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Relation to the concept of 'I-thou'. |
Religious studies scholar Graham Harvey defined "animism" as the belief "that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others." He added that it is therefore "concerned with learning how to be a good person in respectful relationships with other persons." |
In his "Handbook of Contemporary Animism" (2013), Harvey identifies the animist perspective in line with Martin Buber's "I-thou" as opposed to "I-it". In such, Harvey says, the animist takes an I-thou approach to relating to the world, whereby objects and animals are treated as a "thou", rather than as an "it". |
There is ongoing disagreement (and no general consensus) as to whether animism is merely a singular, broadly encompassing religious belief or a worldview in and of itself, comprising many diverse mythologies found worldwide in many diverse cultures. This also raises a controversy regarding the ethical claims animism may or may not make: whether animism ignores questions of ethics altogether; or, by endowing various non-human elements of nature with spirituality or personhood, it in fact promotes a complex ecological ethics. |
Distinction from pantheism. |
Animism is not the same as pantheism, although the two are sometimes confused. Moreover, some religions are both pantheistic and animistic. One of the main differences is that while animists believe everything to be spiritual in nature, they do not necessarily see the spiritual nature of everything in existence as being united (monism) the way pantheists do. As a result, animism puts more emphasis on the uniqueness of each individual soul. In pantheism, everything shares the same spiritual essence, rather than having distinct spirits or souls. For example, Giordano Bruno equated the world soul with God and espoused a pantheistic animism. |
Fetishism / totemism. |
In many animistic world views, the human being is often regarded as on a roughly equal footing with other animals, plants, and natural forces. |
African indigenous religions. |
Traditional African religions: most religious traditions of Sub-Saharan Africa are basically a complex form of animism with polytheistic and shamanistic elements and ancestor worship. |
In East Africa the Kerma culture display Animistic elements similar to other Traditional African religions. In contrast, the later polytheistic Napatan and Meroitic periods, with displays of animals in Amulets and the esteemed antiques of Lions, appear to be an Animistic culture rather than a polytheistic culture. The Kermans likely treated Jebel Barkal as a special sacred site, and passed it on to the Kushites and Egyptians who venerated the mesa. |
In North Africa, the traditional Berber religion includes the traditional polytheistic, animist, and in some rare cases, shamanistic, religions of the Berber people. |
Asian origin religions. |
Indian-origin religions. |
In the Indian-origin religions, namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, the animistic aspects of nature worship and ecological conservation are part of the core belief system. |
Matsya Purana, a Hindu text, has a Sanskrit language shloka (hymn), which explains the importance of reverence of ecology. It states: "A pond equals ten wells, a reservoir equals ten ponds, while a son equals ten reservoirs, and a tree equals ten sons." Indian religions worship trees such as the Bodhi Tree and numerous superlative banyan trees, conserve the sacred groves of India, revere the rivers as sacred, and worship the mountains and their ecology. |
Panchavati are the sacred trees in Indic religions, which are sacred groves containing five type of trees, usually chosen from among the Vata ("Ficus benghalensis", Banyan), Ashvattha ("Ficus religiosa", Peepal), Bilva ("Aegle marmelos", Bengal Quince), Amalaki ("Phyllanthus emblica", Indian Gooseberry, Amla), Ashoka ("Saraca asoca", Ashok), Udumbara ("Ficus racemosa", Cluster Fig, Gular), Nimba ("Azadirachta indica", Neem) and Shami ("Prosopis spicigera", Indian Mesquite). |
The banyan is considered holy in several religious traditions of India. The "Ficus benghalensis" is the national tree of India. Vat Purnima is a Hindu festival related to the banyan tree, and is observed by married women in North India and in the Western Indian states of Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat. For three days of the month of Jyeshtha in the Hindu calendar (which falls in May–June in the Gregorian calendar) married women observe a fast, tie threads around a banyan tree, and pray for the well-being of their husbands. Thimmamma Marrimanu, sacred to Indian religions, has branches spread over five acres and was listed as the world's largest banyan tree in the Guinness World Records in 1989. |
In Hinduism, the leaf of the banyan tree is said to be the resting place for the god Krishna. In the Bhagavat Gita, Krishna said, "There is a banyan tree which has its roots upward and its branches down, and the Vedic hymns are its leaves. One who knows this tree is the knower of the Vedas." (Bg 15.1) |
