Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi (Venice, March 4, 1678 - Vienna, July 28, 1741) was a Venetian Baroque composer, violinist, impresario, teacher, and Catholic priest. He was nicknamed Il prete rosso ("The Red Priest") for being a priest and with red hair. He is considered one of the greatest Baroque composers, his influence during his lifetime spanning all of Europe and he was instrumental in the development of the instrumental music of Johann Sebastian Bach. His mastery is reflected in having cemented the concert genre, the most important of its time. He composed some seven hundred and seventy works, including more than four hundred concertos, for flute, violin, and a variety of other musical instruments, and nearly forty-six operas. He is especially popular as the author of the concerto series for violin and orchestra The Four Seasons.
Many of his compositions were written for the female musical ensemble at the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children. Vivaldi had worked there as a Catholic priest for eighteen months and was employed from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740. He also had some success with expensive performances of his operas in Venice, Mantua, and Vienna. After meeting Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, he moved to Vienna and hoped for royal support. However, the emperor died shortly after his arrival, and the composer himself died in poverty less than a year later.
After nearly two centuries of decline, their music experienced a renaissance in the early 20th century, with much scholarly research dedicated to his work. Many of Vivaldi's compositions, once thought lost, have been rediscovered, in one case as recent as 2006. His music remains hugely popular and is regularly performed around the world.
Biography
Family history
Very little is known about the origins of his family: his grandfather, Agostino, was a baker from Brescia, married to Margherita, with whom he had several children. One of them was Giovanni Battista, familiarly called Gianbattista, who was born in 1656 and was the father of the composer. Margherita, after her husband died, went to Venice with her children. Gianbattista was a hairdresser before he began to stand out as a violinist and dedicate himself to it professionally. In June 1676, at the age of twenty, he married Camilla Calicchio. The musician Gianbattista Vivaldi, nicknamed Rosso ("Red") and recorded in some documents as Giovanni Battista Rossi, was a member founder of the Sovvegno de' musicisti di Santa Cecilia, a professional organization of Venetian musicians; He was also a violinist in the orchestra of the Basilica of San Marco and in that of the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo. Vivaldi's father had joined the Sovvegno di Santa Cecilia.
Early Years
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born on March 4, 1678 in Venice, then the capital of the Republic of Venice. The midwife baptized him at home immediately after his birth, giving rise to the belief that they thought he was his life was in danger somehow. Although not known for certain, the immediate baptism of the child was probably due to either his poor health or an earthquake that struck the city that day. In the trauma of the earthquake, Vivaldi's mother may have destined him for the priesthood. The official baptism in the church took place two months later. Antonio had nine siblings, three of whom died at an early age. These were: Gabriela Antonia (1676-1678), Margarita Gabriella (1680-1750), Cecilia Maria (1683-1767), Bonaventura Tomaso (1685-after 1718), Zanetta Anna (1687-1762), Francesco Gaetano (1690- 1752), Iseppo Santo (1692-1696), Gerolama Michela (1694-1696), and Iseppo Caetano (1697-post-1729).
Giovanni Battista taught Antonio to play the violin and later toured Venice playing the instrument with his son. He probably learned to play the instrument at an early age, given the extensive musical knowledge he had acquired at the age of twenty-four, when he started working at the Ospedale della Pietà. Disciple of Giovanni Legrenzi, president of the Sovvegno and one of the first Baroque composers and chapel master in the Basilica of San Marco. It is possible that Legrenzi gave the young Antonio his first composition lessons from him. Scholar Walter Kolneder appreciates the influence of Legrenzi's style in one of Vivaldi's early liturgical works, Laetatus sum (RV Anh. 31), written in 1691 at the age of thirteen.
Youth and ordination as a priest
In 1693, at the age of fifteen, he began to study to be a priest. On September 18 of that year, Antonio entered a seminary and received his first minor orders: ostiary on September 19, 1693, lector on September 21, 1694, exorcist on December 25, 1695, and acolyte on September 21, 1696. On April 4, 1699, he was ordained a subdeacon, then a deacon —on September 18, 1700—, and finally anointed priest on the 23rd. March 1703, at the age of twenty-five.
