This Concerto in F minor is subtitled “Winter” and, not surprisingly, contains the least ebullient music – music that at times even takes on a dark expressive manner. This is the closing chapter in Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, a cycle of four violin concertos each inspired by an Italian sonnet whose mostly pastoral scenes the composer attempts to describe in the music. The bleakness and dissonance of L’inverno (Winter) create a severe but expressive portrait that provides a striking summation of Vivaldi’s pictorial ingenuity in these four works.
L’autunno (Autumn) is marked by a folksy harvest celebration and the galloping of a hunting party on horseback. L’estate (Summer) is painted in similarly vivid colors that portray both the piping of a shepherd and a gathering storm. The birds that greet the season “with their joyful song” in La primavera (Spring), for example, are colorfully depicted in the work’s elaborately ornamented figuration. Each concerto is accompanied by a descriptive poem whose imagery becomes an essential element of the musical fabric. 8, entitled Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention) and remains the composer’s best-known and most characteristic work.Īside from the features that have come to be associated with most of Vivaldi’s music – grace, virtuosity, energetic motoric rhythms – the concertos of The Four Seasons are remarkable for their extraordinary programmatic imagination, which is counterbalanced by close attention to formal structure. Four concertos, known collectively as The Four Seasons, were first published in 1725 as part of a set of twelve concerti, Op. Winter SolsticeĪntonio Vivaldi must be regarded as the indisputable king of the Baroque instrumental concerto. Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, “Winter”, “The Four Seasons” / “Le Quattro Stagioni” – “L’Inverno” – Concerto No.
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