Theme From "Spring" (From "The Four Seasons"): A Song History
"Spring," or La primavera, is the first of Antonio Vivaldi's four violin concertos known as The Four Seasons, and it is set in E major.[1] The four concertos open a set of twelve that was printed in Amsterdam in 1725 under the title Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, Vivaldi's Opus 8.[2] Vivaldi dedicated the collection to Count Wenzel von Morzin, for whom he had already supplied the concertos to fill a commission.[3] Just when the music was written is less certain: sources differ, with one placing it around 1720 and another in the 1710s.[1][3]
Vincennes Porcelain Factory, Figure Pair of the Dancer and the Bagpiper (Le Joueur de musette), unglazed soft-paste porcelain, 1748–52. A porcelain dancer and bagpiper made in France around 1750, shown for the concerto's closing pastoral dance over bagpipe-like drones; the figures have no connection to the music.
The printed set came with a sonnet for each season, and letters in the solo violin part tied particular passages to particular lines of verse.[3] Who wrote the poems is also disputed, since one account suggests Vivaldi himself while another calls the author unknown.[1][3] In "Spring," the opening Allegro greets the season with birdsong and running brooks before a thunderstorm passes over.[1] The slow middle movement shows a sleeping goatherd, with the violas marked to play the part of his barking dog, and the finale is a pastoral dance over drones that imitate bagpipes.[2]
The concertos found an eager audience in France, where the Concert Spirituel programmed them many times, and "Spring" may have been the French favorite of the four: besides being heard as written, it was reworked as a choral motet by Michel Corrette and as a piece for solo flute by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[2] Like the rest of Vivaldi's music, the set then vanished from the repertoire for more than a hundred years, until it was rediscovered early in the twentieth century.[2] One account traces the concertos' present-day performance tradition back no further than the 1940s.[3] The cycle was first recorded complete in 1942, and its broad popularity came only after the Second World War.[2] Dana Gruber arranges a theme from "Spring" in DAD tuning for The Wedding Book, a Fingers Of Steel collection of prelude, processional and recessional pieces for mountain dulcimer, written out in both tablature and standard notation.[4]
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: "The Four Seasons".
- Boston Baroque: "Vivaldi's The Four Seasons" (Martin Pearlman).
- Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: "Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, Op. 8 Nos. 1–4" (Ellen Exner).
- Fingers Of Steel: "Dana Gruber, The Wedding Book".
- Image: Vincennes Porcelain Factory, Figure Pair of the Dancer and the Bagpiper (Le Joueur de musette), unglazed soft-paste porcelain, 1748–52. The Cleveland Museum of Art.