On the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branches rustling overhead, the goat-herd sleeps, his faithful dog beside him. Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their charming songs once more. Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar, casting their dark mantle over heaven, The birds celebrate her return with festive song,Īnd murmuring streams are softly caressed by the breezes. It is advisable, at least during the first few hearings, to follow the sonnets and music together, for they are bound up with one another to an extent rarely heard in any other programmatic pieces either of the baroque period or subsequently. The published scores (by Estienne Roger of Amsterdam in 1725) are marked to indicate which musical passages are representative of which verses of the sonnet. Each of the four sonnets is expressed in a concerto, which in turn is divided into three phrases or ideas, reflected in the three movements (fast-slow-fast) of each concerto. But none were to do so in such precise pictorial detail as Antonio Vivaldi in his Four Seasons concertos.Īs a descriptive basis for his Four Seasons, Vivaldi took four Sonnets, apparently written by himself. Music representing the moods of the four seasons has always been popular, and baroque composers such as Werner and Fischer among others produced cycles of concertos representing the fours seasons. One of the earliest uses of music was in the accompaniment of theatrical dance and story-telling, so it is natural that composers should from time to time produce what we know as "program music" – music written to portray events, activities or moods such as pastoral scenes or storms.
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