If Bach is the Air We Breathe, Vivaldi is the Oxygen
Preview of “Vivaldi’s Spell”
by John Lenti
Vivaldi’s 1711 Opus 3, L’estro Armonico, was a shot across the bow of Baroque music. The juggernaut of Arcangelo Corelli had steamed over every composer in Europe, and the concerto (soloist/s accompanied by orchestra) had been perfected in Corelli’s twelve crystalline yet genial concertos for two violins and one cello (and orchestra). No such constraint bound Father Antonio however, so he issued his first publication of concertos comprising two Corellian concertos for two violins and cello, one concerto for four violins and cello, three for four violins, two for two violins, and four for just one violin. The author of this riotous opus was a fiery, leonine demigod who must have emanated a glow and fragrance something like a split golden tomato ripening on a windowsill. While the title of the collection sounds odd in English (“Harmonic Estrus,” bleargh), it is evocative of the wild musical oat-sowing that he was up to.
Meanwhile in Germany, Johann Sebastian Bach was entering the full flower of his genius at the Weimar court. Around May of 1713, the Duke’s son returned home from university in the Netherlands with trunks full of music, whence Bach encountered L’estro. According to Bach’s first biographer, Johann Nikolas Forkel, “[Bach’s] soaring genius attended an ardent industry which incessantly impelled him, whenever he found his own equipment insufficient, to seek guidance from others. Vivaldi and his Concertos were the first from whom he sought counsel.” L’estro sufficiently inspired Bach that he arranged six of the concertos for keyboards (of which we present three in their original forms on today’s program*), and ever after, his instrumental music was a fusion of German counterpoint with Italianate tunefulness and rhythmic propulsion. If Bach is the air we breathe, Vivaldi is the oxygen in it.
*look Bach’s arrangements up later: RV580 became the 4-harpsichord concerto BWV1065, RV565 and 522 became organ solos, BWV596 and 593