The Four Season (detailed)

Almost three centuries ago, Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) composed his most famous works and the most significant examples of Baroque program music. The Four Seasons are the opening works in Opus 8, a set of concertos published in 1725. That set actually contains twelve violin concertos, but the brilliance and popularity of the first four have generally obscured the remaining works. Learning about Baroque music, there is simply no getting around The Four Seasons. They epitomize various aspects of Vivaldi’s mature concerto style, but they also were influential in celebrating the pictorial connections between program music and an accompanying narrative. Vivaldi chose to publish each concerto with a corresponding sonnet, and they are reproduced below. Some scholars believe Vivaldi himself penned these poems, though their authorship remains in doubt. We do know that, in his sketches, Vivaldi correlated passages from the sonnets to specific themes in the music.
The musical year begins with Spring and continues around the cycle. Certain features are held constant as we make this journey, including the three-movement, fast-slow-fast arrangement that Vivaldi’s generation bequeathed to subsequent composers. Each concerto lasts about ten minutes and offers a splendid platform for the soloist. They both compare and contrast well, one with the others. Two are in major, two in minor. Two feature violin writing that is elegant and refined; the other two are virtuosic and feverish—even in the icy chill of Winter. What draws us to this music is certainly its animation and absolutely brilliant, idiomatic violin writing. It hardly needs pointing out that Vivaldi himself was one of the greatest violinists of the day. His improvisations, as entr’acte diversions in the theater, were legendary. And it was his technical skill, above all else, that attracted so many parents to seek a spot for their daughters in the Pieta—originally a home for foundlings.
Sound effects range from broadly evocative (thunder and winds) to more directly mimetic (bird calls, dog barks). But rather than creating just a sequence of effects, Vivaldi conveys a sense of narrative progression by introducing the accompanying sonnets. There is an irony at work here. On one hand, Vivaldi so effectively captures moments from the sonnets in sound, that it would seem redundant to offer any kind of description in words. And yet musical pictorialism is never a one-to-one correspondence; rapid repeated notes, for instance, do not always signify winds, let alone something so precise as the North Wind. So there is a place for commentary, and the accompanying sonnets make that task both easier and more justifiable. We can continue to argue about reading stories or images into music, generally speaking. But here, in The Four Seasons, Vivaldi seems specifically to be asking us to make that leap with him.

SPRING
By virtue of its place at the head of The Four Seasons, “Spring” opens with one of the most recognizable themes in all of classical music. The E major tonality effuses brightness with every bow stroke. The main theme repeatedly ascends to settle on the fifth note of the scale (B), adding a feel of expansiveness. After a series of bird calls, we encounter trickling springs, thunder, and flashes of lightning that lead us to a variant of the main theme in minor. Ultimately Vivaldi will conclude the movement with the sunnier strains of the opening material. Thus brief suggestions of a tempest are enclosed within the reassuring frame of the radiant E major material. It is an aesthetic shared by the 18th century generally, as evidenced in its gardens, which preferred to confine and shape wild nature within logical bounds.
The Largo, scored for string quartet, presents three overlapping gestures that suggest a nocturnal setting: the distinctive barking dog in viola, murmuring plants in the inner strings, and “sleeping goatherd” theme in solo violin. Without the textual cue, this theme, I believe, would not suggest “the sleeping goatherd” in any other context (unless we are to interpret the plaintive melody as referring to the goatherd’s dreams?). Rather, we have a simple chordal framework that allows the solo violinist to embellish at will. We are on slightly firmer ground interpreting the Finale, which clearly pictures a rustic dance. Back again are the sunny E major and resonant emphases on the fifth scale degree (B), which evokes the bagpipes mentioned in the accompanying sonnet. But beyond these brief references and hints, Vivaldi gives no further verbal clues. It is easy to be drawn in by Vivaldi’s shimmering surfaces, playing the “identification game” as various birds, dogs, and dancers have their moment in the sun (or under the moon, as the case may be!). But this concerto rewards a purely musical study as well, with its masterful balance between solo and full ensemble and its use of harmonic sequence to reach unexpected keys. Without that sense of bold tonal color, Vivaldi’s evocation of “Spring” would have been trite and timidly monochromatic.

SUMMER
The second concerto, Summer, starts out where many of us end up around this time of year: “exhausted by the heat,” to quote the sonnet. In the slow introduction, Vivaldi employs falling lines and chromatically lowered tones (such as A-flat in place of the expected A-natural) to evoke drooping energy levels. What an effective foil for the much-too-vigorous cuckoo in solo violin that intrudes upon our impending slumber. Our next visitor is the turtledove, whose doleful cry also touches on the unexpected A-flat sitting a semitone above G. After twittering finches have their say, things get a bit more agitated as the winds pick up. Clearly a storm is in the offing. The shepherd feels it, too, and his fears elicit an operatic aria in solo violin. The sonnet suggests that such fears are symbolic of the boy’s trepidation about his future, generally speaking. Vivaldi paints the mood with a traditional lament bass progression, in which the harmonic foundation falls stepwise through the interval of a fourth. (Listen for that same device tomorrow night in the most famous lament of all, from the close of Dido and Aeneas.)
A level of unease continues into the Adagio. Now, despite a tender melody in the solo violin, flies and wasps compete for our attention with periodic thunder. The whole movement lasts just two minutes. Before we know it, the tempest is raining down upon us (the Finale). This Finale is one of Vivaldi’s very best, for it merges the two elements that have made his reputation in the concerto world: dazzling, idiomatic violin writing and significant use of harmonic sequence.

