Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Vivaldi wrote around five hundred concertos and taught music to orphaned girls for most of his working life. Born in Venice in 1678, the son of a barber who became a violinist at St Mark's, he was ordained in 1703 and was called il Prete Rosso, the red priest, for his hair. He stopped saying mass within a year, citing a chest complaint that was probably asthma or angina. He was appointed to the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for girls, and worked there on and off for nearly forty years as violin master and composer. Its orchestra and choir, made up entirely of the girls, became one of the sights of Europe, performing from behind grilles, and most of his concertos were written for them. He standardised the solo concerto in three movements, fast-slow-fast, using ritornello form in which an orchestral refrain alternates with solo episodes. It is the model Bach and every later composer worked from, and Bach transcribed several of his concertos for keyboard. L'estro armonico, published in Amsterdam in 1711, made his reputation across Europe. The Four Seasons of 1725 are four violin concertos each accompanied by a sonnet, with the music tracking the text line by line — birdsong, a barking dog, ice underfoot, a summer storm — among the earliest programme music. He also wrote some fifty operas and travelled to stage them, and had a long association with the singer Anna Girò that drew clerical criticism. Tastes changed, and he left Venice for Vienna in 1740 hoping for imperial patronage. Charles VI died weeks later. Vivaldi died in July 1741 in poverty and was buried in a pauper's grave.

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