The Life Of Antonio Vivaldi

The once great Antonio Vivaldi lived among the people composing music that till this day is still listened and remembered. Although not many might remember his works, his life was truly an interesting one. Coming from a religious family he was originally on track to be a priest. However somewhere along the road he became a composer, all while still keeping his holy duties.

Starting his fate before Vivaldi was born, in the New Groove Dictionary it said that his father Giovanni Battista, born in Brescia, Italy to a family of tailors.

According to the Groves musical Dictionary, Giovanni himself was practicing to become a barber and no longer be a tailor. However fate was not on Giovanni’s side as his father passed away and he had to move with his newly widowed mother to Vienna, Italy in 1666. Since his father's death Giovanni ended up learning how to play the violin, eventually landing him a job as a violinist at Saint Marco under the false name Rossie.

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Later on in life he married Camilla Calicchio a tailors daughter and with her had nine children, one of them being Antonio. Out of his nine children Antonio was the only one that had developed any skills in music. Another thing that helped Antonio get farther to his musical career was the fact that his own father might have played and conducted his own operas but there was never enough evidence to have a clear conclusion. Plus Giovanni became a founding member of the Sovvega di Cecilia.

All of this came from the New Groove Dictionary

While in the Britannica Encyclopedia, Antonio himself, he was born in May 6, 1678. Because of the rather large earthquake that had hit Vienna in March 4 of the same year his family had Vivaldi baptized almost immediately after his birth from fear of another earthquake hitting again. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica Antonio himself, might have had Bronschidle Asthma considering how Vivaldi often said that due to his medical reasons he could not sing or play any wind based instrument. All while others say he might have been lazy and or did not want to play all together. The reason people say he was making up the medical problems was because Vivaldi never let that get in the way of his journeys and tours. Speaking of which whenever he went on journeys and tours he had a rather large ontourage with him at all times. Once more this came from the New Groove Dictionary

Back to his childhood, Vivaldi was actually studying to become a priest. He studied from September 18, 1693 to March 4, 1703. After he finished his studies he went to do his ordeal in Saint Geminiano or Saint Giovanni in Oleo. He lived with his family in the parish of Saint Martino. From there he learned how to play the piano. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica scholars believe that Giovanni taught Vivaldi how to play. Occasionally Vivaldi would play in the same place his father would perform, Saint Marco. He had his first taste of being a musician in public in 1696.

According to the New Groove Dictionary, Vivaldi obtained his first official post in 1703 where he became the Maestro di Violino in Pio Ospedela della Pieta with an annual salary of 60 ducats. The place where he taught was oddly enough one of the fours schools devoted to caring for orphan, indigent kids with great musical abilities, even odder was that they were mainly girls. In order for the school to get money to pay the teachers and take care of the students they had to prepare plays and concerts for the nobles which was the job of none other but Vivaldi himself. Vivaldi himself was grateful for the job and how he got it. Apparently the schools Maestro de Coro Francesco Gasparini owed a great favor to Vivaldi and when the position came to be he offered it to Vivaldi. Once more the information found here was all based upon the New Groove Dictionary.

After a while Vivaldi got a raise of 40 ducats for teaching the girls Viole all’inglese. However the harder part about Vivaldi’s job was getting the performers and musical instruments together in time for his concerts for the nobles.In 1705 Vivaldi had made his own sonatas in 12 chambers and in trio medium, which to say he was doing quite well as a musical composer. Because of how bad the economy was they decided to fire Vivaldi in 1707, however there was more at play as to why he was fired. Like before there was little to no evidence to have a clear conclusion. The school had been left with no teacher so what they decided to do till they found Vivaldi's’ replacement was to have his , sh students teach each other. One of his students was Anna Maria, she is the one teaching the other girls to play while vivaldi was away.

