Antonio Vivaldi
The Four Seasons, Op. 8, Nos. 1-4
Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice in 1678 and died in Vienna in 1741. He composed this work in the early 1720s, and it was probably first performed around 1725 in Bohemia. The score calls for solo violin, strings, and continuo.
*****
Composers have been imitating nature in their music for centuries, perhaps even millennia. What is remarkable about The Four Seasons is the form Vivaldi chose as a vehicle for such descriptive music: each “season” is, in fact, a self-contained violin concerto. Vivaldi, of course, was the master of the concerto form; he wrote several hundred of them, 220 alone for the violin. His concertos typically have three movements, fast-slow-fast, with the outer movements in ritornello form. (The ritornello is a theme played in the orchestra that returns to punctuate contrasting sections played by the soloist.) Despite the storytelling going on in The Four Seasons, these pieces also work quite nicely as concertos. They are superb solo vehicles: showy, expressive, and musically engaging.
Vivaldi was very specific about what he was trying to depict. He supplied poems at the beginning of each season that correspond closely with the music itself. They are, in fact, road maps to let the musicians know exactly what they are emulating. For the most part, the orchestral refrains in the ritornello movements tend to present a general picture of the season, leaving room for the soloist to make comments about more specific things.
The opening of Spring gives out the good cheer of the season, after which we hear a conversation among three birds—or, if you prefer, three violins. After the orchestra gives its imitation of a babbling brook a storm enters, with trembling thunder and flashes of lightning. As the clouds part, the birds return. The long, winding melody of the second movement represents a sleeping goatherd, and the insistent viola notes are the goatherd’s watchful dog. The finale is a graceful shepherd’s song, replete with the drone of bagpipes.
As Summer begins you can hear “men and flocks languish” in the heat: every phrase seems to droop. In the solo violin we hear first the cuckoo, then the turtledove, then the goldfinch. The loud orchestral interruption is the north wind; after the soloist depicts the shepherd’s dread of the coming storm the ominous wind returns. In the second movement the shepherd is kept awake by fear and, in a low grumbling, a “furious swarm of flies and hornets.” The third movement is a storm in music: there is thunder, lightning, even hail to bring down the crops.
With Autumn’s “songs and dances, the peasants celebrate the joy of a fine harvest.”  Celebrate, indeed: the reeling soloist reveals that some, at least, have had a bit too much to drink, and as the party winds down we hear a bit of wooziness near the end. The second movement is predictable: sleeping peasants! Everyone wakes up for the hunting music of the third movement. The ritornello is quite gallant, and a good time is had by all.
Winter is crackling dry and cold, and the violin is the screech of the wind. Vivaldi specifies stamping feet and chattering teeth, though some relief comes from the second movement’s cozy moment before the fire. The third movement’s nervous violin is walking guardedly on the ice. A fall to the ground obtains, then the painful getting-up. The icy winds take over the movement, and take your breath away.