Vivaldi, Concerto No. 11, Op. 3 (L’estro Armonico)

Most people are familiar with the concertos of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) known as The Four Seasons written in 1723. We featured that work here. But Vivaldi composed more than 500 concertos. His first collection of concertos, opus 3, known as “L’estro Armonico” (the “harmonic spirit” or “harmonic inspiration”) is dated 1712 and is said to be the catalyst for Vivaldi’s fame spreading throughout Europe.

Vivaldi’s music was quite popular in his day and the Italian style based in Venice was studied by composers throughout Europe. Handel went to study and work in Venice from 1706 to 1710 and mastered the Italian style. Bach shared the interest among German composers in the latest music from Venice and, although his travels were severely limited, he had access to manuscripts. It was during Bach’s time in Weimar (1709-1717) that he transcribed many of Vivaldi’s works, creating a series of concertos labeled “after Vivaldi.”

Vivaldi’s music, like that of many of his contemporaries including Bach, was either forgotten or lost for many decades as new styles of music came into vogue in the late 18th century. Interest in Bach’s music was revived 70 years after his death by Felix Mendelssohn. Scholars who subsequently combed through Bach’s music discovered his transcriptions of concertos by Vivaldi. A desire to get to the source of those transcriptions contributed to the effort to explore Vivaldi’s music in detail. Works by Vivaldi that had been lost were discovered over many years, one as recently as 2006.

Vivaldi helped to establish the form of solo concerto. Four of the twelve concertos in L’estro Armonico are solo concertos. While the others, including No. 11 featured here, are concerto grossi featuring a group of soloists, Vivaldi tends to feature each member of the group sequentially as a true soloist. Indeed, the Siciliano (third movement) focuses entirely on the solo violin. (In a deviation from the written score, the solists take turns with this line.)