In Buddhism's Pali canon, the banyan (Pali: "nigrodha") is referenced numerous times. Typical metaphors allude to the banyan's epiphytic nature, likening the banyan's supplanting of a host tree as comparable to the way sensual desire ("kāma") overcomes humans. |
Mun (also known as Munism or Bongthingism) is the traditional polytheistic, animist, shamanistic, and syncretic religion of the Lepcha people. |
Sanamahism is an ethnic religion of the Meitei people of in Northeast India. It is a polytheistic and animist religion and is named after Lainingthou Sanamahi, one of the most important deities of the Meitei faith. |
Shendao () is a term originated by Chinese folk religions influenced by, Mohist, Confucian and Taoist philosophy, referring to the divine order of nature or the Wuxing. |
The Shang dynasty's state religion was practiced from 1600 BCE to 1046 BCE, and was built on the idea of spiritualizing natural phenomena. |
Shinto is the traditional Japanese folk religion and has many animist aspects. The , a class of supernatural beings, are central to Shinto. All things, including natural forces and well-known geographical locations, are thought to be home to the kami. The kami are worshipped at kamidana household shrines, family shrines, and jinja public shrines. |
The Ryukyuan religion of the Ryukyu islands is distinct from Shinto, but shares similar characteristics. |
Kalash people of Northern Pakistan follow an ancient animistic religion identified with an ancient form of Hinduism. |
Muism, the native Korean belief, has many animist aspects. The various deities, called "kwisin," are capable of interacting with humans and causing problems if they are not honoured appropriately. |
Philippines indigenous religions. |
In the indigenous Philippine folk religions, pre-colonial religions of Philippines and Philippine mythology, animism is part of their core beliefs as demonstrated by the belief in Anito and Bathala as well as their conservation and veneration of sacred Indigenous Philippine shrines, forests, mountains and sacred grounds. |
Anito (lit. '[ancestor] spirit') refers to the various indigenous shamanistic folk religions of the Philippines, led by female or feminized male shamans known as "babaylan". It includes belief in a spirit world existing alongside and interacting with the material world, as well as the belief that everything has a spirit, from rocks and trees to animals and humans to natural phenomena. |
In indigenous Filipino belief, the Bathala is the omnipotent deity which was derived from Sanskrit word for the Hindu supreme deity "bhattara", as one of the ten avatars of the Hindu god Vishnu. The omnipotent Bathala also presides over the spirits of ancestors called Anito. Anitos serve as intermediaries between mortals and the divine, such as Agni (Hindu) who holds the access to divine realms; for this reason they are invoked first and are the first to receive offerings, regardless of the deity the worshipper wants to pray to. |
Abrahamic religions. |
Animism also has influences in Abrahamic religions. |
The Old Testament and the Wisdom literature preach the omnipresence of God (Jeremiah 23:24; Proverbs 15:3; 1 Kings 8:27), and God is bodily present in the incarnation of his Son, Jesus Christ. (Gospel of John 1:14, Colossians 2:9). Animism is not peripheral to Christian identity but is its nurturing home ground, its axis mundi. In addition to the conceptual work the term animism performs, it provides insight into the relational character and common personhood of material existence. |
With rising awareness of ecological preservation, recently theologians like Mark I. Wallace argue for animistic Christianity with a biocentric approach that understands God being present in all earthly objects, such as animals, trees, and rocks. |
Pre-Islamic Arab religion. |
Pre-Islamic Arab religion can refer to the traditional polytheistic, animist, and in some rare cases, shamanistic, religions of the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula. The belief in jinn, invisible entities akin to spirits in the Western sense dominant in the Arab religious systems, hardly fit the description of Animism in a strict sense. The jinn are considered to be analogous to the human soul by living lives like that of humans, but they are not exactly like human souls neither are they spirits of the dead. It is unclear if belief in jinn derived from nomadic or sedentary populations. |
New religious movements. |
Some modern pagan groups, including Eco-pagans, describe themselves as animists, meaning that they respect the diverse community of living beings and spirits with whom humans share the world and cosmos. |
The New Age movement commonly demonstrates animistic traits in asserting the existence of nature spirits. |
A shaman is a person regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of benevolent and malevolent spirits, who typically enters into a trance state during a ritual, and practices divination and healing. |
