Antonio Lucio Vivaldi

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (1678–1741) was an Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, and Roman Catholic priest whose roughly five hundred concertos defined the genre and influenced Johann Sebastian Bach, who transcribed several of them. He is most widely known for The Four Seasons, a set of four violin concertos published in 1725.

Born in Venice to a violinist father at San Marco, he was ordained a priest in 1703 and nicknamed il Prete Rosso, "the Red Priest," for his auburn hair. Chronic respiratory difficulties, possibly bronchial asthma, soon excused him from saying Mass, and the same year he was appointed master of violin at the Ospedale della Pietà, a Venetian orphanage and music conservatory for girls where he would teach and compose for nearly four decades.

His L'estro armonico opus 3 of 1711 became one of the most influential collections of the early eighteenth century, circulating widely through Europe in printed editions. He wrote more than forty operas alongside the concertos, oratorios such as Juditha triumphans, and the choral Gloria in D major rediscovered in the twentieth century.

By the late 1730s Venetian taste had moved on, and he travelled to Vienna in 1740 hoping for patronage from Emperor Charles VI, who died shortly after his arrival. He died there in poverty the following July and was buried in a hospital cemetery; his manuscripts later resurfaced in two Piedmontese collections in the 1920s, sparking the modern Vivaldi revival.

The name Antonio is the Italian form of Antonius, an old Roman family name of disputed Etruscan origin, popularized as a baptismal name through Saint Anthony of Padua. He bore it as a priest-composer whose music outlasted two centuries of obscurity.