Fall is here – and to celebrate, here is the iconic fall composition, “Autumn” from Vivaldi‘s “Four Seasons“.

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 the harvest AND to title it “Fall” was out of the ordinary.

Actually, there is more to say. Julia Fischer is awesome!

And so here is your obligatory summer piece, titled (what else) “Summer”, by Antonio Vivaldi.

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 summer AND to title it “Summer” was out of the ordinary.

I guess I have to post the quintessential spring piece.

Antonio Vivaldi wrote a massive amount of music. Musicians tell a joke about him: did he write more than 500 concertos? No, he just wrote the same concerto 500 times. It all sounds similar, but that doesn’t make it dull – quite the contrary actually. If it weren’t good, it wouldn’t have survived 300 years!

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons are actually four violin concertos. The idea of attaching a non-musical idea (in this case, the seasons of the year) to a composition was fairly unique for the time. It was a wise move on Vivaldi’s part, because now this group of concertos are his most played work. Each concerto uses music to paint the sights, sounds, and smells of each season (Winter is a chilling storm!) To our modern ears and minds, this is a no-brainer – but in 1700, it was a little more cutting-edge. Eventually this idea (attaching a non-musical idea to a piece of music) became known as programmatic music, and is almost expected of any modern composition.