Inclined more towards music than religious obligations, he managed to be excused from saying mass for health reasons in 1704. His symptoms, strettezza di petto ("tightness of the chest"), have been interpreted as a form of asthma and according to medical research by Frenchman Roger-Claude Travers, appear to have been angor pectoris (angina pectoris). This did not prevent him from composing or participating in musical activities., although it caused him to stop playing wind instruments. Following his ordination as a priest, he was nicknamed Il Prete Rosso ("The Red Priest"). Vivaldi celebrated Mass as a priest only a few times and seemed to have retired from priestly duties, although he he was still a member of the priesthood. It is believed that this is also due to his habit of composing while he was giving mass. It appears that he remained committed to Catholicism, as the entry in the Vienna death records reads: "Antonio Vivaldi, secular priest". It is believed that he remained a devout Catholic, indeed in 1792 the Protestant composer Ernst Ludwig Gerber wrote of the aged Vivaldi that "the rosary never left his hand save when he took up his pen to write an opera".
Conservatory of the Ospedale della Pietà
In September 1703 Vivaldi became maestro di violino (violin teacher) at an orphanage called the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. Although he is more famous as composer, he was also considered a violinist with exceptional technique. The German architect Johann Friedrich Armand von Uffenbach refers to him as "the famous composer and violinist" and said that "Vivaldi played a solo accompaniment excellently and in the conclusion added a free fantasy [an improvised cadence], which absolutely delighted me." surprised, because it is almost impossible that anyone has ever played, or even will play, in such a way."
Vivaldi was only twenty-five years old when he started working at the Ospedale della Pietà. During the next thirty years he composed most of his most important works while working there.There were four similar institutions in Venice, whose purpose was to give shelter and education to abandoned or orphaned children, or whose families could not support them. They were financed with funds provided by the Republic. The children learned a trade and had to leave the institution when they reached the age of fifteen. The girls received a musical education and the most talented stayed on and became members of the renowned Ospedale orchestra and choir.
Shortly after Vivaldi's appointment, the orphans began to gain recognition and consideration abroad as well. He wrote concertos, cantatas, and vocal sacred music for them. These sacred works, numbering over sixty, are varied, including solo motets and large-scale choral works for soloists, double choir, and orchestra. In 1704 the position of maestro de viola all'inglese to his duties as violin teacher. The position of maestro di coro, which he held for a time, required a lot of time and work. He had to compose an oratorio or concerto at every party and teach the orphans both music theory and how to play certain instruments.
In 1705 Giuseppe Sala published the first collection (Connor Cassara) of his works: his Op. 1 is a collection of twelve sonatas for two violins and basso continuo, in a conventional style. In 1709 his op. 2, a second collection of twelve sonatas for violin and basso continuo. His real breakthrough as a composer came with his first collection of twelve concertos for one, two, and four violins with string instruments, L'estro armonico op. 3, which Estienne Roger published in Amsterdam in 1711, dedicated to Ferdinand de' Medici. The prince patronized many musicians such as Alessandro Scarlatti and Georg Friedrich Händel. He was also a musician and Vivaldi probably met him in Venice. L'estro armonico was a resounding success throughout Europe. In February of that year, Vivaldi and his father traveled to Brescia, where his Stabat Mater (RV 621) was performed as part of a religious festival. The work seems to have been written in a hurry: the string parts are simple, the music of the first three movements is repeated in the next three, and not all of the text is ready. However, perhaps in part due to the forced essentiality of music, the work is considered one of his early masterpieces.
His relationship with the Ospedale board of directors was often strained. The board had to vote every year on whether to keep the teachers. The vote on Vivaldi was rarely unanimous and he was seven to six against him in 1709. After serving a year as a freelance musician, in 1711, he was recalled from the Ospedale , with one vote. unanimous; clearly during his year-long absence the board realized the importance of his role.In 1714 he published La stravaganza op. 4, a collection of concertos for violin and strings, dedicated to his former violin student, the Venetian nobleman Vettor Delfin. In 1716 he was promoted to maestro di concerti (music director), which made him responsible for all the musical activity of the institution.
