RING TONE: "Spring" from The Four Seasons by Vivaldi
MUSIC CONTINUES IN LIFT, VERSION FOR STRINGS
'As a musician and conductor,
'I've long known the concertos known as The Four Seasons.
'I hear it all the time, in all sorts of places.'
MUSIC CONTINUES IN LIFT
'It's used as background music in lifts, airports, restaurants.
'And supermarkets.
'They play it to cheer you up at a subconscious level,
'and make you feel good about shopping and spending cash.
'This is great music.
'But it's wasted on tinny tannoys that make it sound dull.'
The real thing is so much better.
I couldn't tell you who it was.
I like it. I think it is by Mozart.
It's Beethoven. I don't know which one it is.
I've heard it on TV, and as background music at airports.
Also television commercials. I think it's Vivaldi.
I'd say it's the most recognisable...
Either that or Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
'This music was also a big hit when it was written in 1720.
'But then it slipped into oblivion for nearly 200 years.
'This is the story of the rediscovery of The Four Seasons,
'and the man who composed them - Antonio Vivaldi.'
Mystery, intrigue and ambiguity are the essence of Venice,
and its ancient tradition of carnival.
They also surround one of its most famous citizens - Antonio Vivaldi.
Vivaldi was a priest who refused to say Mass.
He was rumoured to be in a menage a trois with two teenagers.
And despite celebrity and riches during his life, he died in poverty.
His extraordinary music disappeared.
It might never have been heard again.
MUSIC: "Winter" Concerto
'So who was Antonio Vivaldi?
'How did he fall into obscurity when, in his life, he was such a colourful character?'
His flaming red hair earned him the nickname of "the Red Priest".
He wrote passionate, dramatic, dangerous music.
If JS Bach was the Beatles of that era, Vivaldi was the Rolling Stones.
MUSIC: "Summer" Concerto
'Vivaldi was prolific.
'He wrote nearly 800 works for a wide variety of instruments.'
I'll just look at The Four Seasons.
Its popularity both in his time and now is no accident.
It's vivid music, and tells a story.
Almost everyone has come across it one way or another.
'It might never have been heard again, but for a musical find
'that catapulted him back into the public eye.
'My journey of rediscovery begins in Italy, but not in Venice.'
I'm following in the footsteps of Alberto Gentili,
lecturer in musical history at the University of Turin.
He made one of the 20th century's most unexpected musical discoveries.
That was over 70 years ago, in 1927.
'This is the sleepy town of San Martino, near Turin.
'Gentili was sent here to value a collection of music
'that was for sale at this school, the Collegio San Marco.'
When Gentili entered the college, Vivaldi was only known to experts.
That was because his contemporary, JS Bach,
had incorporated some of Vivaldi's music into his own work.
'Vivaldi's music disappeared after his death in 1741.
'If anyone remembered him, apart from a few experts,
'it was as a freakish violinist, not as a composer at all.'
Vivaldi's music was the pop music of his day.
Like stars now, he found it hard to stay at the top.
There was no Radio 1 pumping out the music to keep it alive.
There were no CDs for fans to buy.
Most of his music wasn't published. There might be one handwritten copy.
So when the piece was no longer new, it was easy to forget, and lose.
It's unsurprising that Vivaldi's music not only fell out of fashion, but disappeared altogether.
'Until this curtain was drawn back.
'And the door opened for Alberto Gentili.
'Gentili was given 97 volumes of music to look at.
'14 contained music by Vivaldi - 140 instrumental works,
'29 cantatas, 12 operas and an oratorio.'
It was an amazing find, but there was more to come.
When Gentili saw how the collection was numbered,
he realised half of it was missing.
What if the collection were part of a split inheritance?
He tracked down the rest of the collection,
and persuaded the reluctant owner to sell.
Vivaldi, formerly seen as a minor figure of the Baroque era,
was about to become a major star.
'The Turin national library is where Vivaldi's work is now kept.
