# Why was Vivaldi so obsessed with concertos?



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Vivaldi gave us literally hundreds of concertos. What did he get out of it? Or did he write them as some sort of manic compulsion?


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## Livly_Station (Jan 8, 2014)

Vivaldi wanted to annoy Stravinsky.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

quite a lot of them are short, some are even 5 minutes long.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> quite a lot of them are short, some are even 5 minutes long.


Some could be shorter. A good deal of them need not to even exist.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Why was Vivaldi so obsessed with concertos?*

He was prescient.
He foresaw the future and the development of the Internet Forum, such as Talk Classical. And he wanted to assure that he would become a topic on that Forum, so he began writing concertos, hundreds and hundreds of them, concertos for every instrument imaginable, and even some unimaginable, and even some not yet invented, and even some uninventable, because he knew, he just knew there was somebody out there in future land who would be obsessed with knowing why he was obsessed with concertos and would ask about it on an Internet Forum.

At least that's my understanding.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

SONNET CLV said:


> *Why was Vivaldi so obsessed with concertos?*
> 
> He was prescient.
> He foresaw the future and the development of the Internet Forum, such as Talk Classical. And he wanted to assure that he would become a topic on that Forum, so he began writing concertos, hundreds and hundreds of them, concertos for every instrument imaginable, and even some unimaginable, and even some not yet invented, and even some uninventable, because he knew, he just knew there was somebody out there in future land who would be obsessed with knowing why he was obsessed with concertos and would ask about it on an Internet Forum.
> ...


Vivaldi didn't even have toilet paper. Imagine conceiving something such as the internet in the 17th/18th century.


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## VoiceFromTheEther (Aug 6, 2021)

The concerti were written with specific pupils and performances in mind.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ I think that's true (with himself as a potential soloist as well). But he also wrote a lot for the new fashionable tourism market - selling re-treads as mementos - and that makes up the numbers.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

About 80 of the concerti were also published which made some money, at least for the publisher
If there are about 500 Vivaldi concerti and the average lasts 10 min. it's around 83 hours of music. Bach's 200+ extant cantatas are more than 60 hours and 50-100 cantatas may have been lost, so we are in the same order of magnitude. Handel wrote around 40 operas which is again about 100 hours or more. Telemann probably wrote more music than Bach and Handel combined... They wrote a lot of music quite fast in that period (and even later, Donizetti wrote ca. 70 operas in ca. 30 years, around 4 operas per year in good years)


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Livly_Station said:


> Vivaldi wanted to annoy Stravinsky.


I want that on a T-shirt.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_The concerti were written with specific pupils and performances in mind._

True -- Vivaldi spent much of his life teaching wayward school girls at a sort of academy. He also wrote music for traveling country musicians, his famed "Alla Rustica" concerto for violin being one such piece.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Telemann wrote 1000 cantatas, Graupner, 1400 cantatas


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> Some could be shorter. A good deal of them need not to even exist.


Haven't you said the exact same thing, about Brahms?
Anyway, I appreciate C.P.E.'s a bit more;



hammeredklavier said:


>


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

larold said:


> _The concerti were written with specific pupils and performances in mind._
> 
> True -- Vivaldi spent much of his life teaching wayward school girls at a sort of academy. He also wrote music for traveling country musicians, his famed "Alla Rustica" concerto for violin being one such piece.


Exactly ^ ^ ^. So, addressing the OP: The accompanying parts could be played by the younger or less proficient girls, the solo parts by apt pupils or Vivaldi himself. And, of course, the concerto was the most important orchestral or large instrumental ensemble form of its day. It makes perfect sense when one understands the practical issues of Vivaldi's life as a teacher.


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

Why are so many people obsessed with Vivaldi's numerous concertos?


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I don't think Vivaldi was obsessed as posthumously blessed that so many of the bloody things have survived.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I hope no-one gets obsessed with this thread.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Merl said:


> I hope no-one gets obsessed with this thread.


