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1. Vivaldi Four Seasons Fall Piano
2. Antonio Vivaldi Four Seasons Fall
3. Antonio Vivaldi Four Seasons Fall
4. Vivaldi Autumn

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Composed in 1723, Vivaldi brought together a piece that would stand the test of time. His superlative virtuoso of the violin proved him to be one of the cornerstones for the Baroque period in music. The Four Seasons. Is split up into four parts: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Spring starts out with probably the most famous violin. The Autumn concerto from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons: Concerto for violin, strings and continuo, from Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione, Opus 8 No. 3 in F major Notes (c) 2016 Christopher DiMatteo. 🎵 Buy the MP3 album on the Official Halidon Music Store: Stream it on Spotify: iTunes & Apple Music: http. Vivaldi's Four Seasons was my serious introduction to Classical Music. At the time, I did not know that it was Baroque and that there would be a difference in my taste and choice. Since then, my choice of music has been the Baroque Era music. The instruments, the pomp and charm keep me riveted.

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The Four Seasons, Italian Le quattro stagioni, group of four violinconcerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, each of which gives a musical expression to a season of the year. They were written about 1720 and were published in 1725 (Amsterdam), together with eight additional violin concerti, as Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (“The Contest Between Harmony and Invention”).

The Four Seasons is the best known of Vivaldi’s works. Unusually for the time, Vivaldi published the concerti with accompanying poems (possibly written by Vivaldi himself) that elucidated what it was about those seasons that his music was intended to evoke. It provides one of the earliest and most-detailed examples of what was later called program music—music with a narrative element.

Vivaldi took great pains to relate his music to the texts of the poems, translating the poetic lines themselves directly into the music on the page. In the middle section of the Springconcerto, where the goatherd sleeps, his barking dog can be marked in the viola section. Other natural occurrences are similarly evoked. Vivaldi separated each concerto into three movements, fast-slow-fast, and likewise each linked sonnet into three sections. His arrangement is as follows:

Spring (Concerto No. 1 in E Major)
Allegro
Spring has arrived with joy
Welcomed by the birds with happy songs,
And the brooks, amidst gentle breezes,
Murmur sweetly as they flow.
The sky is caped in black, and
Thunder and lightning herald a storm
When they fall silent, the birds
Take up again their delightful songs.
Largo e pianissimo sempre
And in the pleasant, blossom-filled meadow,
To the gentle murmur of leaves and plants,
The goatherd sleeps, his faithful dog beside him.
Allegro
To the merry sounds of a rustic bagpipe,
Nymphs and shepherds dance in their beloved spot
When Spring appears in splendour.

Summer (Concerto No. 2 in G Minor)
Allegro non molto
Under the merciless sun of the season
Languishes man and flock, the pine tree burns.
The cuckoo begins to sing and at once
Join in the turtledove and the goldfinch.
A gentle breeze blows, but Boreas
Is roused to combat suddenly with his neighbour,
And the shepherd weeps because overhead
Hangs the fearsome storm, and his destiny.
Adagio
His tired limbs are robbed of rest
By his fear of the lightning and the frightful thunder
And by the flies and hornets in furious swarms.
Presto
Alas, his fears come true:
There is thunder and lightning in the heavens
And the hail cuts down the tall ears of grain.

Autumn (Concerto No. 3 in F Major)
Allegro
The peasant celebrates with dancing and singing
The pleasure of the rich harvest,
And full of the liquor of Bacchus
They end their merrymaking with a sleep.
Adagio molto
All are made to leave off dancing and singing
By the air which, now mild, gives pleasure
And by the season, which invites many
To find their pleasure in a sweet sleep.
Allegro
The hunters set out at dawn, off to the hunt,
With horns and guns and dogs they venture out.
The beast flees and they are close on its trail.
Already terrified and wearied by the great noise
Of the guns and dogs, and wounded as well
It tries feebly to escape, but is bested and dies.

Winter (Concerto No. 4 in F Minor)
Allegro non molto
Frozen and shivering in the icy snow,
In the severe blasts of a terrible wind
To run stamping one’s feet each moment,
One’s teeth chattering through the cold.
Largo
To spend quiet and happy times by the fire
While outside the rain soaks everyone.
Allegro
To walk on the ice with tentative steps,
Going carefully for fear of falling.
To go in haste, slide, and fall down to the ground,
To go again on the ice and run,
In case 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.

My Translation of the Autumn Sonnet Read on BBC Radio 4

The BBC Radio 4 program Something Understood of November 25, 2018, featured my translation of Vivaldi’s Autumn sonnet. Something Understood is a Sunday evening feature show about spirituality and religion, covering a wide range of philosophical topics through many different traditions and points of view. BBC Radio 4 is a very popular and highly respected national radio channel, that programs a wide range of news and history, drama and comedy, and popular science. The producers of an episode about Autumn found my translation and judged it to be the one they wanted to use in their production, so I was happy to grant the rights.

Here is the translation, as it was heard in Something Understood. I don’t know who performed the reading but she does a wonderful job with the words. (The episode was about contemplating the more peaceful autumnal themes, and they actually didn’t use the last stanza, about the hunt, so that part is not read.)

http://cdimatteo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/C_DiMatteo_translation_Vivaldi_Autumn_BBC_Radio4_Nov_25_2018.mp3

The Autumn concerto from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons: Concerto for violin, strings and continuo, from Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione, Opus 8 No. 3 in F major
Notes (c) 2016 Christopher DiMatteo. All rights reserved.