'The most exciting thing about the collection
'is that there are plenty of compositional manuscripts,
'meaning that he composed from his head straight onto the page.
'They're stunning to look through.
'There's a little bit scrubbed out here.
'Occasionally, he has a bad day and there are more corrections.
'But, basically, there are no second thoughts or mistakes at all.'
I found it really moving looking at all of this.
This is a man's musical life.
Imagine how those musicologists felt, being the first to see this
for the best part of 200 years.
It's a bit like your first kiss.
You wonder how it might be, and it finally happens.
And it's mind-blowing.
'The Four Seasons weren't part of this collection.
'They'd gathered dust elsewhere.
'But the new interest in Vivaldi meant that they were found and brought back to life.
'But it was the arrival of the LP record in the 1950s
'that brought The Four Seasons to a wider audience.'
Records put The Four Seasons at the top of the classical charts.
What was it that so captured the public imagination,
both when the pieces were written, and now, almost 300 years later?
MUSIC: "Spring" Concerto
This is my band and, with soloist Clio Gould, we'll explore The Four Seasons,
the four greatest concertos to tell a story ever written.
Vivaldi also wrote four sonnets, one for each concerto.
Take Spring, for instance.
He took each line and applied it to the score to make it utterly clear what the music described.
First, it says, "Spring has arrived."
MUSIC: "Spring"
And then, the joyful birds welcome it with their happy songs.
They're not the only ones who are happy. The brooks murmur sweetly.
But the sky darkens and thunder and lightning proclaim a storm.
Happily, the storm passes and the birds come out again, twittering with their happy songs.
Now, this is a violin concerto -
a piece where you have a solo violinist
and the orchestra are like the accompaniment.
The second movement has a sleeping goatherd,
which is Clio playing this beautiful singing, voluptuous line.
Then, the second level of Vivaldi's painting is the murmur of leaves.
That's what the violins have to play.
The third element to the picture, bizarrely, is his dog.
The goatherd has a faithful dog, barking.
I'm reliably informed Italian dogs go, "Bow! Bow!"
And Vivaldi's music is exactly that.
The Four Seasons is like a concept album -
the 18th century's equivalent to Pink Floyd's The Wall.
Who was this vivid musical painter?
We're not even sure what he looked like.
This is definitely a caricature,
but is this a portrait of the flesh-and-blood man?
Some experts think so.
They believe the red patch on his forehead is a hint of his red hair.
I just can't see this.
More convincingly, the violin shows him to be a performing musician...
..and the inkwell, which means he was also a composer.
Vivaldi was born in Venice,
supposedly during an earthquake.
CACOPHONOUS STRINGS
I was thrilled the man who wrote such tempestuous music
was born to such elemental forces.
BABY CRIES
But sadly, it's probably not true.
Despite its tranquil surface, Venice is vulnerable to earthquakes,
but there's no record of one on Vivaldi's birthday - 4 March 1678.
Vivaldi was born right here...
Well, not in this house, but on this spot.
The date was only known in 1962 when a baptism certificate was found.
That was next door, here in the church of San Giovanni in Bragora.
Vivaldi was the eldest son of a barber who was also a violinist.
He was the only one who inherited his father's musical ability.
This book contains Vivaldi's baptism certificate,
gives the date of 6 May 1678, and says, "Antonio was born March 4th
"and was baptised at home, being in danger of death."
The baptism here was just a formal version.
Why was he in danger? The earthquake was a nice story.
It was maybe more to do with what was a lifelong illness - asthma.
This asthma was probably the cause of many of the scandals of his life.
For a start, asthma may be the reason Vivaldi became a priest.
His mother apparently made a bargain with God.
Her first-born would become a priest if he lived long enough...
It was common for poorer families to make their eldest son a priest.
It was a career that offered social mobility.
Also, he was so disabled by asthma that few trades were open to him.
But was Vivaldi a priest in his heart?
Was it just a job he could exploit for the sake of his real career?
