Since 1978, the 300th anniversary of Vivaldi's death, there has been an explosion of serious writing about his music, life and times. Much of this has taken the form of articles published in academic journals or conference proceedings, some of which are not easy to obtain. The twenty-two articles selected by Michael Talbot for this volume form a representative selection of the best writing on Vivaldi from the last 30 years, featuring such major figures in Vivaldi research as Reinhard Strohm, Paul Everett, Gastone Vio and Federico Maria Sardelli. Aspects covered include biography, Venetian cultural history, manuscript studies, genre studies and musical analysis. The intention is to serve as a 'first port of call' for those wishing to learn more about Vivaldi or to refresh their existing knowledge. An introduction by Michael Talbot reviews the state of Vivaldi scholarship past and present and comments on the significance of the articles.

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is the most up-to-date body of musical knowledge ever gathered together.

The composition of the solo concerto studied as an evolving debate (rather than a static technique), and for its stylistic features.

Eminent musicologist H. C. Robbins Landon rediscovers the composer through an accessible and musically informed biography. Presenting documentation about Vivaldi discovered after the Baroque revival in the 1930s, Robbins Landon explores a fascinating life: Vivaldi was a Catholic priest who gave up celebrating Mass almost as soon as he was ordained; we was a lifelong invalid, but could travel all over Europe when it suited him; he was a dazzling violin virtuoso but died a pauper. Robbins Landon masterfully integrates musical analysis and biography, using each to illuminate the other and to unravel the riddle of Vivaldi's identity and extraordinary gift. This book includes illustrations of eighteenth-century Venice and several newly translated letters.

Federico Maria Sardelli writes from the perspective of a professional baroque flautist and recorder-player, as well as from that of an experienced and committed scholar, in order to shed light on the bewildering array of sizes and tunings of the recorder and transverse flute families as they relate to Antonio Vivaldi's compositions. Sardelli draws copiously on primary documents to analyse and place in context the capable and surprisingly progressive instrumental technique displayed in Vivaldi's music. The book includes a discussion of the much-disputed chronology of Vivaldi's works, drawing on both internal and external evidence. Each known piece by him in which the flute or the recorder appears is evaluated fully from historical, biographical, technical and aesthetic standpoints. This book is designed to appeal not only to Vivaldi scholars and lovers of the composer's music, but also to players of the two instruments, students of organology and those with an interest in late baroque music in general. Vivaldi is a composer who constantly springs surprises as, even today, new pieces are discovered or old ones reinterpreted. Much has happened since Sardelli's book was first published in Italian, and this new English version takes full account of all these new discoveries and developments. The reader will be left with a much fuller picture of the composer and his times, and the knowledge and insights gained from minutely examining his music for these two wind instruments will be found to have a wider relevance for his work as a whole. Generous music examples and illustrations bring the book's arguments to life.

The Reader's Guide to Music is designed to provide a useful single-volume guide to the ever-increasing number of English language book-length studies in music. Each entry consists of a bibliography of some 3-20 titles and an essay in which these titles are evaluated, by an expert in the field, in light of the history of writing and scholarship on the given topic. The more than 500 entries include not just writings on major composers in music history but also the genres in which they worked (from early chant to rock and roll) and topics important to the various disciplines of music scholarship (from aesthetics to gay/lesbian musicology).

Detailed survey of Vivaldi's unjustly neglected chamber cantatas, showing them to stand comparison with his more famous works. Vivaldi's chamber cantatas for solo voice, some forty in total, are steadily gaining in popularity: but because of their relatively small place in the oeuvre of a composer famed for his productivity, and also on account of the general scholarly neglect of their genre, they are little discussed in the literature. This book comprehensively explores their literary and musical background, their relation to the composer's biography, the chronology of their composition, and their musical qualities. Each cantata is discussed individually, but there is also a broader consideration of aspects concerning them collectively, such as performance practice, topical allusion, and the conventions of Italian verse. The author argues that while Vivalid's cantatas are not as innovative as his concertos and operas, he produced several masterpieces in the genre that rank with his best music. MICHAEL TALBOT is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Liverpool.