Despite his frequent travels beginning in 1718, he was paid 2 sequins by the Ospedalle for writing two concertos a month for the orchestra and for rehearsing with them at least five times when he was in Venice. The records of the Ospedalle show that he was paid one hundred and forty concerts between 1723 and 1733.
Opera impresario
In the early 18th century, opera was the most popular musical entertainment in Venice and proved to be the most profitable for Vivaldi. There were several theaters competing for the public's attention. He began his career as an opera composer as a sideline: his first opera, Ottone in villa (RV 729) was not performed in Venice, but was performed at the Teatro Garzerie in Vicenza in 1713. The following year, he became impresario at the Teatro San Angelo in Venice, where his opera Orlando finto pazzo (RV 727) was performed. The play was not to the public's taste, so it was closed after a couple of weeks and replaced with a repeat of a different play already performed the previous year.
In 1715 he presented Nerone fatto Cesare (RV 724, now lost), with music by different composers conducted by him. The opera contained eleven arias and was a success. In the last season, he planned to stage Arsilda, regina di Ponto (RV 700), an opera composed entirely by himself, but the city censor blocked the performance. The main character, Arsilda, fell in love with another woman, Lisea, who is posing as a man. The following year, Vivaldi got the censor to accept the performance of the opera and it was a resounding success.
During this period, the Ospedalle commissioned several liturgical works from him. The most important were two oratories. Moyses Deus Pharaonis, (RV 643) was lost. The second, Juditha Triumphans (RV 644), celebrated the victory of the Republic of Venice against the Ottoman Empire and the capture of the island of Corfu. Composed in 1716, it is one of his most outstanding sacred works. The eleven sung parts were performed by girls from the Ospedalle, both male and female roles. Many of the arias include solo instrument parts—recorders, oboes, love violas, and mandolins—showing how talented the girls were. Also in 1716, Vivaldi wrote and produced two more operas, L' incoronazione di Dario (RV 719) and La costanza trionfante degl'amori e degl'odii (RV 706). The latter was so popular that it was performed two years later, republished and under a new title, Artabano re dei Parti (RV 701, now lost). It was also staged at the Teatro San Angelo in 1731 and a year later in Prague, under the name Doriclea (RV 708). In the following years, he wrote several operas that were performed throughout Italy.
Mantua and The Four Seasons
In 1717 and 1718 he was offered a new prestigious position as Kapellmeister at the court of Philippe of Hesse-Darmstadt, Governor of Mantua. He moved there for three years and produced several operas, including Titus Manlius (RV 738). During his stay in the city, Vivaldi met a young aspiring singer, Anna Tessieri Girò, who became his disciple and favorite prima donna. Anna, along with her older half-sister Paolina, became part of Vivaldi's entourage and regularly accompanied him on his many travels. There was speculation about the nature of the relationship between Vivaldi and Girò, but there is no evidence to indicate that there was anything beyond friendship and professional collaboration. Although Vivaldi was questioned about his relationship with Anna Girò, he flatly denied any romantic relationship in a letter to his patron Bentivoglio, dated November 16, 1737.
During this period he wrote The Four Seasons, four violin concertos depicting scenes appropriate to each season of the year. Three of the concertos were original in conception, while the first, “Primavera”, borrowed motifs from a symphony in the first act of his contemporary opera Il Giustino. The inspiration for the concertos probably came from the fields of Mantua. The work was a musical revolution in its conception: in these concertos he depicted flowing streams, singing birds (of different species, each specifically characterized), barking dogs, buzzing mosquitoes, weeping shepherds, storms, drunken dancers, silent nights, hunting parties. From both the hunters' and the prey's point of view, icy landscapes, children ice skating and warm winter campfires. Each concerto is associated with a sonnet, possibly by the composer himself, describing the scenes depicted in the music. They were published as the first four concertos in a collection of twelve, Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, op. 8, published in Amsterdam by Michel-Charles Le Cène in 1725.
In 1721 he went to Milan, where he presented the pastoral drama La Silvia (RV 734, nine arias survive). He visited the city again the following year with the oratorio L'adorazione delli tre re magi al bambino Gesù (RV 645, now lost). In 1722 he moved to Rome, where he gave a new style to his operas. The new Pope Benedict XIII invited him to play for him. In 1725 he returned to Venice, where he produced four operas in the same year.