MUSIC: Allegro from "Spring"
Venice has a strong effect on any visitor.
It's a glorious, romantic city... but this is not its only face.
It's also claustrophobic, smelly and downright unnerving.
But no-one can argue that Venice bulges with every sensual excess.
It must have had a powerful effect on Vivaldi. How could it not?
Vivaldi's Venice was not dissimilar to today's.
It was a city dependent on tourism.
Its days as a trading centre and economic power had come to an end.
MUSIC: Allegro from "Spring"
If I was an 18th-century tourist doing the Grand Tour,
I'd be looking to buy music by Vivaldi as a memento of my stay.
It makes today's trinkets seem a tad tawdry.
'Then, as now, tourists wanted to see the hottest acts.
'A 1713 guidebook listed Vivaldi and his father
'as one of the main tourist attractions in Venice.'
Vivaldi senior, Giovanni Battista, was the most important person in Antonio's life, his bedrock.
Dad acted like manager. He also helped raise money
by copying out Antonio's music and selling it.
They lived together right until Giovanni's death, just five years before Antonio's.
Their relationship seems like that between Mozart and his father years later, only more easy-going.
'Vivaldi's father wrote one opera,
'and was good enough to be a violinist at the famous ducal church of St Mark's.
'But Antonio was brilliant.
'As a result, he composed music
'that makes big demands of the violin soloist.
'I met Clio at the Caffe Florian at St Mark's Square
'to talk about Vivaldi from a performer's point of view.'
The piece has many tricky moments.
I think you can tell that Vivaldi
was himself a fabulous player
because he puts one of the most technically demanding passages
almost immediately into the piece, which is distressing when playing it!
Normally you want a warm-up, and most composers pace things
so that there are no big demands immediately.
But he doesn't worry about that.
There's a quote from someone who saw him play.
He described his playing as being so ferocious, his fingers came close to the bridge.
What would that sound like on a modern instrument?
I've tried that, and the pitches you'd get up to...
I can't see where he'd be bowing, unless the bow was very thin.
Only a bat can hear it, really!
There was a bit of poetical licence in the description! Maybe.
Funnily enough,
he leaves almost nothing in the virtuoso-style writing
to the individual player to decide to do.
Everything is written in to the piece, except the slow movements...
You can embellish them a bit. You can do something with them.
He doesn't let you do your own thing. Every note is filled in for you.
Up until that time,
composers had left it to the performer to embroider the work.
It is quite unusual.
Vivaldi's extraordinary talent got him a very important job.
This job was to be key to his development as a composer.
In 1703, Vivaldi was engaged to teach violin
in a refuge for illegitimate and abandoned children.
Unwanted babies in Venice were frequently abandoned or even thrown into thecanals.
Four hospitals were set up.
Three looked after orphans and sick children.
Only one looked after abandoned children.
It was called the Pieta, which means "compassion".
The babies were put through a hole in the wall,
known as the scafetta.
This one wouldn't fit a baby now.
But above it, there's a stern warning.
It says God curses those who send their sons and daughters to this hospital of the Pieta,
when they have the means to raise them themselves.
It's signed by God's representative on Earth, Pope Paul III himself.
The Pieta still exists. It's an institute dealing with adoption.
It even takes in abandoned children - about four a year,
rather than the four a day that arrived in its heyday.
There are documents revealing secrets about its past.
Micky White has spent years finding out more about Vivaldi and the Pieta.
This is a register of the children brought in between 1708 and 1719.
The majority of them died, and on the whole page,
we've got eight entries.
These crosses are the ones that died.
Out of the eight entries, seven have died. An enormous number!
Now, I will show you one of these, called Agata.
She was newborn.
From her entry, we can see
she was dressed very well. She's got red leggings.
She's also dressed in lace. There was a note left with her.
It said she has one finger on her left hand,
and on her left foot she's got one toe.
On her right foot she's got three toes.