According to Mircea Eliade, shamanism encompasses the premise that shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments and illnesses by mending the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the soul or spirit restores the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness. The shaman also enters supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community. Shamans may visit other worlds or dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements. The shaman operates primarily within the spiritual world, which in turn affects the human world. The restoration of balance results in the elimination of the ailment. |
Abram, however, articulates a less supernatural and much more ecological understanding of the shaman's role than that propounded by Eliade. Drawing upon his own field research in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Americas, Abram suggests that in animistic cultures, the shaman functions primarily as an intermediary between the human community and the more-than-human community of active agencies—the local animals, plants, and landforms (mountains, rivers, forests, winds, and weather patterns, all of which are felt to have their own specific sentience). Hence, the shaman's ability to heal individual instances of dis-ease (or imbalance) within the human community is a byproduct of their more continual practice of balancing the reciprocity between the human community and the wider collective of animate beings in which that community is embedded. |
Animism entails the belief that "all living things have a soul", and thus, a central concern of animist thought surrounds how animals can be eaten, or otherwise used for humans' subsistence needs. The actions of non-human animals are viewed as "intentional, planned and purposive", and they are understood to be persons, as they are both alive, and communicate with others. |
In animist worldviews, non-human animals are understood to participate in kinship systems and ceremonies with humans, as well as having their own kinship systems and ceremonies. Harvey cited an example of an animist understanding of animal behavior that occurred at a powwow held by the Conne River Mi'kmaq in 1996; an eagle flew over the proceedings, circling over the central drum group. The assembled participants called out ('eagle'), conveying welcome to the bird and expressing pleasure at its beauty, and they later articulated the view that the eagle's actions reflected its approval of the event, and the Mi'kmaq's return to traditional spiritual practices. |
In animism, rituals are performed to maintain relationships between humans and spirits. Indigenous peoples often perform these rituals to appease the spirits and request their assistance during activities such as hunting and healing. In the Arctic region, certain rituals are common before the hunt as a means to show respect for the spirits of animals. |
Some animists also view plant and fungi life as persons and interact with them accordingly. The most common encounter between humans and these plant and fungi persons is with the former's collection of the latter for food, and for animists, this interaction typically has to be carried out respectfully. Harvey cited the example of Māori communities in New Zealand, who often offer "karakia" invocations to sweet potatoes as they dig up the latter. While doing so, there is an awareness of a kinship relationship between the Māori and the sweet potatoes, with both understood as having arrived in Aotearoa together in the same canoes. |
In other instances, animists believe that interaction with plant and fungi persons can result in the communication of things unknown or even otherwise unknowable. Among some modern Pagans, for instance, relationships are cultivated with specific trees, who are understood to bestow knowledge or physical gifts, such as flowers, sap, or wood that can be used as firewood or to fashion into a wand; in return, these Pagans give offerings to the tree itself, which can come in the form of libations of mead or ale, a drop of blood from a finger, or a strand of wool. |
Various animistic cultures also comprehend stones as persons. Discussing ethnographic work conducted among the Ojibwe, Harvey noted that their society generally conceived of stones as being inanimate, but with two notable exceptions: the stones of the Bell Rocks and those stones which are situated beneath trees struck by lightning, which were understood to have become Thunderers themselves. The Ojibwe conceived of weather as being capable of having personhood, with storms being conceived of as persons known as 'Thunderers' whose sounds conveyed communications and who engaged in seasonal conflict over the lakes and forests, throwing lightning at lake monsters. Wind, similarly, can be conceived as a person in animistic thought. |
The importance of place is also a recurring element of animism, with some places being understood to be persons in their own right. |
Animism can also entail relationships being established with non-corporeal spirit entities. |
In the early 20th century, William McDougall defended a form of animism in his book "Body and Mind: A History and Defence of Animism" (1911). |
Physicist Nick Herbert has argued for "quantum animism" in which the mind permeates the world at every level: |
