms a tranquil scene that is temporarily disrupted by a thunderstorm, while lines 914 detail various ways that people enjoy the pleasant aspects of spring. While eight of the twelve concertos contained in the collection were adventurous in purely musical terms, the first four were unusual for programmatic reasons. The first of these occurs in bars 4850, where a scalar plunge of almost two octaves signifies slipping on the ice and falling to the ground. Each season contains 3 movements. In fact, his choice of the sonnet as a poetic form provides some important clues about Vivaldi's broader aesthetic concerns. An early 18th-century concerto always followed the same basic form. Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678-28 July 1741) was an Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher and cleric. But because physical distress is generally caused by the effects of cold rather than by any violent motions, we encounter FEPM in just three brief passages in the finale. 10 It is also possible to see, in the emphasis on powerful winds in Winter, an indirect reference to Aeolus. 2 47 For example, Cecil Forsyth warned that writing parallel octaves for the viola and cello can, in some circumstances, create a feeling of emptiness in the alto- and tenor-registers. Bella Brover-Lubovsky notes that while the use of the flattened seventh degree (with major third) in minor keys was common in the seventeenth century, it is rare in Vivaldi's works. Example 4 Vivaldi, L'Autunno, first movement, bars 3256, The textures and scoring combinations discussed thus far only hint at the variety of sonorities that Vivaldi called upon to tell the tale of humanity's interaction with the seasons. While the majority of these writings appeared in the second half of the eighteenth century, Cohen and scholars such as Christopher Wheatley and N. A. Halmi have shown that descriptions of sublime experiences (in a Burkean sense) can be found in writings long before the term came into favour, and that even the term sublime was not used exclusively to refer to a grand, dignified rhetorical style in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.Footnote Indeed, they rank among the best known pieces of music from the European concert tradition. Another remarkable feature of The Four Seasons that links them to Arcadian aesthetics is their contribution to a gradual transformation and expansion, throughout the eighteenth century, of topics deemed suitable to depict the natural and pastoral worlds. Strohm, Reinhard, The Operas of Antonio Vivaldi, two volumes (Florence: Olschki, 2008), volume 1, 102108 31/4 (20042005), 310321 Vivaldi published his Four Seasons concertos in a 1725 collection entitled The Contest Between Harmony and Invention. Google Scholar. 44 Fertonani, La simbologia, 95; Everett, The Four Seasons, 89. The sonnet for the Spring concerto reads as follows. The Italian violinist and composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was particularly fond of program music, and he produced a great deal. He initially trained as a Catholic priest, but ill health prevented him from performing many of his duties. This is why the boldest and most diverse textures are more frequently used in the two concertos illustrating the most menacing seasons, summer and winter. As it turns out, the bold textural contrasts that helped establish Vivaldi's early reputation were especially well suited to promoting his new conception of the seasons (and nature in general) because they could seize the audience's attention and hold it fast to specific details within the narrative, all the while underlining the distinct expressive character of each musical gesture. I also show how the expressive aura of each season is shaped by choices of texture and sonority. Google Scholar. Vivaldi lived from 1678 - 1741, which was during the Baroque period (1600-1700) and he was a Baroque composer. Springcomprises of a ritornello form, with an introduction presenting the antecedent and consequent phrases of the ritornello. In order to find the motivation for this change, we must consider other, non-musical aspects of Vivaldi's cultural milieu. 53 PEDALS 7. But there is a subtle yet imaginative logic behind Vivaldi's decisions about which textures to hold in reserve and which to rely upon more heavily for each season. Vivaldi was therefore helping extend into the realm of the solo concerto an art of orchestration that was already being developed in multiple genres.Footnote The expressive potential of FEPM has been a subject of much discussion by modern writers. 25 Yet her assertion that orchestration depends on the ability to reproduce the same effect from one orchestra to another overemphasizes orchestral variability in the earlier eighteenth century and appears to discount the idea that a string ensemble (without winds) can constitute an orchestra.Footnote How might a composer in the early eighteenth century use music to convey the excitement of the hunt, the oppression of summer heat, the terror of a thunderstorm or the joys of the harvest? The scholarly consensus has been that Vivaldi had the basic content in mind as he composed the music and wrote the sonnets himself at some point afterwards, with the captions being added specifically for the publication of the concertos.Footnote A caption tells us that this passage represents the Sirocco wind. Those who did desire a career in music were likely to stay at the orphanage into adulthood, where they were provided with an opportunity to teach and perform. Heller, Wendy, Reforming Achilles: Gender, opera seria and the Rhetoric of the Enlightened Hero, Early Music CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He does this by using texture to alter the ritornello's character, removing the gradual build-up that had featured in its first two appearances, so that the later returns begin at full intensity. There is perhaps no better illustration of how Vivaldi and his contemporaries could profit from a flexible treatment of the orchestra than the long solo episode introducing the drunken villagers in the opening movement of the Autumn concerto (Example 4). 31 While Vivaldi was not the first composer to use the texture, he was amongst the first to feature it extensively and prominently in instrumental works (and perhaps the first to use it in concerto slow movements), helping popularize it to the extent that many imitators of his concerto style soon picked up the use of FEPM as well. Through his use of FEPM and the bassetto, Vivaldi exploited the textural options provided by the orchestral ensemble to draw attention to important changes in motivic content and rhetorical style. 