To command an audience's attention, artists needed to be able to dramatize, allegorize or even defamiliarize the mundane. While people in seasonal climates are affected by changing conditions throughout the year, there are many aspects of the day-to-day experience of each season that are repetitive or unremarkable. How might a composer in the early eighteenth century use music to convey the excitement of the hunt, the oppression of summer heat, the terror of a thunderstorm or the joys of the harvest? The use of any expressive medium to represent the cycle of the seasons was an audacious artistic venture. These last aspects, in particular, provide a new understanding of the historical significance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons as a powerful demonstration of both the expressive potential of the concerto genre and the still underappreciated art of orchestration during the early eighteenth century. The article also demonstrates how Vivaldi used diverse textures and sonorities to create powerful contrasts that heighten the emotional impact of the aural imagery while underlining recurring expressive and pictorial motifs throughout the cycle.

Positing new connections to Arcadian reform ideals of verisimilitude, this article addresses important questions concerning Vivaldi's pairing of sonnets with concertos and the aesthetic factors behind his choice of narrative topics to depict in the music. Moving away from religious and mythological allegory, they exemplify a growing interest in descriptive representation of nature's power and in humanity's complex physical and emotional relationship with elements beyond its control.

Antonio Vivaldi's cycle of violin concertos dramatizing the four seasons marked a substantial shift in the way that the seasons were depicted in the arts.

Antonio vivaldi 4 seasons