il Prette Rosso - A Birthday Wish!

Antonio Vivaldi aka the Red Priest turns 329 years old today!

We start you off with the first movement from his mandolin concerto in C Major:


Of course, Vivaldi's most known works are his set of four concertos known as The Four Seasons. Each concerto focuses on one of the four seasons and the music is written to evoke images of the season. Whether the joy of the return of the sun in springtime, the hot muggies in summer (followed by the wickedly violent storm), the celebration of the fall harvest, or the quiet contentment of sitting in front of the fire in the winter time:

To rest contentedly beside the hearth, while those outside are drenched by pouring rain.

Source: WikiPedia – The Four Seasons (Vivaldi) Winter Antonio Vivaldi's music was among the earliest works in my classical music collection and good thing. His works are typified by often times very fast, light and bouncy, almost always catchy.

Here is the third movement from the Summer Concerto: The second movement evokes the lazy dog days of summer where it is hot and muggy and most people prefer to laze under a shade tree with a cold drink, and then the storm hits! The storm movement is the third (the second movement foreshadows the storm with sounds evoking approaching thunder),

One complaint I have heard people lodge against il Prette Rosso is many of his works seem to resemble each other closely, to be honest, the charge is not ill founded. Vivaldi's unfamiliar works are often easy to pick out, but this does not lessen his career. Vivaldi was an accomplished musician, teacher, and composer of music.