Antonio Vivaldi

EARLY LIFE 

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born on March 4, 1678, in Venice, Italy. When he was born he looked so frail that the midwife baptized him immediately.

Probable portrait of Vivaldi, c. 1723

Antonio grew to love the violin and played along with his father at St. Mark's Basilica.

CAREER 

Young Vivaldi studied for the priesthood and was ordained in 1703.

Because of his red hair, Vivaldi became known as "il prete rosso", which means "the red priest."

Vivaldi gave up officiating, and was first appointed violin teacher at a Venetian orphanage Pio Ospedale della Pietà when he was 25. The name means "Devout Hospital of Mercy."

He gave music lessons at the Pio Ospedale della Pieta, to those among the resident orphan girls who showed musical aptitude. Vivaldi also took on the extra job of writing sacred music for the girls' choir.

Vivaldi taught there until 1709, when for financial reasons the school voted not to renew his post, the older girls took over his job.

During his break from Vivaldi wrote a large number of works including violin sonatas and concertos which made him famous throughout Europe. Musicians started to come to Venice in order to visit Vivaldi for lessons.

In 1711 Vivaldi was re-appointed at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà. The girls' Sunday concerts, for which Vivaldi composed many orchestral and choral works, gained renown, until no visit to Venice was considered complete without hearing a performance.

He remained as a teacher until 1716, when he was appointed to the higher position of maestro di coro (in charge of all musical events) where he remained with some interruptions for the next two decades. Yet he somehow found time to compose 500 concertos, 90 sonatas and 50 operas.

The Pio Ospedale della Pietà.

In 1718 Vivaldi left Venice and moved to Mantua in Northern Italy, where he became the director of music for the governor, Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt.

In his later years Vivaldi travelled widely and probably performed and composed in Prague, Dresden, and Amsterdam. He often returned to Venice to rehearse his music with the girls.

WORKS

The 12 concertos of L'Estro Armonico (1712) gave Vivaldi a European reputation.

The first of his many operas, Ottone in villa, was performed in 1713. Vivaldi's first oratorio, Juditha Triumphans devicta Holofernis barbaric, was performed by the girls from the Pietà in 1716.

First edition of Juditha triumphans

In 1725 a Dutch publishing house produced as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione ("The Contest Between Harmony and Invention"), a set of 12 descriptive violin concertos by Vivaldi, four of which - probably written two years prior to publication - depicted the seasons (the others on themes of Storm at Sea, Pleasure and The Hunt).

Each of The Four Seasons concertos describes a season: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. The Four Seasons were an early example of programme music, which is music that paints a scene or tells a story.

Vivaldi’s partners in performing The Four Seasons would have been his young girl pupils.

The Four Seasons was played no more often than any of Vivaldi’s other works during his lifetime.

Title page of "Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Invenzione", 1727

Early in his life Vivaldi's operas were performed throughout Italy and in Vienna. More than 750 works are known to exist, and researchers have long struggled with the task of identifying and cataloguing them.

Vivaldi's finest work was thought to be his 500 concerti in which virtuoso solo passages alternate with passages for the whole orchestra. He orchestrated in new, unique ways and prepared the way for the late baroque concerto.

Though he was a major influence on the development of the solo concerto, by the end of his life Vivaldi had been musically sidelined. However, his original musical style had wide influence on later composers. Johann Sebastian Bach, for instance, transcribed many of his concertos for the keyboard.

It wasn’t until the 1920s that the gradual rediscovery of Vivaldi's original manuscripts resulted in his recognition as Italy’s greatest-ever instrumental composer.

The first recording of The Four Seasons was made in 1942 by Bernardino Molinari and the St Cecilia Academy. It featured a specially adapted piano.

Vivaldi's operas are seldom heard now, but his orchestral and chamber music are performed frequently, as is his popular sacred 'Gloria'.

PRIVATE LIFE 

A lifelong bachelor, during his time in Mantua, Vivaldi became acquainted with a young opera singer Anna Tessieri Girò, who would become his student and protégée. Anna, along with her older half-sister Paolina, described as his 'nurse.' moved in with Vivaldi and regularly accompanied him on his many travels.

There was speculation as to the nature of Vivaldi's and Girò's relationship, but Vivaldi denied any romantic relationship with Girò in a letter to his patron Bentivoglio dated November 16, 1737.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH 

After meeting the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna hoping for royal support. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi's arrival and the impoverished Vivaldi had no way to return home.

Vivaldi died a poor man on July 28, 1741, aged 63 of "internal infection", in a house owned by the widow of a Viennese saddlemaker.

He was buried next to Karlskirche, a baroque church in an area which is now part of the site of the TU Wien, in Vienna.

Antonio Vivaldi (engraving by François Morellon de La Cave,)1725)

Sources Europress Encyclopedia, Compton's Encyclopedia, Classic FM magazine