Werner Krieglstein wrote regarding his "quantum Animism": |
Socio-political impact. |
Harvey opined that animism's views on personhood represented a radical challenge to the dominant perspectives of modernity, because it accords "intelligence, rationality, consciousness, volition, agency, intentionality, language, and desire" to non-humans. Similarly, it challenges the view of human uniqueness that is prevalent in both Abrahamic religions and Western rationalism. |
Animist beliefs can also be expressed through artwork. For instance, among the Māori communities of New Zealand, there is an acknowledgement that creating art through carving wood or stone entails violence against the wood or stone person and that the persons who are damaged therefore have to be placated and respected during the process; any excess or waste from the creation of the artwork is returned to the land, while the artwork itself is treated with particular respect. Harvey, therefore, argued that the creation of art among the Māori was not about creating an inanimate object for display, but rather a transformation of different persons within a relationship. |
Harvey expressed the view that animist worldviews were present in various works of literature, citing such examples as the writings of Alan Garner, Leslie Silko, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Walker, Daniel Quinn, Linda Hogan, David Abram, Patricia Grace, Chinua Achebe, Ursula Le Guin, Louise Erdrich, and Marge Piercy. |
Animist worldviews have also been identified in the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki. |
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist and impresario of Baroque music. Along with Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, Vivaldi ranks amongst the greatest Baroque composers and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe, giving origin to many imitators and admirers. He pioneered many developments in orchestration, violin technique and programmatic music. He consolidated the emerging concerto form into a widely accepted and followed idiom. |
Vivaldi composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other musical instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than fifty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as "The Four Seasons". Many of his compositions were written for the all-female music ensemble of the , a home for abandoned children. Vivaldi began studying for the priesthood at the age of 15 and was ordained at 25, but was given dispensation to no longer say public Masses due to a health problem. Vivaldi also had some success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua and Vienna. After meeting the Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, hoping for royal support. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi's arrival, and Vivaldi himself died in poverty less than a year later. |
After almost two centuries of decline, Vivaldi's musical reputation underwent a revival in the early 20th century, with much scholarly research devoted to his work. Many of Vivaldi's compositions, once thought lost, have been rediscovered – some as recently as 2015. His music remains widely popular in the present day and is regularly played all over the world. |
Birth and background. |
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born on 4 March 1678 in Venice, then the capital of the Republic of Venice. He was son of Giovanni Battista Vivaldi and Camilla Calicchio, as recorded in the register of San Giovanni in Bragora. |
He was baptized immediately after his birth at his home by the midwife, the reason for which has led to speculation. Most likely it was done due either to his poor health or to an earthquake that supposedly struck the city that day. In the trauma of the earthquake, Vivaldi's mother may have dedicated him to the priesthood. However, there was no earthquake on the day Vivaldi was born, and this rumor may originate from an earthquake that struck Venice on 17 April 1688. The [baptismal] ceremonies which had been omitted were supplied two months later. |
Vivaldi had five known siblings: Bonaventura Tomaso, Margarita Gabriela, Cecilia Maria, Francesco Gaetano, and Zanetta Anna. Vivaldi's health was problematic. One of his symptoms, ("tightness of the chest"), has been interpreted as a form of asthma. This did not prevent him from learning to play the violin, composing, or taking part in musical activities, although it did stop him from playing wind instruments. |
His father, Giovanni Battista, was a barber before becoming a professional violinist and was one of the founders of the , an association of musicians. He taught Antonio to play the violin and then toured Venice, playing the violin with his young son. Antonio was probably taught at an early age, judging by the extensive musical knowledge he had acquired by the age of 24, when he started working at the . |