The Four Seasons: The Sonnets and The Music

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) in an anonymous portrait of 1723, in the Museo della Musica, Bologna.

The Four Seasons are part of a collection of twelve concertos entitled, “Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione.” Cimento means “Challenge,” “Contest” or “Test of Skill” which is an appropriately ambitious title.

There are four sonnets that go with each of the concertos of the Four Seasons, which lay out the program in the music. My translations of all four of the sonnets are on their own page on this site.

The music was composed in close correspondence to the sonnets. The words of the Four Seasons sonnets have been included right in the musical score ever since the first edition, published in Amsterdam in 1725. There are also additional words written into the score, which are not parts of the sonnets, which further clarify the musical narrative to the readers, musicians and listeners. At every letter marking the sections, there is a quote from the sonnet and some additional identifying descriptions. For example, at letter B, in the example below, the sonnet says, “E del liquor di Bacco accesi tanti” (“Their fires lit by Bacchus’ liquor”) and the extra note below it “E vbriaco” tagging that section as that of “the drunk.” (Read the V in “vbriaco” as a U, “ubriaco” which means drunk. The v/u switch is an old typesetting convention.)

The Story in the Music of Vivaldi’s Autumn

As with all the Four Seasons, the music of the Autumn concerto follows the story in the sonnet quite closely. After the Villanelle dance is introduced in the first movement, the rest of the movement is a technical display for the solo violinist (all of the section at letter B, below) where the notes depict the drunken revelry of the country people, ending with them falling asleep (letter C).

The whole second movement is a prolonged, peaceful nap (letter D).

The third movement tells the story of a hunt, in two voices. First, the whole orchestra plays the hunting motif, representing the hunters. Then, the solo violin part narrates the hunt from the point of view of the hunted animal. At letter G, measures 82 and 83, notice how quiet and subtle is the musical depiction of rifles firing and dogs barking, across all four sections of the string orchestra (at 1:42 – 1:44 in the audio track below). The hunt motif comes back again and again, and the solo part becomes more and more frantic and technically challenging as it tells the story of the fleeing animal and its eventual capture and demise.

This listening guide shows the Autumn sonnet, with the original Italian lines in blue, my translations right below them, followed by bits of the score showing the musical themes that illustrate each section of the sonnet.

First, here is my translation of the complete sonnet, then the listening guide.

AUTUMN
(Allegro)
They dance and sing the Villanelle,
And celebrate the finished harvest
Their fires lit by Bacchus’ liquor
And all their pleasure ends in sleep

(Adagio molto)
Let all of us leave the songs and dances
In the cool and crisp and pleasing air
The season invites us, every one,
To peaceful sleep and fine enjoyment.

(Allegro)
The hunters are ready just before dawn
With horns and rifles and a small pack of dogs,
Their prey flees quickly, they follow its scent,

Now they surprise it, stunned by the noise,
Of the rifles and dogs, it tries to fight back
But weakened by fleeing, it struggles and dies.

Translation (c) 2016 Christopher DiMatteo. All rights reserved.

AUTUNNO (with translations, and the musical examples)

(Allegro)

http://cdimatteo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Vivaldi_Autumn_1st_mvt_Allegro.mp3

Celebra il Vilanel con balli e Canti
Del felice raccolto il bel piacere
They dance and sing the Villanelle,
And celebrate the finished harvest

E del liquor di Bacco accesi tanti
Their fires lit by Bacchus’ liquor [drunken solo, measures 32 to 56, audio from 1:07 to 2:07 ]
Finiscono col Sonno il lor godere
And all their pleasure ends in sleep

(Adagio molto)

http://cdimatteo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Vivaldi_Autumn_2nd_mvt_Adagio_molto.mp3

Fa’ ch’ ogn’ uno tralasci e balli e canti
L’ aria che temperata dà piacere,
E la Staggion ch’ invita tanti e tanti
D’ un dolcissimo sonno al ben godere.
Let all of us leave the songs and dances
In the cool and crisp and pleasing air
The season invites us all
To peaceful sleep and fine enjoyment.

Vivaldi Four Seasons Fall Piano

(Allegro)

Antonio Vivaldi Four Seasons Fall

http://cdimatteo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Vivaldi_Autumn_3rd_mvt_Allegro.mp3

I cacciator alla nov’alba à caccia
Con corni, Schioppi, e cani escono fuore
The hunters are ready just before dawn
With horns and rifles and a small pack of dogs,

Fugge la belva, e Seguono la traccia;
Their prey flees quickly, they follow its scent,

Antonio Vivaldi Four Seasons Fall

Già Sbigottita, e lassa al gran rumore
De’ Schioppi e cani, ferita minaccia
Now they surprise it, stunned by the noise,
Of the rifles and dogs, it tries to fight back

Languida di fuggir, mà oppressa muore.
But weakened by fleeing, it struggles and dies.

Vivaldi Autumn

Vivaldi’s’ works are in the public domain. Scores from www.MutopiaProject.org. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (Unported) License. The image of Vivaldi is an anonymous portrait in the public domain and is held in the Museo della Musica in Bologna. The image of Arcimboldo’s Autumn is also in public domain, the work is in the Musée du Louvre in Paris. The recordings are by Neville Mariner and the Academy of S. Martin in the Fields, they may not be copied and are here presented under fair use.