The revival of interest in Vivaldi’s contemporary, Johann Sebastian Bach, by the Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn and others, strangely served merely to diminish Vivaldi, who was said to pale in comparison to the German master.
Even before his death, his music began to fade from the world, and during the nineteenth century Vivaldi went largely unperformed. Still, though Vivaldi’s achievement in this vast body of repertoire is undeniably uneven, its existence alone would be enough to qualify the Venetian as one of the greatest composers who ever lived.Īnd yet Vivaldi, who lived from 1678 to 1741, was nearly forgotten by time. (The present writer wishes he could utter a rejoinder on Vivaldi’s behalf to Stravinsky himself, expressing his gratitude that the Russian composer did not inflict such a number of his own works upon our ears.) It is true that string concerti comprise the majority of Vivaldi’s output, that a certain uniformity of form, style, and technique governs much of this oeuvre, and that only a fraction stand out to the casual listener as obviously “great” works that can be readily distinguished from the others.
Moreover, a put-down has dogged Vivaldi through the ages, repeated by Igor Stravinsky among other notables: that he did not write 500 concerti but the same concerto 500 times. The Four Seasons’ fame has also resulted in the pigeon-holing of Vivaldi as a composer of instrumental music, specifically of string concerti. At the same time, it has made Vivaldi a one-hit wonder in the concert-going public’s mind, akin to a Carl Orff (of Carmina Burana fame) or a Samuel Barber (he of the funereal Adagio). Like those pieces, The Four Seasons has become a cliché, a piece of kitsch that we hear in muzak form as we shop at the mall, ride in an elevator, or watch a television commercial. The first bars of the first concerto in the set, “Spring,” like the openings of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, have been so overplayed that we really cannot hear the music anymore. Though it has made Vivaldi famous for at least the last century or so, The Four Seasons has paradoxically led us to underestimate the Venetian’s true greatness.
By one estimate it is the most played piece of classical music in world history. Inevitably, when one hears the name of Antonio Vivaldi, one thinks of his famous set of four violin concertos, The Four Seasons. Then, several events occurred to re-awaken interest in the music of “The Red Priest.” Once renowned across Europe, by the early twentieth century Vivaldi was considered a minor composer. The popularity of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” has paradoxically led us to underestimate the Venetian’s true greatness.
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