Вивальдидің 12 скрипка концерті: «Гармониялық шабыт»

Set of 12 violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi

L'estro armonico (The Harmonic Inspiration), Op. 3, is a set of 12 concertos for string 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. Vivaldi composed a few concertos specifically for L'estro armonico, while other concertos of the set had been composed at an earlier date. Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot described the set as "perhaps the most influential collection of instrumental music to appear during the whole of the eighteenth century".

L'estro armonico (the harmonic inspiration) was published as Antonio Vivaldi's Op. 3 in Amsterdam in 1711 and dedicated to Ferdinando de'Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany under the title of "Ferdinando III" Vivaldi's Opp. 1 and 2 had only contained sonatas, thus L'estro armonico was his first collection of concertos appearing in print. It was also the first time Vivaldi chose a foreign publisher, Estienne Roger, instead of an Italian one. Vivaldi composed a few concertos specifically for L'estro armonico, while other concertos of the set had been composed at an earlier date.

L'estro armonico is a set of 12 concertos for string instruments. In the 1711 first publication each concerto was printed in eight parts:

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 variety 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. 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 training his pupils; this is recounted by one of them, Francis Fleming, in the autobiographical novel The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Timothy Ginnadrake:

The Irish violinist John Clegg, a child prodigy who studied with both Geminiani and Dubourg, is also known to have been an advocate of Vivaldi's concertos, although no records specifically mention L'estro armonico. To illustrate the extent to which "Vivaldi's Fifth" had entered the popular culture, Talbot mentions a 1743 musical entertainment where a performance was advertised in a programme involving "rope dancing, tumbling, vaulting and equilibres", with dances that included "the Drunken Peasant", a "Hornpipe in wooden shoes" and new "Morrice dances". In a 1760 essay, Oliver Goldsmith recorded the following anecdote about the celebrated blind Irish harpist Turlough O'Carolan:

The violinist is not named, but commentators have suggested Geminiani, Dubourg or Clegg; as Talbot points out, it is unlikely to have been Geminiani, because of his known antipathy to Vivaldi. Transcriptions for harp of the third and fifth concertos survive in the collections of another celebrated blind harpist, the Welshman John Parry; they are held in the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. The 1797 Encyclopædia Britannica records that the fifth concerto was also played on an Irish variant of Benjamin Franklin's celebrated invention, the glass harmonica. Under the entry for Harmonica or Armonica, a 35 glass harmonica is described, about which its inventor, the Dublin physician Edward Cullen, writes:

There were numerous arrangements for keyboard instruments in the eighteenth century, as described in the next section. One surviving eighteenth century transcription of Op. 3, No. 3 has been interpreted as an arrangement for glockenspiel. Themes from movements in the concertos were borrowed by other composers for vocal works: the opening themes from the last movement of Op. 3, No. 11 were borrowed by Bach for the first choral movement in his 1714 cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21; and the opening motif of the first movement of the fifth concerto is quoted by Handel in the aria Tho' the honours in his 1750 oratorio Theodora. The most substantial borrowing occurred in the burletta The Golden Pippin, first performed in 1773 at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, with the music of various composers arranged by John Abraham Fisher. The first movement of the fifth concerto was arranged for the final number, a sextet for the principal characters, Jupiter, Juno, Pallas, Venus, Paris and the Dragon. Op. 3, No. 6, RV 356, is an important piece in the Suzuki violin method, where students are first introduced to playing in a higher position.

CD title Record label Recording date Antonio Vivaldi: Concertos Discover 1994 Antonio Vivaldi: L'Estro Armonico, 12 Concerti Op. 3 Philips1963 Antonio Vivaldi: L'Estro Armonico, 12 Concerti Op. 3 Vanguard 1957 Antonio Vivaldi: Meisterwerke Zum Kennenlernen Art of Classics 1991 Classical Top 1000 Classic Mania Concerti Virtuosi Analekta Karajan Conducts Vivaldi & Bach Deutsche Grammophon L'Estro Armonico Digital Concerto 1990Masters of Classical Music: Vivaldi Delta Music for Double Bass & String Quartet Gallo 1998 The World's Greatest Composers: Vivaldi (Collector's Edition Music Tin) Madacy Entertainment 2008 The World's Greatest Composers: Vivaldi (Collector's Edition) Madacy Entertainment 2008 Vivaldi: Concerti Rivo Alto 1996 Vivaldi: Concerto a Quattro Violini; L'Estro Armonico Zig Zag Territoires 2007 Vivaldi: Concertos Opp. 3, 4, 8 & 9 (Box Set) Decca 2006 Vivaldi: Concertos (Box Set) Archiv Produktion 1987 Vivaldi: Concertos FSM Adagio Vivaldi: L'Estro Armonico Concertos, Op. 3 Nos. 1–12 Brilliant Classics Vivaldi: L'Estro Armonico, Op. 3, Vol. 1 (Hybrid SACD) Arts 2002 Vivaldi: L'estro armonico, Op. 3/1–6 Arte Nova 1995 Vivaldi: L'Estro Armonico, Op. 3, Nos.1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11 Naxos 1991 Vivaldi: L'estro Armonico, Op. 3, Vol. 1: Concertos No. 1–6 (DVD Audio) Arts 2003 Vivaldi: L'Estro Armonico, Op. 3, Vol. 1 Arts 2002 Vivaldi: L'Estro Armonico: Concertos Nos. 1–7 Point Classics 1994 Vivaldi: L'Estro Armonico Bongiovanni 1997 Vivaldi: L'Estro Armonico Chandos 2002 Vivaldi: L'estro Armonico Disky 2000 Vivaldi: L'estro Armonico London 1994 Vivaldi: L'Estro Armonico London 1998 Vivaldi: The Four Seasons (Box Set) Naxos 1993 Vivaldi: The Masterworks (Box Set) Brilliant ClassicsVivaldi: L'estro armonico, Op. 3Channel Classics2015