She was left, obviously,
because she was deformed.
The entry tells you she is from a rich family.
And given what she was wearing. Exactly.
We come to another one, Marina.
You can see the difference in the entry.
Marina was four days old, and she was wrapped in rags.
So this is a register of the children Vivaldi taught music to,
and ended up composing for.
No. He only taught the girls. The boys didn't do music.
They were taught a trade,
like stone cutting, sail making.
Then they were pushed out at about 16.
Only the girls did music.
It's a unique opportunity for a composer to have these musicians.
He had all these girls at his disposal who could play any instrument and sing.
So the Pieta asked for new works from him all the time. Absolutely.
He had to write two concertos a month.
But Vivaldi wrote two a week.
The concerts given by the girls became famous throughout Europe.
Tourists flocked to hear them.
They were mostly performed in the Pieta church.
This is the Pieta church today.
This version wasn't completed until after Vivaldi's death.
But I can show you where his concerts would have taken place.
The entrance to the church was there. It's now the Hotel Metropole.
'Although he was a great violinist, the fact that Vivaldi was a priest led to him getting the job.
'It was a bit risky putting a man in with the women,
'but a priest, of course, was completely trustworthy.'
I believe Vivaldi's music is full of subtexts. It's easy to see why.
Imagine being a 26-year-old priest surrounded by talented women.
You could get quite hot under the collar!
For the audience, it was an almost erotic experience.
The female musicians were hidden by grilles, around here.
The audience could only fantasise
about whether they were as beautiful as their music.
This is how French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau described it:
"Vespers are performed in barred-off galleries by girls,
"of whom the oldest is not 20 years of age.
"I can conceive of nothing as voluptuous, as moving as this music.
"What grieved me were these accursed grilles,
"which allowed only tones through,
"concealing the angels of loveliness of whom they were worthy."
'Even today, groups perform here, dressed in 18th century costume,
'as a tribute to the concerts of Vivaldi's day.
'I suggested that Clio join this group, The Music of Venice.'
Clio, we don't want to play here. It's not the best place.
Vivaldi didn't see this church completed,
but he did help design the acoustics.
You can see there are no corners in the ceiling.
Where will we go, then? Behind those grilles up there.
That's where the Pieta girls played.
'Up to 32 people would cram in here,
'16 instrumentalists and 16 singers.'
It's a disaster. There's not enough space to swing a cat up here.
I've no idea how the Pieta girls were doing it for so long.
So, Clio, is it feasible? There isn't enough room to play here.
I'm amazed that they got so many musicians in here in Vivaldi's time.
But the acoustic IS beautiful.
And we are in a different place
from an 18th century concert-going public.
Women in particular weren't meant to play in public,
and certainly not instruments as indelicate as the oboe, which makes you look like a beetroot.
Girls wouldn't want to be seen like that!
And imagine straddling a block of wood like a double bass.
But there's nothing too shocking about the violin,
so let's play down there.
MUSIC: Allegro from "Spring"
'On and off, Vivaldi spent 40 years of his life
'teaching and composing for the girls of the Pieta.
'But if they were half as beautiful as Rousseau imagined,
'how did Vivaldi resist them?
'Probably rather easily.
'Rousseau finally persuaded a friend who worked at the Pieta
'to let him meet them.'
"He introduced me to those famous singers, whose voices I knew.
"Come, Sophie! She was horrible!
"Come, Katina! She was blind in one eye!
"Come, Bettina! The smallpox had disfigured her.
"Scarcely one was without some blemish. I was desolate!"
'Very few of us are perfect,
'which could be why many Venetians wore masks outside carnival season.
'It was cheaper than a face-lift!
'Masks gave Venetians a chance to live dangerously.
'For example, they were often worn in gaming houses and brothels.
'I could worry that my association with Clio might be misinterpreted.
'But not if we're both wearing masks.
'Clio wanted to know if the real Vivaldi
'is like the man she knows through playing his music.'
