Vivaldi The Four Seasons – Winter
“The Four Seasons” is one of the most famous works by Vivaldi and Baroque music in general. The cycle, consisting of four concertos, is an example of program music: each concerto is dedicated to a season and is introduced by a sonnet that reveals the images generated by the music.
"The Four Seasons" composed around 1718−1720 was a revolution in baroque music: Vivaldi depicted the sounds of flowing creeks, singing birds, a shepherd and his barking dog, buzzing flies, storms, drunken dancers, hunting, landscapes, and sounds of fireplace.
To conclude the cycle "The Seasons" with the fourth concerto "Winter", Antonio Vivaldi shows the audience the different faces of winter: the icy cold of a snowstorm, the comfort of a burning fireplace, the danger of walking on an icy road.
Vivaldi indicated in the author's notes to the first part of the concerto that the musicians should imitate the chattering of teeth from the cold, the howling of the icy wind, the trampling and running as they try to keep warm. The second slow movement is written in bel canto style and is even performed as a separate work. Finally, in the third part, one hears the crackling of the ice underfoot.
Text of the accompanying sonnet:
Allegro non molto
To tremble from cold in the icy snow,
In the harsh breath of a horrid wind;
To run, stamping one's feet every moment,
Our teeth chattering in the extreme cold
Largo
Before the fire to pass peaceful,
Contented days while the rain outside pours down.
Allegro
We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously,
for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and,
rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home
despite the locked and bolted doors...
this is winter, which nonetheless
brings its own delights.
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Composer: Antonio Vivaldi
Artist: Botticelli Trio
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