Giovanni Battista Vivaldi
Giovanni Battista Vivaldi (* 1655 in Brescia ; † 14. May 1736 in Venice ) was a violinist of the Baroque and the father of Antonio Vivaldi .
Giovanni Battista Vivaldi (. 1655 in Brescia; † 14. May 1736 in Venice) was a violinist of the Baroque and the father of Antonio Vivaldi. Around 1665, after the death of his father, Giovanni Battista Vivaldi moved with his mother and siblings from Brescia to Venice, where he first worked as a barber and later became a violinist. In 1676 he married the daughter of a tailor, Camilla Calicchio. Vitali, Giovanni Battista: I-Catalogue Number I-Cat. None force assignment Movements/Sections Mov'ts/Sec's: 3+4 First Pub lication. 1689 Composer Time Period Comp. Period: Baroque: Piece Style Baroque: Instrumentation violin, continuo Related Works Artificii musicali, Op.13. Composer: Antonio Vivaldi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi Performer: Lucia Valentini-Terrani, Katia Ricciarelli. Antonio Vivaldi, the Great Composer of Venice. Antonio Vivaldi was born in 1678 in Venice and was the most important violinist and composer of his time. Gianbattista Vivaldi, a violinist and father of Vivaldi, was responsible for introducing him to the world of music.
Around 1665, after the death of his father, Giovanni Battista Vivaldi moved with his mother and siblings from Brescia to Venice, where he first worked as a barber and later became a violinist. In 1676 he married the daughter of a tailor, Camilla Calicchio , with whom he had ten children, including the eldest son Antonio. The oldest of the girls, Gabriela Antonia, died in infancy.
In addition to his work as a barber, he devoted himself more and more to the violin. In 1685 he became a member of the Chapel of San Marco with the nickname 'Rosso' (probably because of his red hair, which he passed on to his son). In the same year he was a founding member of the musicians' association Sovvegno dei musicisti di Santa Cecilia .
He was very well recognized as a musician, his name can be found in the guides of Vincenzo Coronelli for years next to his famous son, whom he promoted and supported. On September 30, 1729 he received permission to leave his office at San Marco for a year in order to accompany his son to Germany. He also worked as a copyist for his son and for Georg Philipp Telemann .
He may also have worked as a composer. The opera La fedeltà sfortunata , performed under the pseudonym Giovanni Battista Rossi, is attributed to him (1688).
The violinist Martino Bitti was one of his students.
literature
- Karl Heller: Antonio Vivaldi. The Red Priest of Venice . Amadeus Press, Portland 1991, pp. 39-42.
- Michael Talbot : The Vivaldi Compendium . Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2011, pp. 195-196.
- Gastone Vio: Venetian musicians in the circle around Giovanni Battista Vivaldi. Nuovi studi vivaldiani: Edizione e cronologia critica delle opere. Series: Studi di musica veneta: Quaderni vivaldiani, No. 4 Published by: Firenze, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1988. ISBN 978-88-222-3625-8 ; 88-222-3625-4, pp. 689-702.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Michael Talbot: The Vivaldi Compendium . Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2011, p. 3
- ^ Michael Talbot: Giovanni Battista Vivaldi copies music by Telemann: New light on the genesis of Antonio Vivaldi's chamber concertos. In: Studi vivaldiani: Rivista annuale dell'Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi della Fondazione Giorgio Cini. 2015, 55-72.
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Join Britannica's Publishing Partner Program and our community of experts to gain a global audience for your work!Antonio Vivaldi, in full Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, (born March 4, 1678, Venice, Republic of Venice [Italy]—died July 28, 1741, Vienna, Austria), Italian composer and violinist who left a decisive mark on the form of the concerto and the style of late Baroque instrumental music.