I've built up this idea of a person that's like a mass of contradictions.
Sometimes he's so earthy.
Sometimes he's so delicate and spiritual.
But he always seems to have this touch of humanity about him.
Let me unmask another side of him.
From his letters we know he was pushy,
and had to control every aspect of his music.
He'd even supervise the copyists who wrote down his music,
to make sure that none of them made a copy to sell for themselves.
I wouldn't have pinned him down as a control freak.
He had to be. He obviously liked material pleasure.
That's his house coming up here.
Musicians at that time were artisans.
They were pretty low down the pecking order.
So for someone to live as flashily as that was amazing.
He must have put a lot of people's backs up.
But as a cult figure, it's hard to judge him.
You either love or hate a cult figure.
'From 1718 to 1720, Vivaldi left Venice and went west to Mantua.
'He probably wanted to capitalise on his fame and take up commissions.
'It was an escape from being in a gilded but claustrophobic cage.'
MUSIC: Allegro non molto from "Summer"
'Mantua must have been a dramatic change for him.
'Open sky, greenery, a view for miles of countryside.
'Everything must have been a contrast to Venice.
'This is probably where he wrote The Four Seasons,
'but not for the reasons you might think.'
I think The Four Seasons is a townie's take on the countryside.
Deep down, it's not a celebration of the pastoral.
This terrain is a key to the more poisonous undertones of the work.
It's flat and bleak, as you can see, hardly Tuscany.
The sonnet he wrote to accompany the music for summer is bleak.
It talks about men languishing
and pine trees burning in the heat.
There's a deep torpor to the music.
It's as if he was in a fever when writing it.
MUSIC: Allegro non molto from "Summer"
See what I mean? It's almost as if you can't breathe.
There's no lyrical line to find a way through.
There's also the choice of key.
He chooses G minor for Summer.
That doesn't fit most people's impression of summer - happiness.
G minor is one of the darkest keys.
But there's some relief in the form of birds. Here's the first one.
It's a cuckoo. It's followed by a dove and a goldfinch.
But then the winds come out to play.
This causes the shepherd misery,
because he realises that a storm is brewing.
It's constant unresolved harmony.
It bleeds from one chord to the next
without any sense of resolution.
Finally, the winds come in battle, big time.
Then in the second section,
things get even more malign.
This poor shepherd is dying to rest and he can't,
because now there's a swarm of bluebottles, gnats and hornets to keep him company.
His music is in Clio's listless theme.
The insects are in the violins. Just try the violins alone.
Lovely. Let's try that now with our listless shepherd over the top.
FAST, REPEATED "THUNDER" RETURNS
The slow movement is an asthmatic's view of summer -
hot, oppressive, hard to breathe, gnats everywhere.
A storm's threatening but, for Vivaldi, if it brought fresher air, surely it was a blessedrelief.
The relationship between nature and The Four Seasons can be overplayed.
Nature may have very little to do with it at all.
LANGUID VIOLIN GIVES WAY TO "THUNDER"
Just as likely an inspiration is exactly the opposite.
What is more full of man-made artifice
than the opera?
LANGUID VIOLIN AND "GNATS"
Vivaldi was obsessed with opera.
He claimed to have written nearly 100 for theatres like this.
He probably used his experience of telling stories in opera to create the drama of The Four Seasons.
The Four Seasons are basically songs without words,
which is lucky, really, because the words aren't very good.
When the storm breaks at the end of Summer, this is the text -
"The hail cuts down the lofty ears of corn and the winds are in unbridled fury."
This style of writing suggests the words are by Vivaldi.
But he added the line-by-line detail long after he'd finished the music.
So why, you might ask, was he busy adding
coarse sonnets to music that had already been hugely successful?
He probably wanted his patron to feel he was getting something new
when the work was published five years after its first performance.
The words are inessential. It's the music that's important.
MUSIC: Presto from "Summer"
To me, this music is orgasmic -
stripping of corn, thunder, lightning, untold passion.