Last years
At the height of his career he received commissions from European nobility and royalty. The serenade (cantata) Gloria and Imeneo (RV 687), from 1725, was commissioned by the French ambassador in Venice for the celebration of the marriage of Louis XV. The following year, he wrote another serenade, La Sena festeggiante (RV 694), which was premiered at the French embassy to celebrate the birth of the French princesses, Henrietta and Luisa Isabel. La Cetra op. 9 was dedicated to the Emperor Charles VI. In 1728, Vivaldi met the Emperor while he was visiting Trieste to review the construction of a new port. Carlos admired the composer's music so much that he said that he had spoken more with the composer during his meeting than he had spoken with his ministers in the last two years. He awarded him a knighthood, a gold medal, and an invitation to Vienna. The composer reciprocated with a manuscript of La Cetra, a set of concertos almost entirely different from the set with the same title and published as op. 9. The printing was probably delayed, forcing Vivaldi to prepare an impromptu version for the emperor.
Vivaldi traveled to Vienna and Prague in 1730 accompanied by his father, where he presented his opera Farnace (RV 711), which had six performances. Some of his later operas were created in collaboration with two of the leading Italian writers of the time. L'olimpiade and Cato in Utica were written by Pietro Metastasio, the main representative of the Arcadian movement and court poet in Vienna. A young Carlo Goldoni rewrote Griselda from a previous libretto by Apostolo Zeno.
Like many contemporary composers, in the last years of his life he experienced financial difficulties. His compositions were no longer held in as much esteem as they used to be in Venice, as musical tastes had rapidly changed and were considered old-fashioned. In response, he chose to sell a considerable number of his manuscripts at rock bottom prices to finance his move to Vienna. The reason for his departure from the city is unclear, but it seems likely that after his successful meeting with the emperor Carlos VI, wanted to get the position as composer in the imperial court. On his trip to Vienna, he could have stopped in Graz to visit Anna Girò.
It is also likely that Vivaldi came to Vienna to present operas, especially since he lived near the Kärntnertortheater. Shortly after his arrival in the city, Carlos VI died, causing him to lose any imperial protection or a stable source of income. Before long, he became impoverished and died of an "internal infection" during the night of July 27/28, 1741, at the age of 63, in a house owned by a widow of a Viennese saddle maker. On July 28, he was buried in a simple tomb in the cemetery owned by a public hospital, near the church of San Carlos Borromeo. His funeral took place in St. Stephen's Cathedral.The cost of the funeral with a "Kleingeläut" was 19 Gulden 45 Kreuzer, which was quite expensive for the lowest type of bell ringing.
Work
Style and influence
Vivaldi's music was innovative. He developed the formal and rhythmic structure of the concerto, in which he sought harmonic contrasts and innovative melodies and themes. Many of his compositions are striking and full of vitality. He was known for rapidity with which he composed his works, something of which the composer himself was proud and boasted that he could compose a concerto faster than a copyist could reproduce it. Sometimes, this "compositional fury" (as defined in 1739 by Charles de Brosses) was detrimental to the quality of his compositions.
Johann Sebastian Bach, his contemporary, though somewhat younger, studied Vivaldi's work in his formative years. His concertos and arias influenced him profoundly (as in his Pasión según San Juan, Pasión según San Mateo and cantatas) and he transcribed six of their concertos for solo keyboard, three for organ and one for four harpsichords, strings and basso continuo (BWV 1065) based on the Concerto for four violins, two violas, cello and basso continuo (RV 580).
His instrumental sonatas are more conservative than his concertos, and his religious music often reflects the operatic style of the day and the alternation of orchestra and soloists that he helped introduce into concertos. From some of his concertos for violin and sonatas only the transcriptions (mostly for harpsichord) of Bach exist.
His avant-garde operatic style caused him some trouble with more conservative musicians, such as Benedetto Marcello, a magistrate and amateur musician who wrote a pamphlet denouncing him and his operas. The pamphlet, Il teatro alla moda, attacks Vivaldi without mentioning him directly. The cover drawing shows a ship (the Sant'Angelo), at the left end of which is a small angel dressed in a priest's hat and playing the violin. The Marcello family claimed ownership of the Teatro San Angelo and waged a long legal battle with the administration for its restitution, without success. The strange writing under the drawing mentions a non-existent place and names: ALDIVIVA, which is an anagram of A. Vivaldi.
