"Le Quattro Stagioni" di Antonio Vivaldi (1678/1741)

The famous piece “The Four Seasons” written by the Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi is one of the most beautiful pages of the world music. It is an epitome of the love for beauty and the search for excellence, which are the basis of the Italian culture since the Roman Empire.

Vivaldi’s “The Four seasons” is to music what Monna Lisa is to visual arts: an icon of the extraordinary contribution which Italians have given to the world culture around the centuries. When one listens to this music, he/she will be dreamingly transported to “the land where the lemons blossom”, as a great poet defined Italy. 

The reason for the success of this music resides on its harmony (a concept made famous by the Italian Renaissance painters) and also on its meaning. We can say that this is the first “Symphonic Poem” ever written, because that music tries to convey some messages and to recreate a visual representation in the mind of the listener. Vivaldi carefully composed the music, based on written poems on the life in countryside Italy in the XVIII century. A summary of those poetic texts follows:

1. Spring 

This first movement explains how nature wakens itself up and flowers blossoms.

Two elements are presents: water and air, and one can recognize the startling rustle of the leaves and the music of the flowing water in a river. One should imagine a wild landscape as it was on the first day of the Creation of the world. Spring is the creation of the year. One can hear birds singing.

2. Summer 

 Summer time is the period in which the hot weather inspires calm and laziness. In the country side, the peasants are collecting wheat and corn .One can almost hear the noise of the sickles cutting the stems. Unfortunately a violent summer storm arrives, whith thunder and lights and all the peasants have to rush in the huts.

3. Autumn

 In Europe it is the period of preparing wine. So the music begins with the merry dance of peasants who are cutting the grapes, collecting them in the barrels and happily squeezing them under their feet to extract the wonderful juice which, once fermented, will became wine. Some of them drink too much wine and their dance becomes frenetic and irregular.

4. Winter

This magnificent music suggests an atmosphere of rest and cold. In a small village men and  women are shivering for the cold weather,  running from one place to an other and making exercise to fight the cold. While a frosting wind whistles through the frozen branches of the trees, a young boy very happily skates on the frozen river.

I hope that this article will encourage the Chinese readers to pay attention to the meaning of the “four seasons” and consider the message of peace and friendship which, through this music, we  Italians would like to convey.