Violin Concerto in F Major

The autumn harvest, and the riotous feasting that follows, offer a starting point for “Autumn”, the third violin concerto in Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Nature may dominate the other seasons, but “Autumn” is all about man—his pastimes and pleasures. You can almost hear boots clattering in the heavy rhythms of the "Allegro". The dance is seemingly accompanied by a fiddle, suggested in the chords in the solo violin—simple music-making that must make its own harmony. As the wine begins to take hold, the solo violin’s increasingly wandering gambits have a drunkard’s ranting swagger about them, before bluster turns to melancholy and, finally, a brief reprise of the opening dance. “The drunkards have fallen asleep,” Vivaldi writes on the score of the slow movement. Sustained strings spin a dreamy stillness above the harpsichord, whose spread chords seem to suggest the inhale and exhale of breath. It’s a moment of musical pause and refreshment before the exertion of the hunt to follow. The final movement’s cantering theme plunges us straight into a hunt, as if horses and hounds were bounding past. We can hear the call of the horns and the huntsmen’s shrill cries in the soloist’s first entry. Excitement grows in explosive scales and agitated movement from the orchestra as the wounded prey is sighted. Snatched semiquavers pinging up through the ensemble strings (plucked in some performances for extra impact) vividly suggest the snapping of sinews as the animal is finally caught. About Vivaldi's The Four Seasons From a sudden spring thunderstorm to lazy summer heat, harvest songs and dances (and the drinking that fuels them) to the tooth-chattering chill of the winter wind—Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is a vivid portrait of a year in country life, painted in sound. Published in 1725, this group of four violin concertos are the opening works of a larger collection, The Contest Between Harmony and Invention, but they’ve always stood apart: descriptive music in an age of abstraction, film music long before film itself. Dismissed in their day as gimmicks or wild innovation, it took more than 200 years for these sonic snapshots to find a regular place in the repertoire.