Footnote 1 Indeed, Vivaldi drew upon motifs from traditional seasonal depictions in literature, poetry, the visual and decorative arts and (to a lesser extent) music, but he introduced a level of visceral extremes that, as we shall see, exemplifies the emerging eighteenth-century aesthetics of nature and the sublime. None the less, familiarity with these works has dulled our awareness of how little we actually know about them and the extent to which this cycle differs substantially from early modern approaches to the subject of the seasons. 8), works that were highly popular in his own day and are among the most ubiquitous examples of baroque music for many modern listeners. This is part of the challenge undertaken in Antonio Vivaldi's cycle of concertos known as Le quattro stagioni (the title by which Vivaldi referred to them in the dedication of his Op.
To command an audience's attention, artists needed to be able to dramatize, allegorize or even defamiliarize the mundane. While people in seasonal climates are affected by changing conditions throughout the year, there are many aspects of the day-to-day experience of each season that are repetitive or unremarkable. How might a composer in the early eighteenth century use music to convey the excitement of the hunt, the oppression of summer heat, the terror of a thunderstorm or the joys of the harvest? The use of any expressive medium to represent the cycle of the seasons was an audacious artistic venture. These last aspects, in particular, provide a new understanding of the historical significance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons as a powerful demonstration of both the expressive potential of the concerto genre and the still underappreciated art of orchestration during the early eighteenth century. The article also demonstrates how Vivaldi used diverse textures and sonorities to create powerful contrasts that heighten the emotional impact of the aural imagery while underlining recurring expressive and pictorial motifs throughout the cycle. Positing new connections to Arcadian reform ideals of verisimilitude, this article addresses important questions concerning Vivaldi's pairing of sonnets with concertos and the aesthetic factors behind his choice of narrative topics to depict in the music. Moving away from religious and mythological allegory, they exemplify a growing interest in descriptive representation of nature's power and in humanity's complex physical and emotional relationship with elements beyond its control. Antonio Vivaldi's cycle of violin concertos dramatizing the four seasons marked a substantial shift in the way that the seasons were depicted in the arts.
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