Winter is here! There’s nothing like waking up, breathing crisp, fresh air, and seeing a field of diamonds out your window.

Antonio Vivaldi wrote 500 concertos, though musicians will say that he actually wrote the same concerto 500 times. Most of these concertos are given really interesting titles – for example, “Violin Concerto in D” or “Violin Concerto in E” or maybe even “Violin Concerto in F.” In a sea of compositions with very similar names, four of his concertos stand out above the rest (not surprisingly) because they bear a title that suggests something extra-musical. The Four Seasons (having nothing to do with Franki Valli) are four Baroque concertos that musically capture the spirit of the respective times of year – Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. This sort of use of extra-musical influences is known as Program Music, and is commonplace nowadays. If a composer today wrote a piece called “A Cold Winter’s Day” or “The Ice Storm”, we wouldn’t think twice about it; in fact, we would probably begin making assumptions as to how the piece would sound, built on the musical ideas handed down through generations of wintery composers. But in 1720, for Vivaldi to write a Concerto that captures the spirit of winter AND to title it “Winter” was out of the ordinary.

In this concerto, Vivaldi paints winter by beginning in a minor mode with static, unchanging harmony (a dead, dreary landscape), then building into fast scales (blowing wind). Later, we hear a sweet song sung by a warm fireplace, before having to walk back out into the bitter cold.