Vivaldi "Spring"

I feel like I need to write about Baroque music. But Baroque music is hard to write about. (Yeah, like who knew?) I was going to write a post about this Bach French Suite that I played last spring, but I hated it. I love Bach, I truly do. I think he's a genius. Everyone thinks he's a genius. But I think that particular piece is cursed. I never could play it well. A graduate friend of mine played the piece for her master's recital, and had to restart the piece three times over. It's that bad. So I'm not going to write about French Suites. At least not today. I'm going to write about Vivaldi instead.

In 1773, Vivaldi wrote a set of four concerti entitled The Four Seasons. (Auto-spelling is telling me that I misspelled "concerti." Good grief.) Besides being wonderful works of music, these pieces really started to set the standard concerto form. The form of each "season" consists of two relatively fast movements broken up by a slower movement. The pieces are written for solo violin and string quartet, with a basso continuo. This isn't exactly what one thinks of as a concerto, but this was more like a modern concerto than anything which was written before. More interesting though, at least to me, is that these pieces are the first known examples of program music.

Program music is art music, essentially. It might be easier to describe in terms of its opposite, which would be absolute music. Absolute music is music which is intended to be non-representational. Taken at face value, in a sense. Program music is referenced. It is meant to evoke certain images of the outside world. One of the most famous examples of program music is Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, which is essentially a programmatic acid trip. (And yes, that is as fun as it sounds. I'll write about it at some point.)

Back to Vivaldi. "Spring" is the most well-known of the concerti from The Four Seasons. If nothing else, it's worth listening to for the incredibly virtuoso violin playing. Vivaldi was a renowned violinist, and many of the techniques which he employed in his compositions have become standard. He really was revolutionary in that sense as well. Anyway, for each of the "seasons", Vivaldi composed a sonnet which was intended to describe the music (hence why it's called program music). This is the sonnet for "Spring."

Allegro
Springtime is upon us.
The birds celebrate her return with festive song,
and murmuring streams are softly caressed by the breezes.
Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar, casting their dark mantle over heaven,
Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their charming songs once more.

Largo
On the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branches rustling overhead, the goat-herd sleeps, his faithful dog beside him.

Allegro
Led by the festive sound of rustic bagpipes, nymphs and shepherds lightly dance beneath the brilliant canopy of spring.

Oh my goodness, I just feel all warm and flowery now, visions of softly caressing breezes and rustic bagpipes dancing in my head! Listen to the song here. Honestly, the sonnet describes the piece better than I could. That's really why I chose the piece, it talks about itself. A few things to note, though. At about 1:40 in the video comes the "Thunderstorms, those heralds of spring..." The piece modulates to a lower register of the instruments, then to a minor key, fitting of a thunderstorm. Also, the violin is amazing here. I think it's imitating lightning, and it sounds incredibly tumultuous. The last movement, the Allegro, is so charming. It does sound like a light, lilting waltz. It's a bit plaintive, but lovely all the same.