Antonio Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" | Music and Sonnets

The Four Seasons (Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a group of four violin concerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), each of which gives musical expression to a season of the year.

These were composed around 1718-1720, when Vivaldi was the court chapel master in Mantua.

They were published in 1725 in Amsterdam in what was at the time the Dutch Republic, together with eight additional concerti, as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention).

Orazio Gentileschi | Young Woman with a Violin (Saint Cecilia), 1612 | Detroit Institute of Arts

The Four Seasons is the best known of Vivaldi's works.

Though three of the concerti are wholly original, the first, "Spring", borrows patterns from a sinfonia in the first act of Vivaldi's contemporaneous opera Il Giustino.

The inspiration for the concertos is not the countryside around Mantua, as initially supposed, where Vivaldi was living at the time, since according to Karl Heller they could have been written as early as 1716-1717, while Vivaldi was engaged with the court of Mantua only in 1718.

They were a revolution in musical conception: Vivaldi represented flowing creeks, singing birds (of different species, each specifically characterized), a shepherd and his barking dog, buzzing flies, storms, drunken dancers, hunting parties from both the hunters' and the prey's point of view, frozen landscapes, and warm winter fires.

Unusual for the period, Vivaldi published the concerti with accompanying Sonnets (possibly written by the composer himself) that elucidated what it was in the spirit of each season that his music was intended to evoke.

The concerti therefore stand as one of the earliest and most detailed examples of what would come to be called program music - in other words, music with a narrative element.

Vivaldi took great pains to relate his music to the texts of the poems, translating the poetic lines themselves directly into the music on the page.

For example, in the second movement of "Spring", when the goatherd sleeps, his barking dog can be heard in the viola section.

The music is elsewhere similarly evocative of other natural sounds.

Vivaldi divided each concerto into three movements (fast-slow-fast), and, likewise, each linked sonnet into three sections.

The Four Seasons | Music and Sonnets text by Vivaldi

Vivaldi - Concerto No.1 in E major, "La primavera" (Spring)

I. Allegro

Springtime is upon us.

The birds celebrate her return with festive song,

and murmuring streams are

softly caressed by the breezes.

Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar,

casting their dark mantle over heaven,

Then they die away to silence,

and the birds take up their charming songs once more.

II. Largo

On the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branches

rustling overhead, the goat-herd sleeps,

his faithful dog beside him.

III. Allegro

Led by the festive sound of rustic bagpipes,

nymphs and shepherds lightly dance

beneath spring’s beautiful canopy.

Vivaldi - Concerto No. 2 in G minor, "L'estate" (Summer)

I. Allegro non molto

Under a hard season, fired up by the sun

Languishes man, languishes the flock and burns the pine

We hear the cuckoo's voice;

then sweet songs of the turtledove and finch are heard.

Soft breezes stir the air, but threatening

the North Wind sweeps them suddenly aside.

The shepherd trembles,

fearing violent storms and his fate.

II. Adagio

The fear of lightning and fierce thunder

Robs his tired limbs of rest

As gnats and flies buzz furiously around.

III. Presto

Alas, his fears were justified

The Heavens thunder and roar and with hail

Cut the head off the wheat and damages the grain.

Vivaldi - Concerto No. 3 in F major, "L'autunno" (Autumn)

I. Allegro

Celebrates the peasant, with songs and dances,

The pleasure of a bountiful harvest.

And fired up by Bacchus' liquor,

many end their revelry in sleep.

II. Adagio molto

Everyone is made to forget their cares and to sing and dance

By the air which is tempered with pleasure

And (by) the season that invites so many, many

Out of their sweetest slumber to fine enjoyment

III. Allegro

The hunters emerge at the new dawn,

And with horns and dogs and guns depart upon their hunting

The beast flees and they follow its trail;

Terrified and tired of the great noise

Of guns and dogs, the beast, wounded, threatens

Languidly to flee, but harried, dies.

Vivaldi - Concerto No. 4 in F minor, "L'inverno" (Winter) ♬

I. Allegro non molto

To tremble from cold in the icy snow,

In the harsh breath of a horrid wind;

To run, stamping one's feet every moment,

Our teeth chattering in the extreme cold

II. Largo

Before the fire to pass peaceful,

Contented days while the rain outside pours down.

III. Allegro

We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously,

for fear of tripping and falling.

Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and,

rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.

We feel the chill north winds course through the home

despite the locked and bolted doors...

this is winter, which nonetheless

brings its own delights.