Friday, January 4, 2008

Vivaldi's Winter


Antonio Vivaldi prefaced each of the "Four Seasons" Concertos with a sonnet. Here's "Winter":

ALLEGRO MOLTO 
To shiver, frozen, amid icy snow
in the bitter blast of a horrible wind; 
to run constantly stamping one's feet; 
and to feel one's teeth chatter
 on account of the excessive cold; 

LARGO 
To spend restful, happy days at the fireside 
while the rain outside drenches a good 100; 

ALLEGRO 
to walk on the ice, and with slow steps
to move about cautiously for fear of falling; 
to go fast, to slip and fall down; ["falling to the ground"] 
to go on the ice again and run fast 
until the ice cracks and opens up;

LENTO ["Sirocco Wind"]
to hear coming out of the iron gates 

ALLEGRO MOLTO 
Sirocco, Boreas and all the winds at war:
that's winter, but of a kind to gladden one's heart. 
---Antonio Vivaldi, 1725

3 comments:

Martin LaBar said...

Thank you for your comments.

If I understand you, you want to have a list of other blogs that you read on one or both of your blogs.

On the blogger page, go to dashboard, then settings, then template, and add an element. In my blog, I called it "Some of the feeds I subscribe to." I had to name them, and include the blog's URLs, but that did it.

Triona Trog said...

That's an awesome poem; I love the bareness of the language the realistic detail! (reminds me of walking to work)

Hi Marie,
Thanks for the website (it's actually www.persecution.com) I'll have a look around!

I found Trumpet Voluntary in the classical book I bought. I'm sure it's a rather simpler arrangement than your version, but after playing a few notes I recognized it from somewhere in my aural memory. Where are you performing it?

cheerio
triona

Anonymous said...

Wonderful poem--an amazing counterpart to his music. I like your up-to-date language, but can't help wondering are there also translations in 18th c English too?