Beating the Heat with Vivaldi's Summer (Four Seasons)
The Backstory

Sweating in Mantua

Most people think I wrote Summer (Four Seasons) around 1718 to 1720 while I was living in Mantua, though some researchers suggest I may have started as early as 1716 or 1717. At the time, I was working as the chamber chapel master at the court of Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, who served as the governor of the city. Trying to compose music during an Italian heatwave is a bit like trying to bake a cake inside an oven that is already on fire. Instead of complaining about the weather, I decided to capture every drop of that misery on paper and turn the scorching season into a piece for solo violin and strings.

A Three-Course Meal of Heat

I split the work into three separate sections called movements, which are really just like the three courses of a dinner where each dish has its own distinct mood and speed. First comes I. Allegro non molto, where the burning sun wears everyone out, a cuckoo, a turtledove, and a goldfinch sing in the solo violin, and a fierce North Wind makes a shepherd weep with fear. Next is II. Adagio e piano – Presto e forte, a restless back-and-forth where the weary shepherd tries to nap between furious swarms of flies and hornets and terrifying claps of thunder. Finally, III. Presto brings the dinner to a dramatic close as a ferocious thunderstorm rips through the countryside with lightning and hail that flattens the ripe grain crops.

The Mystery Poet

To make sure nobody missed a single detail of the weather, I had the music published with an Italian sonnet that tells the whole story from start to finish. I even placed little letter cues right into the musical score so players and listeners could match each line of poetry to the exact notes depicting the birds, the winds, or the weeping shepherd. The poem was printed anonymously in 1725, and although nobody can prove it from surviving documents, most scholars believe I wrote the verses myself. After all, if I could make a violin sound like a swarm of angry hornets, putting a few rhymes together on paper was hardly going to scare me off.

Four Seasons, Eight Extras

A lot of listeners assume the four seasonal pieces were released in a standalone little package of four, but they actually came out as part of a much bigger twelve-concerto collection. In 1725, the publisher Michel-Charles Le Cène in Amsterdam printed them as the first four works in my set called Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, Op. 8. Buying that sheet music back then was a bit like going to the market for four apples and coming home with a whole crate of fruit. Within that big collection, this piece is officially the second one, carrying the rather grand formal title of Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 8, RV 315.

A Gift for the Count

I dedicated the entire Op. 8 collection to my Bohemian patron, Count Wenzel von Morzin, who was a great supporter of my work. Long before the Amsterdam printer ever set the pages in ink, I had already sent the Count the manuscript scores of the four seasonal pieces. As I noted in my dedication, his private orchestra had already been playing them well before they were published in 1725. Because private court performances back then were not formally recorded, nobody knows the exact date, location, or soloists of that very first performance, which is a bit like throwing a wonderful party and forgetting to write down who came.

Keeping the Band Together

You might think you need a massive army of musicians to whip up a summer thunderstorm, but I wrote the whole thing for a surprisingly small group. My score calls for one solo violin out in front, backed up by two violin parts, a viola, and a bass team known as the basso continuo. That bass group is just a cello paired up with a harpsichord or an organ to keep the harmony solid underneath all the fireworks. With everyone playing at full tilt, those few string players can make enough racket to send you running indoors to check if you left the windows open.

Stuck in G Minor

Most composers like to change the musical key when they move into the middle section of a piece, just to give the listener's ears a change of scenery. For this concerto, however, I decided to keep all three parts anchored in the dark, tense home key of G minor. Staying in G minor the whole way through is like sitting under a heavy grey sky that refuses to clear up all afternoon. It keeps a steady sense of dread hanging in the air from the first tired notes right up until the hail starts pounding the fields.

Instant Hit in Europe

Once the collection hit the shops in 1725, it became an immediate critical and commercial success right across Europe. Listeners in big musical cities like Paris and London could not get enough of it, and the publication quickly cemented my international reputation. Seeing how fast the music traveled from Amsterdam to concert halls everywhere was like watching a good piece of gossip spread through a small village. Much later, a Danish musicologist named Peter Ryom organized all my compositions into a grand catalogue, which is how the piece picked up its neat little label of RV 315.

Remixing the Storm

Even centuries later, other musicians still like to tinker with my storm and see what else they can do with the notes. In 2012, the composer Max Richter adapted the piece for his widely recorded album, Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons. Hearing someone take your three-hundred-year-old melodies and rearrange them is a bit like lending a friend your favorite coat and watching them tailor it into a brand-new suit. I always wanted my music to surprise people, so it is gratifying to see my scorching afternoon find a fresh voice in a modern recording studio.

Going to the Movies

My summer storm has even found a second career on the cinema screen without me having to lift a finger. The final movement, III. Presto, plays a big role in the 2019 French historical drama film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, directed by Céline Sciamma. In the closing concert hall scene, the camera watches the emotion on a character's face while an orchestra tears through my music. It turns out that the tempest I dreamed up in Mantua still knows how to stir up a crowd three hundred years later.