Antonio Vivaldi During The Baroque Era

As one of the most prominent composers of the Baroque era, Antonio Vivaldi contributed a number of significant works and stylistic innovations during his lifetime. Music was a constant in his life. Both as an violin player and composer, Vivaldi centered his career around music. By his immense skill as a violinist and as a composer, he gained fame and popularity in his own time in the Baroque era. He also produced a legacy that has lasted into modern times. Vivaldi had humble beginnings in Venice, Italy, late in the seventeenth century. At the time, Venice was a center of art and culture. As a center of commerce and culture, Venice attracted many prominent musicians. This prosperous Italian city was even the home of notable violin makers, such

Composers of emerging the Classical period, such as Mozart and Beethoven were influenced by Vivaldi’s innovations of the concerto (Paterson). A concerto is a piece that consists of a solo instrument supported by an orchestra. Vivaldi’s innovations of the concerto form included making the solo piece more prominent (Paterson). By making the solo piece more elaborate, Vivaldi highlighted the skill of the soloist. Mozart and Beethoven included this characteristic in the concertos that they composed during their lifetimes. Another innovative characteristic of Vivaldi’s concertos was that they were often programmatic. A programmatic piece of music consists sounds meant to evoke the audience’s imagination to create an experience (Paterson). Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is an example of a programmatic piece of music because it includes sounds resembling bird calls to make the audience think of springtime (Paterson). Program music was a relatively new form of music that Vivaldi helped develop through his compositions. Although Vivaldi made these significant contributions to music, he has been criticized for predictability and repetition in his pieces of music (Paterson). Since he has written almost five hundred concertos, his music is likely to have some repetitive elements (“Antonio Vivaldi”). But much of his music included innovative characteristics, seen in the music of later composers, such as Haydn