 | Vivaldi, Antonio - Largo from the Concerto in C Major for Flute & Harp RV 555 Mvt. 2 Flute and Harp |
Vidéo :
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| Composer : | Vivaldi, Antonio (1678 - 1741) | ||
| Instrumentation : | Flute and Harp | ||
| Style : | Baroque | ||
| Key : | C major | ||
| Arranger : Publisher : | MAGATAGAN, MICHAEL (1960 - ) | ||
| Copyright : | Public Domain | ||
| Added by magataganm, 18 Apr 2019 Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (1678 – 1741) was an Italian Baroque musical composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, and priest. Born in Venice, the capital of the Venetian Republic, he is regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. He composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as the Four Seasons. Details regarding Vivaldi's early life are few. His father was a violinist in the Catherdral of Venice's orchestra and probably Antonio's first teacher. There is much speculation about other teachers, such as Corelli, but no evidence to support this. Vivaldi studied for the priesthood as a young man and was ordained in 1703. He was known for much of his career as "il prete rosso" (the red-haired priest), but soon after his ordination he declined to take on his ecclesiastical duties. Later in life he cited ill health as the reason, but other motivations have been proposed; perhaps Vivaldi simply wanted to explore new opportunties as a composer. It didn't take him long. Landing a job as a violin teacher at a girls' orphanage in Venice (where he would work in one capacity or another during several stretches of his life), he published a set of trio sonatas and another of violin sonatas. Word of his abilities spread around Europe, and in 1711 an Amsterdam publisher brought out, under the title L'estro armonico (Harmonic Inspiration), a set of Vivaldi's concertos for one or more violins with orchestra. These were best sellers (it was this group of concertos that spurred Bach's transcriptions), and Vivaldi followed them up with several more equally successful concerto sets. Perhaps the most prolific of all the great European composers, he once boasted that he could compose a concerto faster than a copyist could ready the individual parts for the players in the orchestra. He began to compose operas, worked from 1718 to 1720 in the court of the German principality of Hessen-Darmstadt, and traveled in Austria and perhaps Bohemia. Throughout his career, he had his choice of commissions from nobility and the highest members of society, the ability to use the best performers, and enough business savvy to try to control the publication of his works, although due to his popularity, many were published without his consent. Later in life Vivaldi was plagued by rumors of a sexual liaison with one of his vocal students, and he was censured by ecclesiastical authorities. His Italian career on the rocks, he headed for Vienna. He died there and was buried as a pauper in 1741, although at the height of his career his publications had earned a comfortable living. This concerto remains a riddle—the identity of the pair of instruments that appear for the first time in the finale and are labelled ‘2 Trombe’. The problem with accepting this designation at face value is that these parts, while often fanfare-like in character and therefore related in a general sense to the trumpet style, contain too many notes in the octave above middle C that are unplayable on the natural instrument. There are other technical difficulties, and also problems of balance with the rest of the ensemble. Robert King’s novel solution, which is fully convincing, is to interpret trombe as a shorthand form of violini in tromba marina (the recording employs ordinary violins played near the bridge and making maximum use of harmonics in an attempt to simulate the historical instruments). There is a precedent for this. For a similar concerto in C major, RV558 (specially written for a visit of Frederick Augustus’ son to the Pietà in 1740), Vivaldi’s copyist wrote ‘violini in tromba marina’ on the title-page but abbreviated this to ‘trombe’ or ‘trombe marine’ in the score itself. The relevant parts in RV555 possess exactly the same general characteristics as those in RV558. Similarly, the ‘violino in tromba’ required in the solo concertos RV221, 311 and 313 may in reality be, as argued by Cesare Fertonani in a recent book on Vivaldi’s instrumental music, a ‘violino in tromba marina’. The point is that, with Vivaldi, so many options remain open: what was yesterday’s heresy can so easily turn into today’s orthodoxy.. Source: AllMusic (https://www.allmusic.com/artist/antonio-vivaldi-mn0000 685058/biography ). Although originally created for 3 Violins, Oboe, Viola all'inglese, Chalmeleau, 2 Cellos, Harpsichord, Strings & Basso Continuo, I created this Arrangement of the Largo from the Concerto in C Major (RV 555) for Flute & Concert (Pedal) Harp. | |||
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