Unless someone discovers he was a cute child prodigy it seems unlikely.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> Unless someone discovers he was a cute child prodigy


like
<Why the obsession with composers?> [Post#69]


hammeredklavier said:


> "Johann Adolph Hasse, a famous German musician who had lived for long periods in Italy, had become the official composer of the court in Vienna in 1764. After examining Wolfgang, he wrote of him, "I took him through various tests on the harpsichord, on which he let me hear things that are prodigious for his age and would be admirable even for a mature man." Hasse adds, "The boy is moreover handsome, vivacious, graceful, and full of good manners; and knowing him, it is difficult to avoid loving him. I am sure that if his development keeps due pace with his year, he will be a prodigy."


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

HenryPenfold said:


> Why are so many people obsessed with Vivaldi's numerous concertos?


Around 230 of Vivaldi's 500 concertos were written for violin. Only 27 were written for cello.

Vivaldi didn't write any concertos for saxophone; actually, I don't think he wrote ANY concertos for brass instruments.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

RV 537 for 2 trumpets but maybe it was originally for other instruments?


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Kreisler jr said:


> RV 537 for 2 trumpets but maybe it was originally for other instruments?


I have it on good authority that the original manuscript had "Per 2 fischietti sudamericani" written on the first page, and recent scholarship reveals that he had Swanee whistles in mind.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Kreisler jr said:


> RV 537 for 2 trumpets but maybe it was originally for other instruments?


Nice find. I'm-a gonna put it into my listening queue.

No, I think that based on the idiomatic fanfare-ish writing it MUST have been deliberately composed for trumpets (or whatever the baroque trumpet equivalent is . . . cornet?

Here it is with the orchestra played on organ, but those don't appear to be modern trumpets (one might be a piccolo trumpet, I'm not sure . . . .)






.

Although it's a bit more impressive with orchestra . . . .


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> I have it on good authority that the original manuscript had "Per 2 fischietti sudamericani" written on the first page, and recent scholarship reveals that he had Swanee whistles in mind.


You can't REALLY appreciate it until you've heard it on two saxophones.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

As an instructor at a girls' school, he could both show himself off (as soloist) and give the girls something musically instructive to do as accompanists (and show off the better pupils as soloists in their own right).


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Antonio Vivaldi was also a Catholic priest. Assuming that he took his vows of chastity and celibacy seriously; it would mean that he had no girlfriend, wife, or children to distract him from his music; let alone the fact that TV, internet, cell phones, and other time-suck technology that hadn't been invented yet. Little is known of Vivaldi's personal life and relationships, but he may have been somewhat cloistered.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Coach G said:


> Antonio Vivaldi was also a Catholic priest. Little is known of Vivaldi's personal life and relationships, but he may have been somewhat cloistered.


For more than two decades, Vivaldi had traveled to the major cities of Europe and been hailed as a great violinist and composer. For nearly a decade after the publication of _The Four Seasons_ he is absent from the records of the Pietà. He was enjoying his fame by traveling extensively (e.g. Prague, Munich, Amsterdam, Vienna, where he became acquainted with and admired by Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI) and producing nearly a dozen operas. When Vivaldi returned to the Pietà in 1735 as probably the most famous composer living in Europe, he signed a contract which read, in part, "with no idea of leaving any more as has been his practice in past years."


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

pianozach said:


> Nice find. I'm-a gonna put it into my listening queue.
> 
> No, I think that based on the idiomatic fanfare-ish writing it MUST have been deliberately composed for trumpets (or whatever the baroque trumpet equivalent is . . . cornet?


I was pretty sure it was original but as I read it just off a cover without having time to check out the piece, I added the caveat. Because guys like André or Güttler have arranged everything they could get their hands on for trumpet...
Vivaldi also wrote for horns (mixed with woodwinds, a bit like Brandenburg 1, RV 562, 569), clarinets (and proto-clarinets, chalumeaux), RV 559, 560 have pairs of oboes and clarinets.
There are rather crazy combinations among the concerti for multiple instruments.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> For more than two decades, Vivaldi had traveled to the major cities of Europe and been hailed as a great violinist and composer. For nearly a decade after the publication of _The Four Seasons_ he is absent from the records of the Pietà. He was enjoying his fame by traveling extensively (e.g. Prague, Munich, Amsterdam, Vienna, where he became acquainted with and admired by Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI) and producing nearly a dozen operas. When Vivaldi returned to the Pietà in 1735 as probably the most famous composer living in Europe, he signed a contract which read, in part, "with no idea of leaving any more as has been his practice in past years."


