Le quattro stagioni (“The Four Seasons”) is a world renowned group of four violin concerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi. Each of them gives musical expression to a season of the year. Vivaldi related his music to poetry, 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 music with a narrative element.
They were written and published during the early 8th century in Amsterdam, but the inspiration for the concertos was probably the countryside around Mantua, where Vivialdi was living at the time. 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.
Created during m
Created during my studies at Image Processing and Multimedia Technology Centre, Terrassa-Barcelona
Original photographs by Joanna Nix, Loren Gu and Catalin Balta