page_title: L'estro armonico
section_title: Performance, transmission and reception
hierarchical_section_title: L'estro armonico / Performance, transmission and reception
caption_attribution_description: English: Chiesa della Pietà on the Riva degli Schiavoni at Castello sestiere in Venice, Italy. Français&#160;: Église de la Pietà sur la Riva degli Schiavoni dans le sestiere Castello de Venise en Italie.
context_page_description: L'estro armonico, Op. 3, is a set of 12 concertos for stringed instruments by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, first published in Amsterdam in 1711. Vivaldi's Twelve Trio Sonatas, Op. 1, and Twelve Violin Sonatas, Op. 2, only contained sonatas, thus L'estro armonico was his first collection of concertos appearing in print. It was also the first time he chose a foreign publisher, Estienne Roger, instead of an Italian. Each concerto was printed in eight parts: four violins, two violas, cello and continuo. The continuo part was printed as a figured bass for violone and harpsichord.
  The concertos belong to the concerto a 7 format, that is: for each concerto there are seven independent parts. In each consecutive group of three concertos, the first is a concerto for four violins, the second for two violins, and the third a solo violin concerto. The cello gets solistic passages in several of the concertos for four and two violins, so that a few of the concertos conform to the traditional Roman concerto grosso format where a concertino of two violins and cello plays in contrast to a string orchestra. L'estro armonico pioneered orchestral unisono in concerto movements.
context_section_description: In our younger days, the fifth concerto of Vivaldi, composed of rattling passages in perpetual semiquavers, was the making of every player on the violin, who could mount into the clouds, and imitate not only the flight, but the whistling notes of birds.
  — Charles Burney (1726–1814), Rees's Cyclopædia
  In her preface to the Dover edition, Vivaldi scholar Eleanor Selfridge-Field gives an account of the performance and publication history of L'estro armonico. Probably initially composed for performance in the Ospedale della Pietà, the collection of 12 concertos was grouped in four cycles of three, each containing a concerto for 1, 2 and 4 concertante solo violins. Each double violin concerto also had a concertante violoncello part, which did not have a fixed role, sometimes playing solo, sometimes responding to the two violin soloists. In the Pietà, performances of the concertos would have allowed advanced pupils to develop their skills as soloists and given the chance to others to learn how to play in an ensemble. The dedicatee of the collection, Ferdinando de' Medici, frequently visited Venice from his native Florence and supported the Pietà. After a concert there in April 1711 featuring an oratorio by Gasparini, Vivaldi's senior colleague, the local Venetian newspaper reported that "the audience, larger than ever, was made ecstatic by the spirited harmony of such a variey of instruments." Selfridge-Field has suggested that it is highly likely that the concert included performances of concertos from L'estro armonico.
  Following their publication, the concertos from the collection were widely performed in Italy, as church music and chamber music, both indoors and outdoors. In theatres and opera houses they were performed by small groups of 10, as in the Pietà, sometimes with Vivaldi as soloist. Open air concerts in the 1720s and 1730s could have as many as a hundred performers. Despite originating in a religious institution, the print copies were widely distributed throughout Europe, with 20 reprintings of Estienne Roger's Amsterdam edition between 1711 and 1743. Sales were slightly more successful than those of Vivaldi's famous 1725 collection Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione which contained The Four Seasons.
  In London John Walsh, Handel's printer, published the twelve concertos in two instalments in 1715 and 1717, when he also published all twelve in one volume, with individual concertos included in later collections. In London his version was pirated by other printing firms in the 1720s; and in Paris there were five or more reprintings from the late 1730s to the early 1750s. The works were also transmitted through manuscript copies, often of individual concertos, the most popular by far being Op.3, No.5, which has 15 known copies and transcriptions.
  Talbot (2010) gives a detailed description, drawn from contemporary accounts, of the performances and reception of the concertos in Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth century. The most popular concerto from the set was Op.3, No.5, RV 519 which was commonly referred to as "Vivaldi's Fifth". Two other concertos from the set were also played by the public, Op.3, Nos.3 and 12. In a London catalogue from 1780, the solo part for each of the three concertos was advertised for a sum of sixpence per concerto; and in a different catalogue from 1790, the solo part with an added bass line was advertised at a price of one shilling per concerto.
  Few Italian violinists promoted Vivaldi in England. In the case of Francesco Geminiani, this was due  partly to his allegiance to his teacher Corelli and partly to his own ambitions as a composer. His protègé Charles Avison was almost certainly expressing Geminiani's views when he dismissed Vivaldi's concertos as "defective in various harmony and true invention," a withering reference to Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione. On the other hand, in London the violinist Matthew Dubourg, another student of Francesco Geminiani, is known to have given many performances of the fifth concerto (at least as early as 1720) and used it for trai
caption: Santa Maria della Pietà, Venice, the church built on the site of the Ospedale della Pietà
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