Music Weblog

Antonio Vivaldi [1678–1741], even more than 330 years after his birth, remains the most famous classical musician to come out of Venice, Italy.  He was an incredibly prolific composer, having written more than 500 instrumental works, plus 46 operas and a great deal of sacred choral music for performance in conjunction with Catholic religious services.  His most famous piece of music is The Four Seasons, composed in 1723.  Known in Italian as Le quattro stagioni, these are a series of four violin concertos of three movements each—a slow middle movement bookended by two quicker ones—that most experts consider to be the quintessential example of the Baroque style of classical music.

A sickly child who never seemed to gain full health—descriptions of his illness appear to imply that he suffered from asthma—Vivaldi learned from his father at a young age to play the violin, and the two of them toured Venice and the surrounding region while Antonio was still a pre-teen.  He began to study for the priesthood at age 15, and he was ordained ten years later.  His condition caused him to abandon most priestly duties, although he remained officially a member of the church until his death.  In 1703, Vivaldi was named the violin master at a Venetian orphanage, and it was in this setting that he composed the vast majority of his material.  During the following decade he was promoted to the orphanage’s music directorship, and many of the works he subsequently composed were written specifically for that organization’s women’s music ensemble.  He remained in this post until 1740, although the overseeing of performances of his compositions and an outside post as maestro di cappella for the governor of Mantua [ca. 1717–1720] allowed him to travel extensively throughout Italy.

Opera was an incredibly popular form of entertainment during this time, and especially in Venice.  Vivaldi’s early attempts at this musical form met with minimal success, but later in his career he enjoyed considerable acclaim for compositions on primarily historical and mythological figures.  Interest in his music declined fairly rapidly after his death; many critics in the era of Romanticism found his music to be too highly structured and unnecessarily repetitive.  His reputation suffered until early in the 20th century, when many of his manuscripts were rediscovered.  Vivaldi’s works for strings, plus his compositions for other solo instruments—bassoon, cello, oboe, flute, etc.—in conjunction with strings, are quite popular today.  Very few of his operas have been revived, however, in contrast to renewed interest in the works of Handel.  The only Vivaldi opera of any consequence to be performed in the past decade has been Orlando Furioso.

Franz Schubert [1797–1828] lived a short but amazingly prolific life, leaving behind a legacy of seven complete symphonies (plus one that remained unfinished upon his death), some 30 chamber music pieces, and more than 600 songs.  He was born in a suburb of Vienna to middle-class parents—his father was a teacher and his mother had been a housekeeper prior to marriage—and was one of five children to survive infancy (nine others died).  As with many composers of his era, Schubert showed an early affinity for music and was taking formal lessons as early as age six.  A year later his vocal promise attracted the notice of composer Antonio Salieri, who was the most prominent musical figure in all of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until supplanted by a young W.A. Mozart.  Although Schubert trained as a teacher to follow in his father’s footsteps, his remarkable facility to write vocal music set him on the path to live out his life as an impoverished composer rather than a more financially secure educator.

Schubert made friends with a cadre of young intellectuals who frequented Vienna’s coffeehouses, the site in those days of deep thought but also revolutionary concepts.  Among his compatriots were several poets, whose written material provided significant fodder for the vast numbers of lieder (art songs) he wrote.  Johann Vogl, a prominent Viennese singer, took the younger Schubert under his wing and subsequently enjoyed the fruits of much of the composer’s resulting song writing.  Vogl’s influence is the primary reason that a number of Schubert’s song cycles were written for the baritone voice.

In addition to lieder, Schubert tried his hand at composing operas.  However, the public’s fascination with the Italianate style as embodied by Rossini—in direct contrast to Schubert’s methodology, which was decidedly Germanic in tone and storyline—offered the composer no success whatsoever.  Of the eight complete operas Schubert wrote—half a dozen other works for the stage are more accurately defined as singspiels in the Mozartean sense—only his three-act heroic opera Fierrabras is performed with any sort of frequency today.  Interestingly, it did not receive its official premiere until 1897, nearly 70 years after the composer’s death.  Schubert died after several years of deteriorating health.  Although the official diagnosis was typhoid fever, there is a strong indication his demise was due instead to mercury poisoning, which was a common “cure” in those days to combat the effects of syphilis.

Much of Schubert’s music remains a strong part of the classical lexicon.  His songs are especially popular with vocal students and professional singers alike.  You can find MP3 examples of Schubert lieder as well as sheet music by this composer and numerous others in the classical realm at mFiles.