Day Forty Nine - Antonio Vivaldi

Do you have many strings to your bow? Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor? I ask you this because today I am talking about a very impressive man … Antonio Vivaldi. Born in Venice on the 4th March 1678, in his lifetime he was a Baroque composer, brilliant violinist, inspiring teacher, impresario and Roman Catholic priest. That is quite some list!

Vivaldi's parents were Giovanni Battista Vivaldi and Camilla Calicchio. His father, who was a barber before becoming a professional violinist, taught Antonio to play the violin and then toured Venice playing the violin with his young son. He was obviously a very gifted child for at the age of 13 he wrote the early liturgical work Laetatus Sum. In 1693, at the age of 15, he began studying to become a priest and was ordained in 1703, aged 25.

Not long after his ordination, in 1704, he was given a dispensation from celebrating Mass most likely because of ill health, it seems he probably suffered quite badly from asthma. Vivaldi said Mass as a priest only a few times, and appeared to have withdrawn from liturgical duties, though he remained a member of the priesthood, some of this down to his habit of composing music whilst celebrating Mass!

In September 1703, Vivaldi became master of violin at an orphanage called the Devout Hospital of Mercy in Venice. Over the next thirty years he composed most of his major works while working there. In the orphanage the boys learned a trade and had to leave when they reached the age of fifteen, and the girls received a musical education, and the most talented among them stayed and became members of the renowned orchestra and choir. It would have been these young women who first played Vivaldi’s finest concertos and operas.

In February 1711 Vivaldi’s setting of the Stabat Mater was played as part of a religious festival. In 1717 Vivaldi was offered a prestigious new position as Choirmaster of the court of prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, governor of Mantua, in the northwest of Italy. It was here that he wrote the Four Seasons, four violin concertos that give musical expression to the seasons of the year. They were a revolution in musical conception: in them Vivaldi represented flowing creeks, singing birds, barking dogs, buzzing mosquitoes, crying shepherds, storms, drunken dancers, silent nights, hunting parties from both the hunters' and the prey's point of view, frozen landscapes, ice-skating children, and warming winter fires.

Vivaldi was very well known in his day, but somewhat fell out of favour in the following two centuries. It was only at the beginning of the 20th Century that his music was rediscovered and he has become so popular once more. He was a very fascinating character and a wonderfully gifted man.

As you take a moment to listen to this adaptation of his work see if you can hear any flowing creeks, singing birds, barking dogs, buzzing mosquitoes, crying shepherds, storms, drunken dancers, silent nights, hunting parties from both the hunters' and the prey's point of view, frozen landscapes, ice-skating children or warming winter fires. If not, give thanks to God for all those things and so much more in this wonderful world.

Neil Chappell