Without a proper job Vivaldi decided to do what other musical composers would often do. He sold his music to nobles and rich folk, one of said people was Count Annabale Gambana, a Brescian nobleman, this all according to the New Groove Dictinary. What he have Gambana was a work titled “Musico de Violino”, what struck as odd was that he did not mention anything about his old profession as Maestro de Violino or the fact that he taught in Pieta . He did the same to Frederick the fourth of Denmark with his Violin Sonatas, Op 12.

Lucky for Vivaldi his time as a solo musician was over as in March 1711 he was voted back to teach in Pieta. In May 1716 he had been given more responsibilities as Maestro de Concerti. However in April 1716 his old friend Gasperini went on sick leave only to never return, leaving another spot for Vivaldi to take and more responsibilities to have. During that time Vivaldi had composed over 30 motes and other lobars, as a reward they decided to give him an increase of 50 ducats. In 1716 Vivaldi wrote Juditha Triumphans referencing the fight between Vienna and the Turks.

Vivaldi’s concertos were extremely populars especially around Germany. They loved it so much that Bach himself would later on transcribe several of them to perform. This would go on until he would often go on tours to perform music all across Europe and getting to his final resting place. Many people do not know what happened at the end of Vivaldi’s life but many believed that because of his life and how luxurious he tried to have it, Vivaldi could have died penniless.

Musical Analysis

The Four Season, La Primavera:

This is the first piece that will be examined. La Primavera, also known as Spring. Officially titled Concerto No 1 in E major, Op 8 RV 269. This composition is in Allegro Form with Largo tempo and Pianissimo. Another thing about it is that it is cheerful and happy

According to Roger Kamien in Music an Appreciation the song depicts sounds of spring such as the chirping of birds and the streames of the lakes. Also because this was part of four songs there was more depiction than just that such as the heavy rains of summer or the falling leaves of fall. This was one of the first musical pieces that had this type of depiction of words and sounds.

He also wrote one of the first styles of music. He wrote in a style which is now known as Sonata Allegro form which is mainly for a single movement. The way this works is by having a nice exposition at the beginning with a primary theme and transition that to a secondary theme and then a closing theme. Then get a development which is essential for the rest of the music. First the musical theme has to be reworked and then to make it longer break the main rhythm into fragments, and have that as a sequence, or maybe even invert the song itself. After the development is over, the song can finish with a Recapitation. Keeping the key tonic and transition without modulation, and the two last closing themes also tonic as well.

This can be seen in Vivaldi’s work La Primavera which in the beginning we do hear a primary theme playing over again and again, which is the sounds of spring and how quant it is. This keeps going far a rather long time till it transitions over to a slower moving piece which is its second main theme, till it moves into its third harder to understand theme and goes back to a rework of his first theme for his development this keeps up by breaking the themes into fragments and moving the piece slowly until the last part of the song which os its recapitation and then it ends pn a sweet note.

La Stravaganza Concerto 2 in E minor

Just as before Vivaldi’s work is a little weird, unlike La Primavera this one does not contain any musical words, instead it is nothing but strings and mainly violins. He also has a lot of focus in the frills of his music following the exact style as before known as Sonata Allegro. I think this composition was made to invoke more feelings of passion and mistrust since its second movement is more slow and quite that makes one feel as if something is wrong

There is not much else tgo be said since Vivaldi is a man that repeats the same thing over and over again like a one trick pony. I will give him credit for making these songs extremely catchy and thought provoking.

Music as a Whole

After hearing a over 430 of his concertos one can get rather bored of them. I thought Vivaldi was going to prove more than what he seemed. When starting this work I felt more to his songs , but after the fifth concerto it seemed pointless, after all his time he followed the same rules and works as before. He did not much to help himself to new ideas, though he did make a rather large slash for paving the way to new artist of the musical world with his new form of writing which will be moved to be known as a sonata cycle .

Although his works are rather quick and sweet with a touch of mistry not much else could be said. I personally enjoyed his early works like the Stravaganza and Gloria but it lost it’s edge in the later runs.