The president of the was Giovanni Legrenzi, an early Baroque composer and the at St Mark's Basilica. It is possible that Legrenzi gave the young Antonio his first lessons in composition. Vivaldi's father may have been a composer himself: in 1689, an opera titled was composed by a Giovanni Battista Rossi—the name under which Vivaldi's father had joined the Sovvegno di Santa Cecilia. Vivaldi's early liturgical work (RV Anh 31) was written in 1691 at the age of thirteen. |
In 1693, at the age of fifteen, he began studying to become a priest. He was ordained in 1703, aged 25, and was soon nicknamed , "The Red Priest"; is Italian for "red" and would have referred to the color of his hair, a family trait. |
Ospedale della Pietà. |
While Vivaldi is most famous as a composer, he was regarded as an exceptional technical violinist as well. The German architect Johann Friedrich Armand von Uffenbach referred to Vivaldi as "the famous composer and violinist" and noted in his diary that "Vivaldi played a solo accompaniment excellently, and at the conclusion he added a free fantasy [an improvised cadenza] which absolutely astounded me, for it is hardly possible that anyone has ever played, or ever will play, in such a fashion." In September 1703, Vivaldi (24) became (master of violin) at an orphanage called the Pio Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy) in Venice; although it was his talents as a violinist which probably secured him the job, he soon became a successful teacher of music there. |
Over the next thirty years he composed most of his major works while working at the Ospedale. There were four similar institutions in Venice; their purpose was to give shelter and education to children who were abandoned or orphaned, or whose families could not support them. They were financed by funds provided by the Republic. The boys learned a trade and had to leave when they reached the age of fifteen. The girls received a musical education, and the most talented among them stayed and became members of the Ospedale's renowned orchestra and choir. |
Shortly after Vivaldi's appointment, the orphans began to gain appreciation and esteem abroad, too. Vivaldi wrote concertos, cantatas and sacred vocal music for them. These sacred works, which number over 60, are varied: they included solo motets and large-scale choral works for soloists, double chorus, and orchestra. In 1704, the position of teacher of "viola all'inglese" was added to his duties as violin instructor. The position of "maestro di coro", which was at one time filled by Vivaldi, required a lot of time and work. He had to compose an oratorio or concerto at every feast and teach the orphans both music theory and how to play certain instruments. |
His relationship with the board of directors of the Ospedale was often strained. The board had to vote every year on whether to keep a teacher. The vote on Vivaldi was seldom unanimous and went 7 to 6 against him in 1709. After a year as a freelance musician, he was recalled by the Ospedale with a unanimous vote in 1711; clearly during his year's absence the board had realized the importance of his role. He became responsible for all of the musical activity of the institution when he was promoted to "maestro de' concerti" (music director) in 1716 and responsible for composing two new concertos every month. |
In 1705, the first collection ("Connor Cassara") of his works was published by Giuseppe Sala: his Opus 1 is a collection of 12 sonatas for two violins and basso continuo, in a conventional style. In 1709, a second collection of 12 sonatas for violin and basso continuo appeared—Opus 2. A real breakthrough as a composer came with his first collection of 12 concerti for one, two, and four violins with strings, "L'estro armonico" (Opus 3), which was published in Amsterdam in 1711 by Estienne Roger, dedicated to Grand Prince Ferdinand of Tuscany. The prince sponsored many musicians including Alessandro Scarlatti and George Frideric Handel. He was a musician himself, and Vivaldi probably met him in Venice. "L'estro armonico" was a resounding success all over Europe. It was followed in 1714 by "La stravaganza" (Opus 4), a collection of concerti for solo violin and strings, dedicated to an old violin student of Vivaldi's, the Venetian noble Vettor Dolfin. |
In February 1711, Vivaldi and his father traveled to Brescia, where his setting of the Stabat Mater (RV 621) was played as part of a religious festival. The work seems to have been written in haste: the string parts are simple, the music of the first three movements is repeated in the next three, and not all the text is set. Nevertheless, perhaps in part because of the forced essentiality of the music, the work is considered to be one of his early masterpieces. |
Despite his frequent travels from 1718, the Ospedale paid him 2 sequins to write two concerti a month for the orchestra and to rehearse with them at least five times when in Venice. The orphanage's records show that he was paid for 140 concerti between 1723 and 1733. |
