A picture book biography, told as if by Vivaldi himself, shows the famous musician's energetic personality and steadfast dedication to music.

In this enthralling new novel, Barbara Quick re-creates eighteenth-century Venice at the height of its splendor and decadence. A story of longing and intrigue, half-told truths and toxic lies, Vivaldi's Virgins unfolds through the eyes of Anna Maria dal Violin, one of the elite musicians cloistered in the foundling home where Antonio Vivaldi—known as the Red Priest of Venice—is maestro and composer. Fourteen-year-old Anna Maria, abandoned at the Ospedale della Pietà as an infant, is determined to find out who she is and where she came from. Her quest takes her beyond the cloister walls into the complex tapestry of Venetian society; from the impoverished alleyways of the Jewish Ghetto to a masked ball in the company of a king; from the passionate communal life of adolescent girls competing for their maestro's favor to the larger-than-life world of music and spectacle that kept the citizens of a dying republic in thrall. In this world, where for fully half the year the entire city is masked and cloaked in the anonymity of Carnival, nothing is as it appears to be. A virtuoso performance in the tradition of Girl with a Pearl Earring, Vivaldi's Virgins is a fascinating glimpse inside the source of Vivaldi's musical legacy, interwoven with the gripping story of a remarkable young woman's coming-of-age in a deliciously evocative time and place.

Chronicles the life of the seventeenth-century composer and discusses his major works, including "The Four Seasons"

"The book combines theory and practice, discussing the theoretical aspects and practical realization of the arrangement of tonal space in terms of their contemporary reception. Brover-Lubovsky's approach is therefore directed toward a study of the musical repertory mapped onto the canvas of contemporary musical thought, including theory, pedagogy, reception, and aesthetics. Tonal Space in the Music of Antonio Vivaldi is a substantial contribution to a better understanding of Vivaldi's individual style, while illuminating wider processes of stylistic development and of the diffusion of artistic ideas in the eighteenth century."--BOOK JACKET.

Every day, Antonio Vivaldi composes a new orchestral piece, and every day, the orphan Candida transcribes Vivaldi's masterpiece into sheet music for the Invisible Orchestra. Nobody notices Candida or appreciates her hard work. But one day Candida accidentally slips a poem she wrote into the sheet music and the girl so often behind the shadows gets recognized for her own talents. Vivaldi really did have an Invisible Orchestra made up of orphan girls he taught to play. This beautiful book pays tribute to their inspiration.

The Four Seasons and the rest of the concertos in Op. 8 represent Vivaldi's remarkable innovation in the field of the Baroque concerto. This detailed guide examines the work's origin and construction in a way that enables the reader to distinguish what is extraordinary about the Seasons and what constitutes the composer's customary method of 'characterising' the solo concerto. Drawing on recent research and his own expertise in the appraisal of Vivaldi's manuscripts, the author draws interesting and sometimes startling conclusions about the conception of the Seasons, the origin of their programme, the dating of the concertos and the rationale behind the collection's ritornello-form structures and aria-like slow movements. The significance of Vivaldi's idiosyncratic art is thus revealed in some of the most popular concert music of all time.