Vivaldi, whose father was a baker before he became a violinist and opera impresario, has been accused by detractors of turning out pieces of music the way a baker turns out loaves of bread. And yet Vivaldi offered, and offers, a good deal more than quantity. The twelve concertos comprised in his collection L'estro armonico (The Spirit of Harmony), for instance, were "the most influential music publication of the first half of the 18th century", in the words of his biographer, Michael Talbot. Bach, seven years Vivaldi's junior, transcribed some of them and was eager for more, and the composer and theorist, J.J. Quantz used Vivaldi's concerto form as an example of how such pieces ought to be composed. Vivaldi was a sickly child who suffered from asthma or possibly heart disease. He studied music while training for the priesthood. In 1703, he was ordained, and in the same year he became maestro di violino at the Ospedale della PietÆ., a church-run orphanage and school for indigent girls. In 1716 he became the institution's maestro de' concerti.

By then, his fame as a violin virtuoso and as a composer was international, and in 1718 he began a series of tours that took him and his court-like entourage through much of Italy (where he was known as "the red priest", because of the colour of his hair) and as far afield as Vienna and possibly Prague. In addition to hundreds of instrumental concertos and sonatas, he wrote a great deal of liturgical music and dozens of operas, and he himself became an opera impresario. Anna GirÜ., one of his pupils from the orphanage, made a name for herself as an opera singer in the mid-1720s, when she was in her mid-teens. From then until the end of Vivaldi's life, she and her sister travelled with the composer and were commonly believed to be his mistresses, although he denied the rumour. In middle age Vivaldi was a wealthy man, but lavish living and a decline in his popularity gradually reduced him to poverty. When he died, during a visit to Vienna, he had to be given a pauper's burial. Within a few decades of his death, his music had virtually been forgotten, but since the 1920s his prestige and popularity have steadily revived.

Harvey Sachs Biographical notes (c) 1996, by permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg

A selection of major works:

Orchestral: Piccolo Concertos, Flute Concertos, Oboe Concertos, Bassoon Concertos, Violin Concertos (published in groups of 12 concertos under collective titles: La Cetra, L'estro armonico, Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione (including "The Four Seasons"), La stravaganza), Concertos for Viola d'amore, Cello Concertos, Double Concertos, Concertos for Strings, Concertos for Multiple instruments,

Chamber: Chamber Concertos, Sonatas, Trio Sonatas.

Choral: Cantatas, Glorias, Juditha Triumphans, Magnificats, Motets, Psalms (Beatus vir, Dixit Dominus, Lauda Jerusalem, Laudate Dominum), Stabat Mater.

Stage works:

Operas: L'incoronazione di Dario, Montezuma, Orlando Furioso, Tito Manlio.