What kind of music is Vivaldi?

Was Vivaldi poor when he died?

Is he still?

We will never know, but perhaps it does not matter. It is all in the past. What matter how he fared, how he was used? He has been gone four years; and, so to speak, out of all the tumult that surrounds us now, he has been. Forgotten; and it is a pleasant change to be able to say at last "the old. Gentleman is dead" without any qualification. For in his old age he has suffered much more than in other years. For he has lost more than ever before; he has been beaten down by the roughness of. Surroundings; and there is a great deal to be said against many of those who. Have tried to do their best for him. But though he must have had cross-country journeys enough in his day and age to break the back of a. Travelling post horse, it is doubtful if Vivaldi was ever better treated than. By the two English gentlemen who escorted him from Vercelli to Milan, a. Distance of nearly a hundred miles, in the beginning of December, 1700. They left the city of Milan one dark morning--for we find no description of a. Morning in the daylight--at half-past five o'clock. We only learn they had left Rome on the 12th October; so we might suppose this journey took place. About this time. And indeed, though it would be absurd to expect a description of the roads, forsooth, as you travel along them in such. Circumstances, I do not see why Mr. Smith, in Handbook of Northern Italy, should write that Vivaldi said that both the post-driver and he, were not. Only fatigued, but in want of wine (as if wine was the only thing you are. Ever tired with, when out travelling). If Vivaldi was a composer of genius, and we all know what great things men of genius sometimes do while they are. On the road, we may trust him in these statements of fatigue. They certainly would suit him, if in the end he really did have an extra coach, with a side. Hut and servants to help to carry the luggage! And they do, indeed, suit. Well with Mr. Smith's "long and wearisome drive.

Why is The Four Seasons Vivaldi so good?

It may seem like an impossible question, but it actually can be answered.

It's the simple, obvious answer that is a bit difficult for music writers to stomach: Because it's Vivaldi.e. We know what you're going to say; we've all heard it and been sickened by the sound of our own voices. Vivaldi's The Four Seasons is just that kind of music. It's that music.

It's good because people were raised on it. The classical world has long had a thing for this sort of music, especially this onethe composer with whom almost all educated moderns are familiar, having heard or seen him at least a hundred times. The Four Seasons is so canonical that there is even a movie about it (Le Quattro Stagioni); it permeates so much popular music (like Mozart's The Marriage Of Figaro) that most every song you ever heardor never heardhad a version of this tune written over it. What else could you want? Even rock critics can only call it that Vivaldi.

Here's the thing: We are not even listening to Vivaldi.e. We are not listening to the people of Vienna in the 18th century. We are listening to Vivaldi himselfto the musician and, of course, to the man who made his notes. We know those. They were always in the books where other men read, studied and copied; we heard them at the concerts that were forbidden to attend, and the music stands in the halls were laden with the small volumes of music he wrote in which he recorded them.

It's the very ordinariness of Vivaldi that saves it from all such things as that kind of music. The great violinist and teacher Yehudi Menuhin once told me, after heard an orchestra perform a particular Vivaldi concerto, that was the best thing he'd ever heardand I mean that quite literally. He didn't care who the composer was. He loved the concert, just as we do. It was the sort of thing we could love without reservation.

No, Vivaldi was not the original genius. Bach was. But he was the one who got there first.