It was during his term in Mantua, from around 1717 to 1721, that he. The music is elsewhere similarly evocative of other natural sounds. In addition to his regular employment, Vivaldi accepted a number of short-term positions funded by patrons in Mantua and Rome.

For example, in the middle section of 'Spring', when the goatherd sleeps, his barking dog can be heard in the viola section. Vivaldi took great pains to relate his music to the texts of the poems, translating the poetic lines themselves directly into the music on the page. The concerti therefore stand as one of the earliest and most detailed examples of what would come to be called program music-in other words, music with a narrative element. Vivaldis violin concertos called 'The Four Seasons' are among the best-known and most-loved collections of string music. The Four Seasons, Italian Le quattro stagioni, group of four violin concerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, each of which gives a musical expression to a season of the year. Unusual for the period, Vivaldi published the concerti with accompanying sonnets (possibly written by the composer himself) that elucidated what it was in the spirit of each season that his music was intended to evoke. They were a revolution in musical conception: in them Vivaldi represented flowing creeks, singing birds (of different species, each specifically characterized), a shepherd and his barking dog, buzzing flies, storms, drunken dancers, hunting parties from both the hunters' and the prey's point of view, frozen landscapes, and warm winter fires. The inspiration for the concertos is not the countryside around Mantua, as initially supposed, where Vivaldi was living at the time, since according to Karl Heller they could have been written as early as 1716–1717, while Vivaldi was engaged with the court of Mantua only in 1718. Though three of the concerti are wholly original, the first, 'Spring', borrows patterns from a sinfonia in the first act of Vivaldi's contemporaneous opera Il Giustino. The Four Seasons is the best known of Vivaldi's works. Set of four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi Antonio Vivaldi (engraving by François Morellon de La Cave, from Michel-Charles Le Cène's edition of Vivaldi's Op.

Antonio vivaldi the four seasons