Vivaldi's legendary preeminence in these compositional achievements led the young Johann Sebastian Bach to voraciously collect and study scores of Vivaldi's concertos and to learn their technical details by transcribing them for performance on the organ. 11 reveal a mature composer who had gained mastery of, and even defined, eighteenth-century musical forms, structures, harmonic devices, and orchestration.

“ Il Favorito ” comes from Vivaldi’s opus 11: a set of six concertos that he presented to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, and that were published in Amsterdam by Le Cene in 1729. Almost all of the concertos-about 350 of which were composed for one solo instrument and strings, and 230 of those for violin-are comprised of three movements, and make extensive use, in the outer fast movements, of ritornello form, in which varied statements of a refrain (the ritornello) played by the entire ensemble alternate with episodes of freely thematic material for the soloist (or soloists in the cases of double, triple, and multiple concertos). It was for the orchestra there of talented and musically accomplished young girls that Vivaldi wrote many of his almost 500 concertos. Subsequently, Vivaldi trained for the priesthood, taking his Holy Orders in 1703, the same year that he became director of music at the Ospedale della Pieta, a convent, orphanage, and music school in Venice. 2, RV 277 “Il favorito”Īntonio Vivaldi was a native of Venice, the son of one of the leading violinists of San Marco, from whom he received his earliest musical training.

Vivaldi guitar concerto program notes