Antonio Vivaldi: the Red Priest of Venice
Antonio Vivaldi was a violinist and composer from Venice, in Italy. He wrote hundreds of concertos, and his most famous music, The Four Seasons, lets you hear birds, thunder and chattering teeth.
In this lesson
A priest with a violin
Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice on 4 March 1678. His father was a violinist, and Antonio learned to play too. He also trained to become a priest, and he was ordained in 1703.
People called him "the Red Priest" because of his red hair. Later he travelled to Vienna, and he died there in 1741, at the age of 63.
Music for the girls of the Pietà
In 1703, Vivaldi started teaching violin at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. It was a home and music school for girls who had no families to look after them.
The girls learned to sing and to play instruments very well, and they gave concerts that people came to hear. Vivaldi wrote much of his music for them.
After he died, his music was played less and less. In the 1920s, researchers found many of his pieces again, and today people all over the world play them.
Music full of pictures
Vivaldi loved the concerto, a piece where a soloist, often a violin, plays together with a small orchestra. His music is lively and bright, and the fast parts have a strong, bouncy beat.
He also liked to paint pictures with sound. In some pieces you can hear birds, water, thunder or dancing, even if nobody tells you what to listen for.
Try listening for
These four parts of The Four Seasons show how music can tell a story.
- Spring, first movement
- Listen for the happy violins that sound like birds singing and a stream running.
- Spring, second movement
- Listen for the slow, dreamy tune, with a dog barking in the violas, a bigger cousin of the violin.
- Summer, last movement
- Listen for the fast, stormy notes that sound like thunder and hail.
- Winter, first movement
- Listen for the shaky, icy notes that sound like shivering in the snow.
Listen to the start of Winter and shiver along with the quick notes. Then listen to Spring and tap a bouncy beat on your knees.
Some pieces to know
Vivaldi wrote a huge amount of music, including more than 500 concertos.
- The Four Seasons
- Four violin concertos, one for each time of the year, published in 1725.
- Violin concertos
- About 230 of his concertos were written for a solo violin, his own instrument.
- Operas
- Music plays for the stage, in which the singers act out a story. He wrote dozens of them.
- Church music
- He also wrote many songs for choirs and singers to perform in church.
Meanwhile, around the world
- 1685A famous composer is born
Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, in Germany. He later studied Vivaldi's concertos closely.
- Around 1700A new kind of keyboard
In Florence, Italy, Bartolomeo Cristofori built an early piano that could play soft and loud.
- 1717Music on the river
In London, Handel's Water Music was played on boats on the River Thames for King George I.
- 1721Six concertos for a prince
Bach sent his six Brandenburg Concertos to a nobleman, the Margrave of Brandenburg.
- 1723A new job in Leipzig
Bach became the music director of the St Thomas Church in Leipzig, in Germany.
Piano sound: Salamander Grand Piano by Alexander Holm (CC BY 3.0).