Vivaldi for kids: his life, his music, and what to play first

Antonio Vivaldi was an Italian composer and violinist who lived from 1678 to 1741. He was a priest with red hair, and he taught music at a home for orphaned girls in Venice. He wrote more than 500 concertos. The most famous are The Four Seasons, four violin concertos that paint spring, summer, autumn, and winter in sound. The best first piece for a child is Spring.

This guide gives you the story, the sound, and five pieces to try.

Quick facts

• Born: 1678, in Venice, Italy
• Died: 1741, in Vienna, Austria
• Era: Baroque
• Played: violin
• Known for: The Four Seasons and hundreds of other concertos

The life in short

Vivaldi grew up in Venice, a city built on water. His father was a barber who became a violinist at the great church of St. Mark’s. He taught his son to play.

Vivaldi trained as a priest and was ordained in 1703. People called him the Red Priest because of his red hair. He had trouble with his breathing all his life, and he soon stopped leading church services. Music became his full-time work.

That same year he took a job at the Ospedale della Pietà. It was a home in Venice for girls who had been orphaned or abandoned. The girls who showed talent got a serious music education. Vivaldi taught them the violin and wrote new pieces for them to play. Their orchestra became famous, and visitors to Venice came to hear it.

He wrote fast. Besides the concertos, he wrote dozens of operas and traveled to stage them. In 1725 he published The Four Seasons.

Tastes changed as he grew older. He moved to Vienna in search of work and died there in 1741 with little money. His music was nearly forgotten for about 200 years. In the 1920s a large collection of his handwritten scores was found, and musicians began to play him again.

What the music sounds like

Vivaldi’s music is bright, quick, and full of energy. Most of his concertos have three parts: fast, slow, fast.

A concerto is a piece where one instrument stands out from the group. In The Four Seasons the star is a solo violin. The soloist plays, the orchestra answers, and the two take turns.

Vivaldi also liked to paint pictures with sound. He printed a poem with each of the Seasons and marked in the music what each part shows: birds, a storm, a barking dog, chattering teeth. Music that tells a story or shows a scene is called program music. It is a good way in for a child.

Five pieces to play first

Spring, first movement. The orchestra plays a cheerful tune. Then three violins chirp and trill like birds. A stream murmurs. A short storm rolls in with rumbling low notes, and the birds come back. Ask your child to call out “birds,” “stream,” and “storm.”

Spring, second movement. A shepherd sleeps under a tree. The solo violin plays his slow, dreamy tune. Underneath, a viola plays two rough notes again and again. Vivaldi wrote that this is the shepherd’s dog barking. Can your child hear it?

Summer, third movement. A summer storm. The violins race and crash from the first note to the last. Play it loud and let your child run.

Winter, first movement. The strings shiver with short, cold notes. The soloist’s fast notes are the icy wind. Listen for the stamping of feet to keep warm.

Winter, second movement. A calm scene by the fire. The solo violin sings a warm tune while the other strings pluck their notes. The plucking is rain falling outside.

Things to do together

Match the season. Play one fast movement from each of the four concertos without saying which is which. Ask your child to guess the season and say why.

Draw four boxes. Fold a sheet of paper in four. Play a little of each season and draw what the music shows in each box.

Read the poem. The poems Vivaldi printed with the Seasons are easy to find in translation. Read the lines for Spring, then play the music and find each line in the sound.

Listen for the soloist. In any Vivaldi concerto, ask your child to raise a hand when one instrument plays alone and lower it when the group comes back.

Place him in time. Vivaldi was seven years older than Bach. Bach admired his concertos and rewrote several of them for keyboard. Find both on the composer timeline.

More Vivaldi to try

He wrote concertos for almost every instrument of his day. Try the Concerto for Two Trumpets, where the two players trade bright calls. Try the Mandolin Concerto in C, which is short and light. For voices, the opening of his Gloria is a burst of joy from a choir and orchestra.

Print and play

Print the Vivaldi fact sheet. It has the story, three pieces, and room to write and draw. The listening journal page has a box for drawing, which suits the Seasons well.

Next, meet the two other great Baroque composers: Bach and Handel. For all 24 composers by era, see classical composers for kids.