OK; so I didn't know that Vivaldi was so much on the move. I had the idea that he just sort of hung around at the girls school teaching music and composing music and then staying in his room all weekend. Even so, I think being chaste or celibate; or at least not married may have made it so many composers had more time to focus on music. Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Ravel, and Mussorgsky, were all bachelors. Maybe there's also something in it that is psychological; so that because said composers were bachelors, had no wife or children; in a way (maybe on a subconscious level) the music WAS their children. They gave "birth" to their concertos, symphonies, etc.


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## Bruckner Anton (Mar 10, 2016)

No idea. But I find his sacred music more interesting to me. His operas also deserve attention.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

MarkW said:


> As an instructor at a girls' school, he could both show himself off (as soloist) and give the girls something musically instructive to do as accompanists (and show off the better pupils as soloists in their own right).





Coach G said:


> Antonio Vivaldi was also a Catholic priest. Assuming that he took his vows of chastity and celibacy seriously; it would mean that he had no girlfriend, wife, or children to distract him from his music; let alone the fact that TV, internet, cell phones, and other time-suck technology that hadn't been invented yet. Little is known of Vivaldi's personal life and relationships, but he may have been somewhat cloistered.


LOL.

A "Catholic priest" at "an instructor at a girls' school" for a decade.

I sincerely doubt he was truly celibate.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Bruckner Anton said:


> No idea. But I find his sacred music more interesting to me.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

We could be asking as well why was Mahler obsessed with symphonies, Wagner and Verdi with operas, Wolf with lieder, Offenbach wih operettas, Strauss Jr. with waltzes, Graupner with cantatas, Chopin with solo piano music in general, etc. The answer, I think, is that it's common for some artists to specialize in one instrument/form that they find more interesting to work with.

By the way, I'm almost sure that I read somewhere that Vivaldi has more hours of music coming from his operas than from his concertos, and it seems that in life his recognition as a composer came primarily from opera.


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## eljr (Aug 8, 2015)

HenryPenfold said:


> Why are so many people obsessed with Vivaldi's numerous concertos?


Because we have tired of exploring our belly button's?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I think Vivaldi needs some defending, in this thread and another. 
I'm calling atsizat (a dedicated Vivaldian) to come for the job.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Vivaldi's reputation then, as now, was based on his concertos. As has been noted by others, his music was in demand locally, but once the L'Estro Armonico set was published in Amsterdam, it cemented his fame throughout Europe. He later went on tours to courts in Europe.

Some have compared his concertos to the views of Venice by his younger contemporary Canaletto, which where basically postcards for rich travelers (especially British making the Grand Tour of Europe). Venice's days as a trading power where over, and this was the beginning of it as a popular tourist destination. It was a place which conveniently combined culture and partying (its thanks to the latter that there where so many orphans, and venereal diseases where rampant).

He didn't take his priestly duties too seriously, music and not the church was his real vocation. He lived with two young women for many years who he claimed where his students. I guess tongues would have been wagging, but in those days even popes had their mistresses, so whatever happened probably wasn't considered too unusual. Venice was a secular republic and never as puritan as Rome, so I doubt anybody - including the authorities - would have cared about this sort of thing.

Vivaldi, along with Corelli, was an innovator not only in string technique, but moving the focus away from church to secular music (both instrumental and opera). His musical trademarks - the dramatic flair, arpeggios and rhythmic dynamism, the song-like quality of the slow movements - where influential in the development of the 18th century symphony. I think quite a few composers where in debt to him, including Bach, Haydn and Mozart.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

I love Vivaldi. If you don’t, it’s your loss. Presumably he had to churn out a lot Music to buy the groceries, as did Bach, Handel, Teleman, and a slew of Composers


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

pianozach said:


> LOL.
> 
> A "Catholic priest" at "an instructor at a girls' school" for a decade.
> 
> I sincerely doubt he was truly celibate.