Perhaps it's a metaphor for his relationship with Anna Giraud.
When Vivaldi was 48, he met a singer aged 16 or 17
who became his muse, his travelling companion...but what else was she?
MUSIC: Allegro from "Autumn"
Vivaldi spent the rest of his life with Anna by his side.
He insisted she star in all of his operas. Apparently, she didn't have a very good voice.
But she had striking looks and stage presence.
Vivaldi certainly thought there was no-one to match her.
She wasn't conventionally beautiful.
But one person described her as having "a delicate figure,
"beautiful eyes, lovely hair and a charming mouth".
Vivaldi was rumoured to have had an affair,
not only with Anna but also with her sister, Paolina, who often acted as chaperone.
MUSIC CONTINUES: "Autumn"
Vivaldi didn't live with Anna.
There's evidence that, wherever he was, his father was with him, and some of his many siblings to boot.
This was probably because of his asthma.
He couldn't walk far out of doors and had his family on hand to help.
Asthma underlies his relationships and it's at the heart of his music.
Vivaldi's brilliant mind trapped in a sick body.
The contrasts of clarity and distorting disease are central to The Four Seasons,
especially to the slow movements.
LONG-DRAWN-OUT, STEPWISE CHORDS OVER A CONTINUOUS BASS NOTE
The sonnet for the second movement of Autumn describes "the sweet slumber of some drunken peasants".
But, to me, this music, even more than in Summer,
is about constriction, suffocation...
LONG CHORDS CONTINUE
..each asphyxiated chord denied the oxygen of resolution.
The third movement of Autumn is a hunt
and it's a manifesto for the anti-hunt lobby.
It's got a club-footed, banal kind of tune that keeps coming back and coming back.
You get a picture of cruel men with mangy horses and disgusting dogs
going off to find some innocent beast to kill.
Here Clio takes off with a new, triplet-y figure in fast runs -
the beast fleeing, terrified, from these animals and men.
Good. The chords in the orchestra rise chromatically,
a semitone at a time, upping the pressure on the poor beast as the hounds close in around him.
FIRST "CLUB-FOOTED" THEME RETURNS
FAST TRIPLETS
Now they mean business. We get real gunshots from the orchestra here.
Taking a bit of poetic licence, we've added pizzicato - plucked strings - to the bowedsound.
Let's play from the first gunshots.
FIRST THEME RETURNS
SOLOIST PLAYS FAST TRIPLETS
And that sound there -
that fast figure the whole orchestra has -
sounds like hounds sniggering like Muttley - do you remember Muttley?
Let's have as much grain in the sound as possible.
And that falling figure that Clio has is the beast finally giving up.
It's been terrified, it's run and run, it's exhausted and it dies.
The hounds carry on laughing.
The final insult of the hunt -
they say, "Do we care?"
SADNESS TURNS TO JOLLITY
FIRST THEME RETURNS
THE MOVEMENT DRAWS TO A CLOSE
Vivaldi's writing in The Four Seasons brims with conviction.
It's sensual, vulgar,
savage and extremely flamboyant -
not the obvious adjectives you'd associate with a servant of God.
Still the same question - was Vivaldi really a committed priest?
Or did he take holy orders as a convenient career to combine with his musical ambitions?
His relationship with the Church was hardly scandal-free.
MUSIC: Adagio molto from "Autumn"
One of the key tasks of a Catholic priest is to say Mass.
Yet Vivaldi only said it for a year after being ordained.
Rumours abounded that, during Mass, he'd sneak into the vestry to jot down music.
Vivaldi said it was his asthma and, given the incense, it COULD be true.
But he pursued his musical career with tireless energy, so I think
it was just a convenient excuse.
MUSIC: Adagio molto from "Autumn"
BIRDS SING AND WATER LAPS
The gossip about Vivaldi began to have serious consequences.
At the age of nearly 60, he wanted to put on an opera in Ferrara, not far from Venice.
