Antonio Vivali: Music Appreciation: Antonio Vivaldi

Kamal Kamel

Music Appreciation

Elijah Holt

November 13, 2017

Antonio Vivaldi

Music is a blessing to humans. A well written piece of music can change anyone’s mood. That's what good composers are capable of doing. Speaking of composers, what comes to the mind is Antonio Vivaldi. Antonio Vivaldi is an Italian composer and violinist who left a decisive mark on the form of the concerto and the style of late Baroque instrumental music. Vivaldi's music, although written almost 300 years ago, has inspired the majority of the songs we hear today. He achieved great success with his sacred vocal music.

Born on March 4, 1678, the Venetian composer and violinist Vivaldi considered as one of the big and best composers throughout the Baroque period. During

He produced over five hundred concertos for almost every combination of instruments including solo, trio sonatas, instrumental sinfonias and an impressive body of sacred music which included oratorios, masses and motets. He also composed 46 operas and 73 sonatas in addition to chamber music and sacred music. Twenty-one of his operas have made their way to today, but their full artistic and dramatic power is yet to be determined. Vivaldi's highly distinctive and recognizable musical style had a profound impact on many contemporaries and future composers. One of them was Giuseppe Tartini. His greatest influence was in the development of the concerto. Vivaldi has been credited with inventing or at least regularizing "ritornello form." This usually employed fast movements in which a "refrain" played by the full ensemble alternates with freer, modulatory episodes played by the solo instruments. Vivaldi’s deft coordination of melody and harmony was much admired by Johann Sebastian Bach who absorbed the Italian style through his study and transcription of his concertos and trio-sonatas. This influence is particularly apparent in Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. Other distinctive elements of Vivaldi's style included a fluid alternation of major and minor tonalities, a highly progressive use of dissonance and rich harmonies, and an innate melodic gift particularly in slow movements. His vocal music has been criticized for perfunctory text-setting and violinist vocal writing, but there are examples of great skill and inspiration in this genre such as his Gloria or Magnificat and his virtuosic and highly expressive motets for solo voice. Vivaldi was unquestionably a master orchestrator who explored the idiomatic potential of the many instruments for which he wrote. The Four Seasons for example, not only illustrates his skills in writing for the virtuoso violinist, but also his ability to depict extra musical or programmatic ideas in a manner that