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 concerto...(+)
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.