In early 18th-century Venice, opera was the most popular musical entertainment. It proved most profitable for Vivaldi. There were several theaters competing for the public's attention. Vivaldi started his career as an opera composer as a sideline: his first opera, "Ottone in villa" (RV 729) was performed not in Venice, but at the Garzerie Theater in Vicenza in 1713. The following year, Vivaldi became the impresario of the Teatro San Angelo in Venice, where his opera "Orlando finto pazzo" (RV 727) was performed. The work was not to the public's taste, and it closed after a couple of weeks, being replaced with a repeat of a different work already given the previous year. |
In 1715, he presented "Nerone fatto Cesare" (RV 724, now lost), with music by seven different composers, of which he was the leader. The opera contained eleven arias and was a success. In the late season, Vivaldi planned to put on an opera entirely of his own creation, "Arsilda, regina di Ponto" (RV 700), but the state censor blocked the performance. The main character, Arsilda, falls in love with another woman, Lisea, who is pretending to be a man. Vivaldi got the censor to accept the opera the following year, and it was a resounding success. |
During this period, the "Pietà" commissioned several liturgical works. The most important were two oratorios. "Moyses Deus Pharaonis", (RV 643) is now lost. The second, "Juditha triumphans" (RV 644), celebrates the victory of the Republic of Venice against the Turks and the recapture of the island of Corfu. Composed in 1716, it is one of his sacred masterpieces. All eleven singing parts were performed by girls of the orphanage, both the female and male roles. Many of the arias include parts for solo instruments—recorders, oboes, violas d'amore, and mandolins—that showcased the range of talents of the girls. |
Also in 1716, Vivaldi wrote and produced two more operas, "L'incoronazione di Dario" (RV 719) and "La costanza trionfante degli amori e degli odi" (RV 706). The latter was so popular that it was performed two years later, re-edited and retitled "Artabano re dei Parti" (RV 701, now lost). It was also performed in Prague in 1732. In the years that followed, Vivaldi wrote several operas that were performed all over Italy. |
His progressive operatic style caused him some trouble with more conservative musicians such as Benedetto Marcello, a magistrate and amateur musician who wrote a pamphlet denouncing Vivaldi and his operas. The pamphlet, "Il teatro alla moda", attacks the composer even as it does not mention him directly. The cover drawing shows a boat (the San Angelo), on the left end of which stands a little angel wearing a priest's hat and playing the violin. The Marcello family claimed ownership of the Teatro San Angelo, and a long legal battle had been fought with the management for its restitution, without success. The obscure text under the engraving mentions non-existent places and names: for example, "ALDIVIVA" is an anagram of "A. Vivaldi". |
In a letter written by Vivaldi to his patron Marchese Bentivoglio in 1737, he makes reference to his "94 operas". Only around 50 operas by Vivaldi have been discovered, and no other documentation of the remaining operas exists. Although Vivaldi may have been exaggerating, it is plausible that, in his dual role of composer and "impresario", he may have either written or been responsible for the production of as many as 94 operas—given that his career had by then spanned almost 25 years. While Vivaldi certainly composed many operas in his time, he never attained the prominence of other great composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti, Johann Adolph Hasse, Leonardo Leo, and Baldassare Galuppi, as evidenced by his inability to keep a production running for an extended period of time in any major opera house. |
Mantua and the" Four Seasons". |
In 1717 or 1718, Vivaldi was offered a prestigious new position as "Maestro di Cappella" of the court of prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, governor of Mantua, in the northwest of Italy He moved there for three years and produced several operas, among them "Tito Manlio" (RV 738). In 1721, he was in Milan, where he presented the pastoral drama "La Silvia" (RV 734); nine arias from it survive. He visited Milan again the following year with the oratorio "L'adorazione delli tre re magi al bambino Gesù" (RV 645, now lost). In 1722 he moved to Rome, where he introduced his operas' new style. The new pope Benedict XIII invited Vivaldi to play for him. In 1725, Vivaldi returned to Venice, where he produced four operas in the same year. |
During his time in Mantua, Vivaldi became acquainted with an aspiring young singer Anna Tessieri Girò, who would become his student, protégée, and favorite "prima donna". Anna, along with her older half-sister Paolina, moved in with Vivaldi and regularly accompanied him on his many travels. There was speculation as to the nature of Vivaldi's and Girò's relationship, but no evidence exists to indicate anything beyond friendship and professional collaboration. Vivaldi, in fact, adamantly denied any romantic relationship with Girò in a letter to his patron Bentivoglio dated 16 November 1737. |
At the height of his career, Vivaldi received commissions from European nobility and royalty, some of them are: |