Compositions
His musical production was very abundant, he composed eight hundred and sixty-five works, as he wrote 46 operas, 70 sonatas, 195 vocal compositions, including 45 chamber cantatas and 554 instrumental compositions, mostly concerts, genre which he founded and was the most important of his time. The best known are the twelve that make up Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (1725). The first four concerts include the famous The Four Seasons. This work has been described as an outstanding example of pre-nineteenth-century program music. It is of paramount importance because it breaks with the concert soli paradigm, established by Vivaldi himself. Until then, the concert soli was a concert in which the solo instrument carried all the weight of the melody and composition, and the rest of the orchestra limited itself to performing the accompaniment according to the rules of the harmony.
About three hundred and fifty of his concertos are written for solo instrument and strings, of which two hundred and thirty are for violin, the others being for instruments such as bassoon, cello, oboe, flute, viola de amor, recorder, lute or mandolin. About forty concertos are for two instruments and strings, and about thirty are for three or more instruments and strings.
He also composed about forty-six operas and a great deal of sacred choral music, such as the Magnificat. Religious music by him includes compositions such as the oratorio Juditha Triumphans (1716), the Gloria in re (1708). In a letter written by Vivaldi to his patron the Marquis Bentivoglio in 1737, he makes reference to his "94 operas". Only fifty of his operas have been discovered and there is no other documentation of the rest of them. Although he may have exaggerated, in his dual role as composer and impresario, it is possible that he could have written or been responsible for the production of as many as ninety-four operas during his career, which at the time was almost twenty-five years. Certainly Vivaldi he composed many operas, but did not rise to the prominence of other great composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti, Johann Adolph Hasse, Leonardo Leo and Baldassare Galuppi, as evidenced by his lack of ability to sustain a production on stage for any length of time in any major opera house. His most outstanding operas in this genre were La costanza trionfante degl'amori e degl'odii and Farnace, which had six reruns each.
The musical catalog that brings together all his works is called Ryom-Verzeichnis (RV) or Ryom catalogue, compiled by Peter Ryom, although there are other catalogs by Antonio Fanna, Marc Pincherle and Edizioni G. Ricordi.
Legacy
During his lifetime he was very popular in several countries such as France and England, but later during Classicism and Romanticism his work was ignored. In the 20th century, the violinist Fritz Kreisler in his Violin Concerto in C major revived the interest in Vivaldi. At this time, many manuscripts were rediscovered in private collections that were, in part, acquired by the University Library of Turin with financial help from businessmen Roberto Foa and Filippo Giordano.
In popular culture
Antonio Vivaldi is one of the best-known composers of Baroque music. His life has been taken to the movies on several occasions. In 1989 Rosso veneziano was released, a thriller that deals with a series of crimes that occurred in 18th century Venice that Vivaldi, together with his friends Carlo Goldoni and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, tries to solve. In 2006, the French-Italian biopic Antonio Vivaldi, un prince à Venise, directed by Jean-Louis Guillermou and starring Stefano Dionisi, was released. In 2009, the Anglo-Italian biopic was released Vivaldi, the Red Priest, directed by Liana Marabini and starring Steven Cree. Other projects exist, such as Vivaldi by Boris Damast and starring Joseph Fiennes or the film of the same name by Patricia Riggen, starring Ben Kingsley, Jessica Biel and Luke Evans. In addition, her music has been used in more than 360 films and television shows.
In 2005 Australia's ABC Radio National commissioned a radio drama on the composer's life, written by Sean Riley and entitled The Angel and the Red Priest. The work was later adapted for the stage and performed at the Adelaide Festival of the Arts. Janice Jordan Shefelman wrote a children's book detailing the composer's life called Vivaldi.
The asteroid (4330) Vivaldi, discovered by Freimut Börngen on October 19, 1982, and the Vivaldi Glacier, north of Alexander I Island in Antarctica, are named in his honour.
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