The Four Season Op.8 Nos.1-4

Concerto No.1 in E minor (“Spring”)

Allegro

Largo

Danza pastorale: allegro

Concerto No.2 in G minor (“Summer”)

Allegro non molto

Adagio

Presto

Concerto No.3 in F major (“Autumn”)

Allegro

Adagio

Allegro

Concerto No.4 in F minor (“Winter”)

Allegro non molto

Largo

Allegro

One of the most prolific of all composers, Vivaldi was also something of a poet - or so it is reasonable to assume from the four sonnets published with the first edition of the Four Seasons in 1725. According to the dedication of that edition, Vivaldi felt that his “feeble” violin concertos were much enhanced by the “completely clear interpretation” the sonnets give them. Although he does not actually say which came first, the music or the verse, the concertos would certainly not have been written as they were - with their many extravagant and unconventional effects - if the composer had not had a detailed programme in mind. The references to the sonnets in the score and parts explain precisely what the descriptive purpose is at any given point.

Programme music was nothing new in the 18th century of course but the Four Seasons is such a rare example of its successful integration with concerto grosso form that the 20th century has picked it out and come to love it perhaps more than any other music of the time. To our ears, they have a touching freshness, innocence even. In the Largo of the “Spring” Concerto, for example, the goatherd sleeping (solo violin) in the rustling meadows (orchestral violins) watched over by his barking dog (violas) is a charming picture and a lovely slow movement. In the Adagio of the oppressive Italian “Summer” rest is troubled by the premonitions of a storm and angry swarms of flies; in “Autumn” the Adagio is as motionless as any drunken sleep can be; and the”Winter” Largo is a domestic idyll at the fireside.

Inevitably, formal conventions are sacrificed here and there, as in the fierce and deliberately unmelodic “Summer” storm (last movement), the shivering, stamping, teeth-chattering first movement of “Winter” and the skating (including a nasty fall) and battles of the winds in the last movement. But the country dance of “Spring,” the hunt complete with chase and kill in the “Autumn” last movement, the virtuoso bird song, rain-storm or windy interpolations in the first movement of “Spring” and enervating “Summer” are brilliantly integrated within concerto form.

Rupert Avis

Concerto No.1 in E minor (“Spring”)

Allegro

Largo

Danza pastorale: Allegro

Concerto No.2 in G minor (“Summer”)

Allegro non molto

Adagio

Presto

Concerto No.3 in F major (“Autumn”)

Allegro

Adagio

Allegro

Concerto No.4 in F minor (“Winter”)

Allegro non molto

Largo

Allegro

One of the most prolific of all composers, Vivaldi was also something of a poet – or so it is reasonable to assume from the four sonnets published with the first edition of the Four Seasons in 1725. According to the dedication of that edition, Vivaldi felt that his “feeble” violin concertos were much enhanced by the “completely clear interpretation” the sonnets give them. Although he does not actually say which came first, the music or the verse, the concertos would certainly not have been written as they were – with their many extravagant and unconventional effects – if the composer had not had a detailed programme in mind. References to the sonnets in the score and parts explain precisely what the descriptive purpose is at any given point.

Programme music was nothing new in the 18th century of course: the Christmas Concerto by Arcangelo Corelli is a famous precedent. But The Four Seasons is such a rare example of the successful integration of programmatic detail with concerto grosso form that later generations have picked it out and come to love it perhaps more than any other music of the time. To our ears, they have a touching freshness and a delight in technical innovation that seems adventurous even now.

Although it is unusual for the first entry of the soloist to be supported by two other solo violins, as in the opening Allegro of the “Spring” concerto, this passage is not only a delightful simulation of birdsong but also an ingenious    study in string texture, just as the rushing scales and brilliant arpeggios of a later episode represent a storm and at the same time the instrumental bravura expected in a concerto. In the Largo of the same concerto the goatherd sleeping (solo violin) in the rustling meadows (orchestral violins) and watched over by his barking dog (violas) is a charming picture and a lovely slow movement. A Danza pastorale or country dance, performed by nymphs and shepherds according to Vivaldi’s sonnet, is a by no means unusual event in the concerto grosso.

The structure of the first movement of “Summer” is dangerously broken up by the sheer variety of seasonal events – more birdsong (cuckoo, turtle dove, goldfinch), a contest between the gentle west wind and the fierce north wind, the shepherd lamenting his fate on a plaintive solo violin before the final storm – but it is held together by the (ever shorter) recurrences of the languid material of the opening bars. In the Adagio there is an extreme contrast between the sustained melodic line on solo violin and the rumbling of thunder and the angry buzzing of insects in the orchestra. The storm, when it comes in the Presto third movement, is a brilliant display of virtuosity for soloist and orchestra alike.   

The cheerful dance music celebrating a successful harvest in the first movement of Autumn would not be out of place in any concerto of the time – unlike the extravagantly tipsy and musically adventurous solo episodes that so rudely interrupt it. After a not far from motionless Adagio devoted to the “delights of peaceful sleep,” a prancing Allegro evokes the exhilaration of the hunt, including a chase and kill vividly reflected on solo violin.

“Winter” begins with an extraordinary Allegro non molto featuring shivering, stamping, teeth-chattering material in the orchestra and a “horrible wind” on the violin. It is better, the serene solo part of the Largo suggests, to spend winter days in comfort at the fireside while, as the pizzicato orchestral violins tell us, it rains outside. In the closing Allegro the soloist ventures out onto the ice, uncertainly at first but ever more confidently until the ice gives way in an alarming series of falling arpeggios. The work ends with another virtuoso war of the winds. “This is winter,“ says the sonnet, “but it also brings joy!”