Baroque · 1600–1750
Antonio Vivaldi
“The Red Priest”
The red-haired priest of Venice who taught orphan girls to play like angels — and wrote 500 concertos.
The Baroque era (1600–1750): Ornate, dramatic music of courts and churches — fugues, concertos and opera are born.
Amazing facts
- He was ordained a priest, but his flaming red hair earned him the nickname 'il Prete Rosso' — the Red Priest.
- He worked for nearly 40 years at the Ospedale della Pietà, a Venetian home for orphaned girls, whose all-girl orchestra became famous across Europe.
- He wrote around 500 concertos. A joker once quipped he wrote 'the same concerto 500 times' — listeners today strongly disagree!
- The Four Seasons came with poems (probably written by Vivaldi himself) describing barking dogs, buzzing flies, thunderstorms and ice-skaters that the music paints in sound.
- He died poor in Vienna and his music was almost forgotten for 200 years, until a rediscovery in the 20th century made him a superstar again.
A few pieces to start with
The Four Seasons — 'Spring'
1725
Violin concertos
Four violin concertos, one per season, each painting a poem in sound: birdsong in Spring, a thunderstorm in Summer, a hunt in Autumn and chattering teeth in Winter.
Gloria in D
1715
Choral
A joyful choral work written for the girls of the Pietà to sing — still one of the most-performed choral pieces in the world.
Life & times — what was happening in the world
1678Born in Venice; baptised at once because of an earthquake (or poor health — historians still argue!).
1682Peter the Great becomes Tsar of Russia; Louis XIV moves his court into the Palace of Versailles.
1687Isaac Newton publishes the Principia, explaining gravity and the laws of motion.
1703Ordained a priest and hired as violin teacher at the Ospedale della Pietà orphanage.
1711Publishes L'estro armonico — the concerto collection that makes him famous across Europe (young Bach copies them out by hand).
1719Daniel Defoe publishes Robinson Crusoe, one of the first English novels.
1721Venice is Europe's party capital — masked carnivals, opera houses and gondolas everywhere.
1725Publishes The Four Seasons in Amsterdam, music that paints storms, birds and winter ice.
1733John Kay invents the flying shuttle, an early spark of the Industrial Revolution.
1740Travels to Vienna hoping for a job at the imperial court.
1741Dies in Vienna in poverty; buried in a simple grave.