Word association time. Say ``Johann Strauss,'' and the first thing that should pop into one's mind is ``waltz.'' Giuseppe Verdi? Grand opera, of course.
Antonio Vivaldi? A specific word might not come to mind, but a definite sound should - fast, chipper, stutteringly rhythmic.
Vivaldi was not the greatest composer of the Baroque era (the most talented composers between 1600 and 1750 were Bach, Handel, Corelli and Monteverdi). But he is certainly one of the most popular, and the music form known as the concerto derives its present features largely from the work of this man known as the Red Priest.
Red-haired Vivaldi became a priest in 1703, but was almost immediately excused from saying Mass. He claimed to be incapacitated by illness, probably asthma. Illness did not prevent him from getting a job that year at the Conservatorio delta Pieta, a girls' orphanage in Venice that emphasized music education. Vivaldi taught violin to the girls, and wrote hundreds of works to be performed by the Pieta's excellent orchestra.
Asthmatic or not, in 1713 Vivaldi took a working leave of absence, probably to compose an opera. From that time on he spent a great deal of time away from the Pieta, producing his operas all over Italy and hobnobbing with nobility. During this period, publication of some of his orchestral works brought him fame throughout Europe.
The governors of the Pieta finally had enough of Vivaldi's truancy, and declined in 1738 to renew his contract. The composer continued to wander around Europe with a base in Venice. Vivaldi's activities brought in quite a bit of money, but he was such a big spender that he died with hardly a ducat to his name in 1741.
Two hundred fifty years after his death, Vivaldi remains both important and popular, but not for the same reasons.
He is popular for the busy brightness of his music - but this quality is also grist for his detractors. He's been accused of writing the very same concerto 500 times; almost every work follows the same fast-slow-fast pattern, with the fast movements chugging along in a repetitious manner that has been described as ``sewing machine music.''
And, except in his most famous concertos, the melodies aren't especially distinctive. What interests scholars is not the tunes themselves, but how the tunes are played.
Some concertos require the soloists to tune their violins in an unusual way; others demand odd uses of the bow; still others have violins or wind instruments pick up a fragment of a melody and turn it into a bird call.
So Vivaldi's importance lies in his experiments with the technique of violin playing. His music is full of special effects and virtuosic passages, but these are more obvious to players than to listeners.
Vivaldi is also important for changing the nature of the concerto. From the late 18th century up until now, something called ``concerto'' has usually been a work that features a solo instrument against an orchestra, the soloist and orchestra competing on equal terms, although the soloist is given the flashier material.
Earlier concertos were quite different, and Vivaldi's mark a transition from what they once were to what they are now.
When Vivaldi was a child, Italian composers like Alessandro Stradella and Arcangelo Corelli were writing examples of the concerto grosso. This was a work in three movements, a slow section sandwiched between fast sections.
The orchestra was divided into two groups. One consisted of several solo instruments, collectively called the concertino or principale. The other was the main orchestra, usually called the tutti or Tipieni.
The construction of the fast movements was rather simple, and relied on contrasts between the soloists and the tutti. These were mostly contrasts of texture - a few players, then a lot of players. They all used the same melodic material, and the soloists' music wasn't any more difficult to play than the tutti's.
Vivaldi came along with something new in 1712. That was the year he published a group of 12 concertos under the title ``L'Estro armonico,'' or ``Harmonic Inspiration.'' There are vestiges of the concerto grosso here, but also the first stirrings of two novelties - the solo concerto, and a new use of the ritornello.
Ritornelli are blocks of themes introduced by the full orchestra. Sometimes they return several times during a movement to remind everyone of the tunes in use, or to provide variety by showing up in a new key.
In ``L'Estro armonico,'' though, Vivaldi tends to use the ritornello only at the beginning of a movement to lay out the tunes. The rest of the movement alternates soloists with tutti handling one melody at a time.
After the ritornello introduces three or four short tunes, the soloists come in with just one of the tunes, or sometimes an entirely new one. Then it's the turn of the tutti with one of the original tunes, then the soloists with still another of the ritornello tunes, and so on for a good four or five minutes.
The solo passages are more virtuosic than the tutti passages, and in four of the ``L'Estro armonico'' concertos we find not a group of soloists but a single violin. This is the beginning of the solo concerto as we know it today.
The slow middle movements show the influence of Vivaldi's operatic work. The tutti is usually silent, leaving the soloist(s) to play long, songlike melodies with the barest accompaniment of cello and harpsichord. Vivaldi may have transformed some of his opera arias directly into slow movements for the concertos.
The bulk of Vivaldi's concertos features one or more violins, but Vivaldi also wrote dozens of works for flute, oboe, bassoon and cello, a few for guitar or mandolin, horns and trumpets, and several with odd combinations of solo instruments.
By far his most popular music is ``The Four Seasons,'' the first four violin concertos from the collection called ``Il Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Inventione'' (``The Contest of Harmony and Invention''). Each concerto is accompanied by a poem about a season of the year, and the score illustrates the poems with musical versions of bird songs, barking dogs, thunderstorms, autumn hunts and icy winds.
Other Vivaldi favorites include two concertos with solo mandolin, lute or guitar (the concerto in D major has a famous slow movement), a blazing concerto for two trumpets, a delicate violin concerto called ``L'Amoroso,'' a rollicking concerto without soloists called ``Alla Rustica,'' and six flute concertos published as opus 10.
Vivaldi listening suggestions
Vivaldi is one of the most-recorded composers, and whether you prefer smooth performances on modern instruments or faster, rather nasal-sounding versions on instruments of Vivaldi's time, there are plenty of compact discs to choose from.
Beginning with ``The Four Seasons,'' all you need do is pick your favorite violinist. If you can live without a star soloist, consider one of the period instrument versions by violinist Simon Standage with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert (available digitally at full price on the Archiv label, or analog and inexpensively from Vanguard or CRD). There's a life and detail to these performances that few others match.
Pinnock and the English Concert have also done two collections on Archiv that offer Vivaldi concertos for a variety of instruments. Archiv 419 615-2 contains ``L'Amoroso'' and works for bassoon, flute, viola d'amore and lute, and oboe and bassoon together. Archiv 415 674-2 contains ``Alla Rustica'' and concertos for oboe and violin, two mandolins, two violins, oboe alone and other combinations.
For people who dislike period instruments, pick up modern-instrument versions of the mandolin/guitar concertos by Claudio Scimone and I Solisti Veneti on Erato. On Philips, I Musici has recorded several discs' worth of strings-only concertos over the years; most of these are nicely done, but some of the recordings from the 1960s are a little stodgy by today's standards.
Not stodgy at all is violinist Shlomo Mintz, who, with the Israel Chamber Orchestra, has begun a series on MusicMasters aiming to record all Vivaldi's violin concertos. This will probably amount to dozens of discs, but they're being issued economically two at a time. This is a series one can plunge into fearlessly.