AUTUMN
Autumn welcomes a more relaxed mood. Summer’s heat and storms have passed, and the harvest has been brought in. This is a time of celebration, to put it politely. Vivaldi is less polite. The music suggests that drunken revelry and indolent dozing are more to the point. He starts with a peasant dance in F major, simple in appeal and based on nothing more complex than tonic and dominant chords. Even the first solo episode does not advance beyond the simple tone established at the outset. But with the entrance of the stumbling drunkard, indicated in the score by Vivaldi as l’Ubriaco, the material becomes more uneven and dynamic. Later in the movement Vivaldi again uses the “lament bass” figure (here descending chromatically) to make the drunkard’s sleep sound far more poignant than it probably should. A final touch of the peasant’s dance is not enough to rouse him, it seems, for the entire next movement is marked “dozing drunkards.” Vivaldi sets this passage in recitative style and builds the initial harmony (an inverted 7th chord) one note at a time (D, B-flat, G, E). Seventh chords of all flavor appear at every moment as the various instruments slide feebly, and often downward, to the nearest pitch they can find. For the final movement, depicting a hunt, Vivaldi borrows the key and thematic material from the first movement. However, the solo episodes are now much more rhythmically engaging and developed. Not unexpectedly, such vigorous displays are used to suggest “the wild beast in flight.” Only for the briefest instant, at the moment of death, does Vivaldi rein in the exuberance of this age-old autumnal ritual.

WINTER
If we recall how Vivaldi built the “dozing” material in the slow movement of Autumn, we will appreciate the striking twist that occurs at the beginning of Winter. The same device—building an inverted 7th chord note by note (here F, G, D-flat, B-flat)— now creates a quite different effect by virtue of faster tempo and string tremolos. He also decides to emphasize the most pungent discord of all: F against G, the very first sounds we hear. Against this backdrop, a “horrid wind” bursts forth as three icy solo cadenzas, each higher than the last. Even the ensemble writing is more taut than ever, though a slight relaxation occurs with the beloved circle-of-fifths sequence for the “stamping of feet.” For all its anguished images, Winter includes perhaps Vivaldi’s most inspired and adored music.
Winter’s slow movement is more substantial than those that appear in the other concertos. And while pizzicato strings are used to mimic raindrops (this is Italy, after all, where January is more often wet than snowy), it is the easy grace of the solo violin melody that holds our attention. The respite from winter’s full force is brief, however. The ensuing finale starts mysteriously with wandering figures over a tonic pedal. Indeed, once supporting players finally join in, Vivaldi explicitly refers to the feeling of trepidation mentioned in the sonnet, “walking slowly and fearfully.” Winter takes on a spectral power as something from which we might hope to flee, like old age or death. But no matter where we hide—even in a brief reverie of warm summer winds—winter’s cold blasts find us. Like the mythical Aeolus, Vivaldi gathers and then unleashes all the winds in torrential final flourish. It is one of the most intense and moving conclusions to a work of music. As such, it is a fitting conclusion to The Four Seasons as a whole. For in these Seasons, Vivaldi has been at his most comprehensive, endeavoring to paint with tones and words. He has put his incredible musical imagination and technique into the service of a noble task: to capture the rich panoply of life in sounds.

© Jason Stell, 2015

Spring
Allegro
The festive Spring has arrived,
The birds celebrate her return with happy songs,
And the brooks of the gentle Zephyrs
With sweet murmurs flow, but,
The sky is covered in a dark mantle
And lightning and thunder announce a storm.
When quiet returns, the birds again take up their lovely songs.


Largo
And in the flower-rich meadow,
To the gentle murmur of leaves and plants
The goatherd sleeps, his faithful dog at his side.

Allegro
To the merry sounds of a rustic bagpipe
Nymphs and shepherds dance in their beloved spot
When Spring appears in its brilliance.



Summer
Allegro non molto - Allegro
Under the merciless sun languishes man and flock;
The pine tree burns, the cuckoo begins to sing and at once
Join in the turtle doves and the goldfinch.
A gentle breeze blows, but Boreas
Joins battle suddenly with his neighbour,
And the shepherd weeps because overhead
Hangs the dreaded storm, and his destiny.

Adagio e piano - Presto e forte
His tired limbs are robbed of their rest
By his fear of the lightning and the heavy thunder
And by the furious swarm of flies and hornets.

Presto
Alas, his fears are well founded
There is thunder and lightning in the sky
And the hail cuts down the lofty ears of corn.


Autumn
Allegro
The peasant celebrates with song and dance
The pleasure of the rich harvest,
And full of the liquor of Bacchus
They finish their merrymaking with a sleep.

Adagio molto
All are made to leave off singing and dancing
By the air which now mild gives pleasure
And by the season which invited many
To enjoy a sweet sleep.

Allegro
At dawn the hunters with horns and guns
And dogs leave their homes;
The beast flees; they follow its traces.
Already terrified and tired by the great noise
Of the guns and the dogs, and wounded it tries
Feebly to escape, but exhausted dies.



Winter
Allegro non molto
Frozen and shivering in the snow.
In the strong blasts of a terrible wind,
To run stamping one’s feet at every step
With one’s teeth chattering through the cold.


Largo
To spend the quiet and happy days by the fire
Whilst outside the rain soaks everyone.
To walk on the ice with slow steps
And go carefully for fear of falling.

Allegro
To go in haste, slide and fall down:
To go again on the ice and run,
Until the ice cracks and opens.
To hear leaving their iron-gated house
Sirocco, Boreas and all the winds in battle:
This is winter, but it brings joy.

(c) Jason Stell