Description
The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni) is a group of four violin concerti written in the early 18th century by the Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). Rather unusually for the time, Vivaldi published the concerti with a set of accompanying sonnets and he took great pains to relate his music to the sonnet’s texts. We hear, for instance, musical portrayals of barking dogs, singing birds, buzzing flies, storms, frozen landscapes and warm winter fires. Thus, the concerti stand as one of the earliest and most detailed examples of what would come to be called ‘program music’ – that is, music with a narrative element.
In the third concerto, Autumn (L’Autunno), the sonnet – and Vivaldi’s music – describes peasants celebrating a bountiful harvest with singing, dancing and drinking. Their revelry ends in drunken slumber, cooled by an autumnal breeze. When day breaks it’s time for the hunt – a noisy affair with guns, dogs and horns. The terrified beast they pursue desperately tries to flee, but dies from its wounds.
The Four Seasons is the best known of Vivaldi’s works. In this arrangement the virtuosic and solo violin passages have been shared to create a balanced and very playable version for wind quintet.
