The red priest
Buongiorno, i miei amici,
Climb aboard my Gondola and let’s take a spin through the canals of Venice as we learn about a composer whom history might have forgotten, had another virtuoso violinist/composer not stolen his name to win over fans excited about a “newly discovered” concerto.
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), often referred to as the "Red Priest" due to his red hair (always covered by wigs in paintings??) and clerical status, changed the Baroque game in terms of texture and musical representation. And while he inspired many other composers (J.S. Bach among them), there are a few Vivaldi works that are just so… uniquely Vivaldi.
Vivaldi’s genius lay in his ability to decorate fairly straightforward structural and harmonic elements with theatrical, highly-energized virtuosic lines and textures and unexpected color changes (example 2 – this one is sort of bonkers). We’re left with a body of work that’s both delightfully complex and accessible.
Working as a music teacher at the Ospedale della Pietà, a girls' orphanage with an exceptional music program (sounds like a weird Hallmark movie premise?), Vivaldi had the unique opportunity to compose a bananas amount of his own music, as well as conduct an extensive range of works by others.
You don’t get to write an episode about Vivaldi without mentioning "The Four Seasons." So whaddaya gotta know?
Set of four violin concertos
A masterclass in descriptive composition or program music (remember La Mer from episode 3??)
Vivaldi shows you chirping birds, dogs, icicles, storms, and drunken dancers
And we have to talk about at least one opera. Baroque opera is generally made up of a smattering of plot-driving hikes (recitatives) and extraordinarily repetitive top 40 hits (how else are you going to remember them once you leave?). They usually follow the “hey, lady, why don’t you love me?” >> “OK fine, now I love you” story structure. Vivaldi’s "L'Olimpiade," though less widely known, is about true love AND the Olympics, so it’s the right opera (of his ~50…) to include in this episode. (Vivaldi disputes this number and says he wrote 94 of them.)
For those looking to delve deeper into Vivaldi's oeuvre, I’ll leave you with a personal favorite: the Concerto for Two Violins in A minor, RV 522. It’s a truly dazzling example of his skill in crafting dialogue between solo instruments and the orchestra. What is that RV number, you ask? The Ryom Verzeichnis is the standard catalog of the music of Antonio Vivaldi created by Danish musicologist Peter Ryom. Verzeichnis is the German word for catalog. All the cool composers get these.
(Enjoying this music? I can’t recommend Julien Chauvin’s work enough.)
(OK, really last one, here’s RV 565.)
Ciao for now.