Charles VI admired the music of the Red Priest so much that he is said to have spoken more with the composer during their one meeting than he spoke to his ministers in over two years. He gave Vivaldi the title of knight, a gold medal and an invitation to Vienna. Vivaldi gave Charles a manuscript copy of "La cetra", a set of concerti almost completely different from the set of the same title published as Opus 9. The printing was probably delayed, forcing Vivaldi to gather an improvised collection for the emperor. |
Like many composers of the time, Vivaldi faced financial difficulties in his later years. His compositions were no longer held in such high esteem as they once had been in Venice; changing musical tastes quickly made them outmoded. In response, Vivaldi chose to sell off sizeable numbers of his manuscripts at paltry prices to finance his migration to Vienna. The reasons for Vivaldi's departure from Venice are unclear, but it seems likely that, after the success of his meeting with Emperor Charles VI, he wished to take up the position of a composer in the imperial court. On his way to Vienna, Vivaldi may have stopped in Graz to see Anna Girò. |
Vivaldi moved to Vienna probably to stage operas, especially as he took up residence near the Kärntnertortheater. Shortly after his arrival in Vienna, Charles VI died, which left the composer without any imperial patronage or a steady source of income. Soon afterwards, Vivaldi became impoverished and died during the night of 27/28 July 1741, aged 63, of "internal infection", in a house owned by the widow of a Viennese saddlemaker. |
On 28 July, Vivaldi was buried in a simple grave in a burial ground that was owned by the public hospital fund. His funeral took place at St. Stephen's Cathedral. Contrary to popular legend, the young Joseph Haydn who was in the cathedral choir at the time had nothing to do with his burial, since no music was performed on that occasion. His funeral was attended by six pall-bearers and six choir boys ("Kuttenbuben"), at a "mean" cost of 19 florins and 45 kreuzer. Only a "Kleingeläut" (small peal of bells), the lowest class, was provided, at a cost of 2ƒ 36. |
Vivaldi was buried at the Bürgerspital-Gottesacker cemetery next to St Charles Church, a baroque church in an area which is now part of the site of the TU Wien university. The cemetery existed until 1807. The house where he lived in Vienna has since been destroyed; the Hotel Sacher is built on part of the site. Memorial plaques have been placed at both locations, as well as a Vivaldi "star" in the Viennese Musikmeile and a monument at the Rooseveltplatz. |
Only two, possibly three, original portraits of Vivaldi are known to survive: an engraving, an ink sketch and an oil painting. The engraving, which was the basis of several copies produced later by other artists, was made in 1725 by François Morellon de La Cave for the first edition of "Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione", and shows Vivaldi holding a sheet of music. The ink sketch, a caricature, was done by Ghezzi in 1723 and shows Vivaldi's head and shoulders in profile. It exists in two versions: a first jotting kept at the Vatican Library, and a much lesser-known, slightly more detailed copy recently discovered in Moscow. The oil painting, which can be seen in the International Museum and Library of Music of Bologna, is anonymous and is thought to depict Vivaldi due to its strong resemblance to the La Cave engraving. |
During his lifetime, Vivaldi was popular in many countries throughout Europe, including France, but after his death his popularity dwindled. After the end of the Baroque period, Vivaldi's published concerti became relatively unknown, and were largely ignored. Even his most famous work, "The Four Seasons", was unknown in its original edition during the Classical and Romantic periods. Vivaldi's work was rediscovered in the 20th century. |
A composition by Vivaldi is identified by RV number, which refers to its place in the "Ryom-Verzeichnis" or "Répertoire des oeuvres d'Antonio Vivaldi", a catalog created in the 20th century by the musicologist Peter Ryom. |
"Le quattro stagioni" (The Four Seasons) of 1723 is his most famous work. Part of "Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione" ("The Contest between Harmony and Invention"), it depicts moods and scenes from each of the four seasons. This work has been described as an outstanding instance of pre-19th-century program music. |
Vivaldi wrote more than 500 other concertos. About 350 of these are for solo instrument and strings, of which 230 are for violin, the others being for bassoon, cello, oboe, flute, viola d'amore, recorder, lute, or mandolin. About forty concertos are for two instruments and strings, and about thirty are for three or more instruments and strings. |
As well as about 46 operas, Vivaldi composed a large body of sacred choral music, such as the Magnificat RV 610. Other works include sinfonias, about 90 sonatas and chamber music. |
Some sonatas for flute, published as "Il Pastor Fido", have been erroneously attributed to Vivaldi, but were composed by Nicolas Chédeville. |