The son of a Venetian violinist, Antonio Vivaldi was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps. He entered the priesthood — where his bright red hair earned him the nickname “the Red Priest” — and in 1703 became a music teacher at the Seminario Musicale dell’Ospedale della Pietà, a Venetian orphanage for girls. The Ospedale was one of several such institutions in Venice that were famous for the attention they paid to the musical training of their students. A large proportion of Vivaldi’s works were composed for the school, whose concerts were a great tourist attraction.

The Ospedale allowed him frequent leaves of absence, so Vivaldi toured a good deal, but the composer’s contract specified that he should write two concertos a month for the pupils and rehearse them if he was in town. Near the end of his life, Vivaldi left Venice permanently to settle in Vienna.

Internationally renowned as a virtuoso violinist, Vivaldi is remembered today chiefly for his brilliant concertos. He wrote more than four hundred of these, including concertos for harp, mandolin, bassoon, and various instrumental combinations; we know of more than 250 solo violin concertos, including our Concerto in G from La stravaganza and Spring from The Four Seasons. Critics of the day complained that Vivaldi’s music was thin and flashy and that the composer was always playing for cheap effects. But the young Bach, before writing his Brandenburg Concertos, carefully copied out pieces by Vivaldi as a way of learning how to write concertos himself.

Chief Works: Solo concertos for many different instruments, including the very famous Four Seasons ◼ Concerti grossi for various instruments ◼ twenty-one extant operas; oratorios; cantatas

Encore: After the Violin Concerto in G and Spring, listen to all of The Four Seasons; Concerto for Two Violins in A Minor, Op. 3, No. 8.

Image credit: Bettmann/CORBIS.