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This week, the sun is shining, and Vivaldi plays the violin! And the bassoon? And the oboe, the flute... wait, is it snowing now? Vivaldi was writing concertos before it was cool.
Howdy, howdy, howdy! I’m Solomon Reynolds, and this is: Saturday Morning Car Tunes! This morning…
Classical California plays Vivaldi’s music three times a day! But who is he? Born in Venice in 1678, Antonio Vivaldi was a violinist and composer who spent a lot of his career teaching and writing music at the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage and music school for girls.
The Harmonic Inspiration, a set of twelve violin concertos, made him internationally famous. It became the most influential music published in its day—even Bach studied it! This is from No. 12.
Vivaldi wrote over 500 concertos, so many that he established the three-movement form. But he didn’t just write for the violin; he also wrote some concertos for the bassoon and the oboe.
Vivaldi was one of the first composers to write programmatic music, or music that represents something explained by a program. This movement from his flute concerto, The Night, is called “Ghosts.” Can you hear them flying through the air?
Vivaldi’s most famous concertos today are probably The Four Seasons, programmatic music about the weather. Can you hear the thunderstorm from "Summer"?
Hunters head out early in the morning during "Autumn."
In "Winter," we walk carefully on the ice to avoid tripping and falling. The wind is pretty chilly, right?
And finally, "Spring" is here.
The German composer Max Richter took Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and recomposed them using period instruments and modern techniques.
Vivaldi was composing long after his 200th birthday. In the 1920s, a famous violin player named Fritz Kreisler said he arranged an old violin concerto by Vivaldi. He had actually written it himself but thought it’d be tacky to put his name on every piece he played. So, instead of composing, Vivaldi was—just—decomposing.
The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet was also inspired by Vivaldi when they arranged “Baroque Hoedown” by Perrey and Kingsley in Vivaldi’s style. Your grown up have heard the original version of “Baroque Hoedown” at Disneyland’s Main Street Electrical Parade in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
Vivaldi concertos are the happiest things on earth!
I’m Solomon Reynolds. I write and produce Saturday Morning Car Tunes, with research assistant Carolina Correa and audio engineer Stephen Page, only on Classical California. Tune in—or out of your car—next Saturday morning!
