When Vivaldi published The Four Seasons in 1725, he did something unusual: he printed a sonnet above each concerto, line by line, so you could follow the story the music was telling. Spring begins, in that sonnet, with the words Giunt' è la Primavera — "Spring has arrived."
Birdsong you can hear
Read the poem and the music stops being abstract. Those bright, chirping figures in the violins at the opening? The sonnet tells you exactly what they are: the birds greeting spring with festive song. Later movements give you a thunderstorm, a barking dog, a shepherd asleep. This is programme music — music that depicts a scene — written nearly two centuries before the term was coined.
The Red Priest
Vivaldi was an ordained Catholic priest, nicknamed il Prete Rosso, "the Red Priest," for his red hair. He spent much of his career teaching music to the girls of a Venetian orphanage, for whom many of his concertos were written. The most famous violin music in the world came out of a charitable institution.
Wear it
Our Spring tee sets the opening ritornello — the birdsong theme — as hand-drawn notation. See it in Wearable Music.