I don't think he even pretended to be a serious priest. He was given licence to ignore many of the more usual priestly duties presumably because he was a musical star. I think it is well documented that he had affairs, including a long lasting and mature one (almost a marriage). But not with his orphan charges.

From what I understand many of the "pupils" were no spring chickens and were anyway more often than not seriously disfigured. I think a charismatic star like Vivaldi could and did do "better" for himself. Not celibate? True, I think, but not because of his connection to the girls' school (actually orphanage of unwanted babies, most of whom died before they had reached the age of 2).

I am no scholar and lack the patience (or interest) to search for and find the sources for the above but this thread is going to need a bit of scholarship if we are going to stick to reality rather than "unkind" suspicions.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Reading this thread it seems I also need to defend Vivaldi's reputation as a composer. Many of his concertos are masterpieces that shine brightly among the music of his time. His music was known far and wide and admired widely (Bach etc). He did perhaps also do some hack work in the concerto form. In addition to concertos he did also produce a great number (close to 100, I think) of operas and many noted religious pieces as well as sonatas. Few composers of his time can stand comparison with him - he was surely one of the greats.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> I have it on good authority that the original manuscript had "Per 2 fischietti sudamericani" written on the first page, and recent scholarship reveals that he had Swanee whistles in mind.


To my knowledge, nobody wrote concertos for weirder combinations of instruments than Kozeluch. I give you-the Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major for trumpet, piano, mandoline & Double bass. (I mean, apart from the 20th century, but by then weirdness was the point.)






Vivaldi can't touch that.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Coach G said:


> Antonio Vivaldi was also a Catholic priest. Assuming that he took his vows of chastity and celibacy seriously...


It's well known that he did not. Nope. He found the whole business of being a priest exceedingly tedious and boring. But then, judging by the church's behavior, one doesn't become a Catholic Priest if one takes vows of chastity and celibacy seriously.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

British merchant Charles Thompson visited Venice in 1732 and gave his impressions:

"The clergy of Venice, both regular and secular, are for the most part illiterate, and of a licentious conversation. The parish priests are elected by the parishioners, who are generally influenced by the nobility in their choice. On these occasions the candidates seldom fail to rip up one another's characters, and expose their several vices, with the greatest heat, and the most scurrilous language imaginable. The scandalous lives of the monks are notorious; and during the Carnival they wear masks, sing upon stages, and fall into many other practices unbecoming their profession." [Worse on the nuns follows].


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## atsizat (Sep 14, 2015)

vtpoet said:


> To my knowledge, nobody wrote concertos for weirder combinations of instruments than Kozeluch. I give you-the Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major for trumpet, piano, mandoline & Double bass. (I mean, apart from the 20th century, but by then weirdness was the point.)
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I listened to your music to the end and despite many instruments used, it sounds ordinary classical music to me.

I will stick to Vivaldi


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

atsizat said:


> I listened to your music to the end and despite that, it sounds ordinary classical music to me.
> 
> Far from being a La Notte, for instance.


You may have misunderstood me. I'm not saying Kozeluch was the better composer or wrote the better concerto, only that he wrote for some really weird combinations of instruments. Vivaldi's flute concerto is one among hundreds (albeit that of a genius) but there's only one concerto for piano, mandolin, double bass and trumpet. Just. One.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> To my knowledge, nobody wrote concertos for weirder combinations of instruments than Kozeluch. I give you-the Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major for trumpet, piano, mandoline & Double bass. (I mean, apart from the 20th century, but by then weirdness was the point.)


Try


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Oooh.... that's like a full house to my four of a kind. I wonder if Fürtwangler ever conducted that for the Nazis?


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Are you too sloppy for correct spelling or is this supposed to be an additional slur for Furtwängler (like Hurwitz mangling any foreign pronunciation extra badly if it's someone he dislikes or finds pretentious) because Nazi is not enough?


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Oh. Sorry. Furtwanglér. He was French, right?


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