Vivaldi, Concerto for guitar and strings

 
Vivaldi in St. Mark's Square

In order to lead the life that we all would want, in the 18th century you also had to do some juggling. Born in Venice as the first-born of a Venetian merchant marriage, Antonio Vivaldi came into the world at a time when the Venetian commercial monopoly of the sale of spices, merchandise and slaves, had begun to crumble. It was the result of the emergence of alternative routes to the "Silk Road" established in the High Middle Ages that connected China and Europe, with Venice as its only commercial intermediary.

In these circumstances, the Venetian merchant families were compelled to encourage in their children the inclination for the practice of a musical instrument, or the development of any artistic talent, in order to attract the European aristocracies to the city and thus establish new commercial alliances. In a relatively few years, Venice ceased to be a fiefdom of merchants who by tradition despised art in all its forms as an unprofitable activity, to become a Renaissance and cosmopolitan cultural capital, the first tourist city in history.

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi
(1678 - 1841)

Antonio's father, faced with the family's growing debts, chose to teach his son the little he had learned when, years ago, he had also worked as a musician due to similar shortages. By the way, Saint Mark's Square had become a new public square where artists showed their talents.

There, in that fledgling stage, the little musician Antonio Vivaldi made his initial training in the domain of the violin, taking home, incidentally, some coins as a result of his efforts.
Before long, his father would join him. Reasonably reliable testimonies of the time indicate that the father-son duo delighted the then "tourists", with little Antonio standing out for his ability to create beautiful melodies capable of evoking the most diverse states of mind.

Concerto for guitar and strings, in D major
Although it has been rightly said that the heyday of the concerto in the Baroque period was due in large part to the great 17th century advances in the art of violin making, maestro Vivaldi did not always entrust to a violin his works for soloist and orchestra. This is the case of this concerto, where the solo instrument is the guitar, although it was originally written for lute.

These first manifestations of what would later be the resorted and celebrated "concerto for soloist and orchestra" of the following centuries are very short duration works. The entire work lasts barely ten minutes. However, they have three movements, which inaugurate the traditional scheme: fast - slow - fast. The second movement, largo, is the most popular and recognizable (3:44).

The rendition is by maestro John Williams, accompanied by the Seville Symphony Orchestra.