Vivaldi is generally known as an Italian Baroque musical composer and virtuoso violinist and teacher. Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born in Venice Italy on March 4, 1678 (baroquemusic, Vivaldi). He was born to Giovanni Battista Vivaldi and Camilla Calicchio and had eight brothers and sisters (baroquemusic, Vivaldi). His father was a barber before becoming a professional violinist who then taught Vivaldi to play (baroquemusic, Vivaldi). Vivaldi then began his career by touring with his father (baroquemusic, Vivaldi). At the age of 25 Vivaldi began working at an orphanage and gave the children music lessons. It is there were he composed most of his major works.
Vivaldi is most famous for being a composer, however, he was also a master violinist. His most famous works include the “Four Seasons” and the “Opus 3” (baroquemusic, Vivaldi). He is mostly associated with the baroque solo concerto approach, specifically violin concertos (module 4). Vilvaldi’s “Four Seasons” encomposes his from as seen in the “Summer” work. https://youtu.be/g65oWFMSoK0
An important contribution that Vivaldi provided to the world of music was one of the earliest double concerto (module 4). Vivaldi uses a pair of soloist working together in a double concerto versus one soloist found in a solo concerto (as the names suggest). His work that most obviously defines this form is “Concerto for Two Trumpets” (module 4). (https://youtu.be/SVtLeR2K8sk)This works of his helped established a standard of the double concerto that was later used by Mozart and Beethoven the latter of which actually then took this step further to a triple concerto (module 4).
As of today Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” is one of the most recognizable concertos of all time. His other work is also being constantly used in teaching and practice lessons for students. Many of these pieces used to practice today were pieces that Vivaldi wrote for his students at the orphanage to practice.
References:
Antonio Vivaldi: Venetian Virtuoso,www.baroquemusic.org/vivaldi.html
Module 4 (online textbook)
This was very informative. I enjoyed reading it. I learned a lot about Vivaldi. Thank you.
Thanks, Dana, I see that this is now on the class site and I’ll grade it today. One technical suggestion; if you put your YouTube links alone on a single line (without parentheses), the video will embed automatically. If you want to edit that, it’ll strengthen the overall appearance.