1 Consider the most complex texture of the entire cycle, the slow movement of the Winter concerto, where there are five rhythmic layers. He points out that Vivaldi's letter of dedication prefacing the first edition of The Four Seasons claims that the captions inserted throughout the printed partbooks constitute clear indications of all the things that are illustrated in [the concertos].Footnote The significance of The Four Seasons results at least as much from their use of the orchestra's affective range as from the brilliance of Vivaldi's melodic, rhythmic and harmonic invention. None the less, familiarity with these works has dulled our awareness of how little we actually know about them and the extent to which this cycle differs substantially from early modern approaches to the subject of the seasons.Footnote Quantz, Johann Joachim: On Playing the Flute, trans. It seems reasonable to suppose that listeners in Vivaldi's day, as in our own, often heard this music without reading or hearing the sonnets. The use of FEPM in these opening nine bars directly relates back to the end of the concerto's first movement, connecting the shepherd's expectations with the actual storm. His set of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons (Italian: Le quattro stagioni, 1725) are the most famous. 36 Although this weekly church service was, for all intents and purposes, a public concert, the simple act of retitling protected the girls honor. Each Sunday night, a public Vespers service was held for which the orchestra and choir provided music. The solo violin uses a wide range of melodic-rhythmic ideas to change rhetorical styles from languid to comically grandiloquent. Copyright 1996 Cambridge University Press. Indeed, they rank among the best known pieces of music from the European concert tradition. Vivaldi was an 18th-century composer associated with the ornate Baroque period of music. Likewise, although it can be argued that The Four Seasons is closer to a series of episodes than a continuous plot, I use the word narrative because the cycle permits a listener (in both Vivaldi's day and ours) to establish a cause-and-effect chain of events. I have traced the use of FEPM in these two concertos not only to illustrate the ways in which Vivaldi used this textural device to convey intense physical violence (real or imagined), but also to show how it can generate expressive cross-references between movements while highlighting differences in the concertos prevailing tones. In addition to FEPM, elevated drama is brought to these works through the use of full-ensemble rhythmic unison, a texture that, when combined with stile concitato rhythmic activity, can provide a different kind of heightened intensity.Footnote 6 Vivaldi's division of background and foreground elements between ritornellos and episodes in these concertos is also noted by Talbot, Vivaldi, 122. CONVENTIONAL TONAL HARMONIES 2. 14 After one more homophonic tutti period (bars 128131), the final tutti (from bar 142) presents both the canonic subject and the cadential gesture in FEPM. 49 The soloistother than momentarily imitating a bagpipe herselfdoes not contribute anything in particular to the storytelling. This evocative title was supposed to draw attention to novel aspects of Vivaldis latest work. The breeze is briefly introduced as a tease (bar 71) in the midst of a solo episode (bars 5977), prompting the solo violin to change its discourse from calls of the turtledove to the song of the goldfinch. Nevertheless, Vivaldi also highlights moments of joy in the season, as emphasized in the final line of the sonnet (translated at the head of this section). Ossi, Massimo, Musical Representation and Vivaldi's Concerto Il Proteo, Il mondo al rovverscio, RV 544/572, Journal of the American Musicological Society Conventional Tonal Harmonies All free from modality, fully functional harmony. 7 For an overview of competing traditions (allegorical and genre scenes) in the later sixteenth century see Legal. Has data issue: false The four violin concertos . 3 His job was to teach them the musical skills that would allow them to secure desirable husbands. The direction in movement goes up stay the same then go back up then go down again with the main idea in the melody. 58/1 (1981), 78 Google Scholar. HARMONY 1. In this respect, Thomson's conception of nature's raw power is similar to that found in early romantic literature. For all the inventiveness of the principal violin part, much of the drama, excitement and memorability of these works can be attributed to the function of the entire ensemble. The uncontrollable quality of nature is evoked not only in the lengthy focus on explosive summer storms, but also in the great rift between the devastation of summer and the mirth that precedes and follows it. 17 The sonnet for spring, for example, is headed Sonetto dimostrativo sopra il concerto intitolato La primavera del Sig.re D. Antonio Vivaldi (illustrative sonnet on the concerto entitled Spring by Don Antonio Vivaldi). Forsyth, Cecil, Orchestration, second edition (London: Macmillan, 1935 45 For a broader discussion of Vivaldi's scoring techniques see Lockey, The Viola as a Secret Weapon. This marks the beginning of an adverse turn of events, the first such downturn in the entire cycle. Medieval and early modern cyclic representations in illuminations, paintings, sculptures, tapestries and literature tended to focus on the seasons as personified deities (popular choices including Flora or Venus for spring, Vertumnus or Ceres for summer, Bacchus for autumn and Aeolus for winter), or as a cycle of humanity's relationship with the fruits of working the land, which might also be used as an allegory of the stages of human life or as a consequence of the biblical story of the fall of Adam and Eve.Footnote Vivaldi still valued the potential for concertos to include a great deal of variety, but he also used them as a vehicle for virtuosic display. 5 1, RV 269, "La primavera" (Spring) - II. He is known mainly for composing many instrumental concertos, for the violin . rhythmic or harmonic pattern that is repeated throughout a composition.
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