Download The Four Seasons “Autumn” sheet music by Antonio Vivaldi from The Country Flutist.
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Product Description
The Four Seasons (Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a set of four violin concertos by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, each one depicting a different season of the year through music. Composed around 1718–1720 during Vivaldi’s time as chapel master at the court in Mantua, the concertos were published in 1725 in Amsterdam—then part of the Dutch Republic—as part of a larger collection titled Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention), which included eight additional concertos.
The Four Seasons is Vivaldi’s most famous work. While three of the concertos are entirely original, the first—Spring—borrows musical ideas from a sinfonia in the first act of his opera Il Giustino. Though long thought to be inspired by the countryside around Mantua, musicologist Karl Heller suggests that the concertos may have been written earlier, around 1716–1717, before Vivaldi’s official appointment in Mantua.
These concertos were groundbreaking in their approach to musical storytelling. Vivaldi vividly illustrated scenes such as flowing streams, chirping birds (each species musically distinguished), a shepherd with his barking dog, buzzing insects, summer storms, drunken dancers, hunting scenes from both the hunter’s and prey’s perspective, icy winter landscapes, and cozy fires.
What set The Four Seasons apart in its time was Vivaldi’s decision to publish the music alongside four sonnets—likely written by the composer himself—that describe the seasonal imagery each concerto portrays. This makes the work one of the earliest and most detailed examples of program music—instrumental music that tells a story or paints a scene. Vivaldi meticulously matched musical passages to lines from the poems. For instance, in the second movement of Spring, a sleeping goatherd is accompanied by the sound of his barking dog, represented by the violas. Throughout the concertos, the music imitates a wide array of natural sounds with remarkable clarity and creativity.
Each concerto follows a three-movement structure (fast–slow–fast), and the accompanying sonnets are likewise divided into three parts, aligning poetry and music with precision.
This arrangement of “Autumn,” is for solo flute.