Life
Vivaldi’s main teacher was probably his father, Giovanni Battista, who in 1685 was admitted as a violinist to the orchestra of the San Marco Basilica in Venice. Antonio, the eldest child, trained for the priesthood and was ordained in 1703. His distinctive reddish hair would later earn him the soubriquetIl Prete Rosso (“The Red Priest”). He made his first known public appearance playing alongside his father in the basilica as a “supernumerary” violinist in 1696. He became an excellent violinist, and in 1703 he was appointed violin master at the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for foundlings. The Pietà specialized in the musical training of its female wards, and those with musical aptitude were assigned to its excellent choir and orchestra, whose much-praised performances assisted the institution’s quest for donations and legacies. Vivaldi had dealings with the Pietà for most of his career: as violin master (1703–09; 1711–15), director of instrumental music (1716–17; 1735–38), and paid external supplier of compositions (1723–29; 1739–40).
Soon after his ordination as a priest, Vivaldi gave up celebrating mass because of a chronic ailment that is believed to have been bronchial asthma. Despite this circumstance, he took his status as a secular priest seriously and even earned the reputation of a religious bigot.
Antonio Vivaldi Life
Vivaldi’s earliest musical compositions date from his first years at the Pietà. Printed collections of his trio sonatas and violin sonatas respectively appeared in 1705 and 1709, and in 1711 his first and most influential set of concerti for violin and string orchestra (Opus 3, L’estro armonico) was published by the Amsterdam music-publishing firm of Estienne Roger. In the years up to 1719, Roger published three more collections of his concerti (opuses 4, 6, and 7) and one collection of sonatas (Opus 5).
Vivaldi made his debut as a composer of sacred vocal music in 1713, when the Pietà’s choirmaster left his post and the institution had to turn to Vivaldi and other composers for new compositions. He achieved great success with his sacred vocal music, for which he later received commissions from other institutions. Another new field of endeavour for him opened in 1713 when his first opera, Ottone in villa, was produced in Vicenza. Returning to Venice, Vivaldi immediately plunged into operatic activity in the twin roles of composer and impresario. From 1718 to 1720 he worked in Mantua as director of secular music for that city’s governor, Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt. This was the only full-time post Vivaldi ever held; he seems to have preferred life as a freelance composer for the flexibility and entrepreneurial opportunities it offered. Vivaldi’s major compositions in Mantua were operas, though he also composed cantatas and instrumental works.
The 1720s were the zenith of Vivaldi’s career. Based once more in Venice, but frequently traveling elsewhere, he supplied instrumental music to patrons and customers throughout Europe. Between 1725 and 1729 he entrusted five new collections of concerti (opuses 8–12) to Roger’s publisher successor, Michel-Charles Le Cène. After 1729 Vivaldi stopped publishing his works, finding it more profitable to sell them in manuscript to individual purchasers. During this decade he also received numerous commissions for operas and resumed his activity as an impresario in Venice and other Italian cities.
In 1726 the contralto Anna Girò sang for the first time in a Vivaldi opera. Born in Mantua about 1711, she had gone to Venice to further her career as a singer. Her voice was not strong, but she was attractive and acted well. She became part of Vivaldi’s entourage and the indispensable prima donna of his subsequent operas, causing gossip to circulate that she was Vivaldi’s mistress. After Vivaldi’s death she continued to perform successfully in opera until quitting the stage in 1748 to marry a nobleman.
In the 1730s Vivaldi’s career gradually declined. The French traveler Charles de Brosses reported in 1739 with regret that his music was no longer fashionable. Vivaldi’s impresarial forays became increasingly marked by failure. In 1740 he traveled to Vienna, but he fell ill and did not live to attend the production there of his opera L’oracolo in Messenia in 1742. The simplicity of his funeral on July 28, 1741, suggests that he died in considerable poverty.
Giovanni Battista Vivaldi Paintings
After Vivaldi’s death, his huge collection of musical manuscripts, consisting mainly of autograph scores of his own works, was bound into 27 large volumes. These were acquired first by the Venetian bibliophile Jacopo Soranzo and later by Count Giacomo Durazzo, Christoph Willibald Gluck’s patron. Rediscovered in the 1920s, these manuscripts today form part of the Foà and Giordano collections of the National Library in Turin.
Giovanni Battista Vivaldi
- born
- March 4, 1678
Venice, Italy
- died
- July 28, 1741 (aged 63)
Vienna, Austria
- notable works
- movement / style