While the solo violin part is an ideal medium for pictorial-ism and onomatopoeia, Vivaldi did not hesitate to orchestrate an episode more fully if this was warranted by the force or plurality of the subject depicted. The needs of the solo concerto dictated that the programme must include many transient events, or sounds that do not last long (bird-song, thunder, etc.), suitable for foreground painting in episodes.

Fast movements, however, offered more scope.

These works, indeed, are almost as highly regarded for their remarkable technical feats – the bariolage in Summer (III, bars 51-4/247-50), for instance – as for their imagery and narrative.1 Slow movements, being short and lacking episodic change, are treated in the Seasons as tableaux: each a static scene painted with considerable textural depth. Their excellence is a measure of how successfully Vivaldi compromised in two directions, adapting both structure and the soloist’s contribution to the programme and very probably tinkering with the programme to make sure that it fitted standard movement-types and the demands of solo virtuosity. Since the Seasons are solo concertos that retain the genre’s essential technical principles, their conception cannot have been devoted exclusively to the programmatic function.

Four seasons composition