But instead, in November 1737, he was summoned to a meeting with the Pope's Venetian representative.
It was here the Papal nuncio told Vivaldi he couldn't enter Ferrara.
The Archbishop of Ferrara had banned him
because of his refusal to say Mass and his friendship with Anna Giraud.
So my doubts that Vivaldi was a committed priest and a virgin seem to have powerful support!
But the Archbishop of Ferrara had banned all priests from being opera impresarios, not just Vivaldi.
Citing Vivaldi's refusal to say Mass and the Anna Giraud relationship
was a way of putting down a priest who'd become too big for his boots.
Vivaldi's behaviour did flout the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.
Whatever the reasons behind the ban,
Vivaldi never made it to Ferrara.
Not long before, his father had died and Vivaldi seems to have been lost without him.
He began to have financial problems when his opera investments failed.
His music fell out of fashion and the popular star became yesterday's news.
We're now in the winter of Vivaldi's life and Winter is my favourite of the fourconcertos.
It's in F minor, a very potent key. It's rich but, at the same time, it can be very cold and metallic.
There's a string technique called "sul ponticello".
You play with the bow right over the bridge
to get a grainy, visceral, metallic sound. Robin -
play us those F naturals normally.
RICH, RESONANT TONE Right. And now play over the bridge.
THIN, SLIGHTLY HARSH TONE
Next, there's an icy blast of wind, just to further disconcert everyone.
FAST, HIGH DOWNWARD ARPEGGIOS AND SCALES, ENDING ON A TRILL
REPEATED "SHIVERS"
FAST PASSAGE REPEATED, BUT HIGHER
REPEATED "SHIVERY" CHORDS
PASSAGE REPEATED, HIGHER STILL
"SHIVERS" MOVE HIGHER BAR BY BAR
Next,
the solo violin has music which is meant to sound -
and DOES sound - like someone's teeth chattering.
Finally, we get this tremendously robust music
which is someone stamping their feet to get blood back into them.
WATER LAPS
This is one of the canals leading to the sea,
a way of leaving Venice, which is what Vivaldi did in 1740, aged 62.
His work opportunities had dried up
and, whilst there's no record of him for a year, we know he ended up in Vienna inJune 1741.
He died a month later, on 27 July,
from what was described as "an internal inflammation".
MUSIC: Largo from "Winter"
Anna Giraud was there, so he didn't die alone.
News reached Venice a month later. A local report said -
"Abbe Don Antonio Vivaldi, virtuoso of the violin,
"known as the Red Priest, esteemed for his compositions and concertos,
"earned 50,000 ducats in his life.
"But his disorderly prodigality caused him to die a pauper."
SWEET, MELANCHOLY MELODY OVER PIZZICATO CHORDS CONTINUES
It's very clear to me, whatever the reality of Vivaldi's life,
that within the music lies the heart,
the unconscious, inner feelings of this turbulent priest.
The sonnet that accompanies the slow movement of Winter tells you it's about a man,
sitting cosy as can be, in front of the fire,
watching the rain outside and those less fortunate than him.
It has a smugness about it which makes me feel
that Vivaldi isn't the man inside, toasting his toes.
He's the guy outside, looking in. He is the outsider.
You'll have heard the rain very clearly - it's the pizzicato that the violins have.
So you've got that going on
underneath Clio's line which is, I presume, the deliciously warm man.
Then you have this extra little bit of tension from Robin on the cello.
SONOROUS OCTAVES The final movement of Winter,
the final concerto of The Four Seasons, is about walking on ice.
The Venetian lagoon froze over ten years before Vivaldi wrote it.
That may have been a direct inspiration.
To me, it's about Vivaldi himself, who'd ducked and dived all his life
but ended a poor, broken man trying NOT to fall over on the ice.
So it's a bit like his epitaph.
MUSIC: Allegro from "Winter", second section
SINGLE BELL TOLLS