Born: March 4, 1678. Venice, Italy
Died: July 28, 1741. Vienna, Austria
Music Listening Program Piece of the Week:
Spring from The Four Seasons, ;page 168 in your binder
Piece with narration by Mr. Jamesbarry...
• Monday
• Tuesday
• Wednesday
• Thursday
• Friday
From Classics for Kids
Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice, Italy, which is where he spent most of his life. His father taught him to play the violin, and the two would often perform together.
Antonio continued to study and practice the violin, even after he became a priest. He was called the "Red Priest" because of his flaming red hair. However, after a while, his bad asthma kept Antonio from saying Mass.
After that, Vivaldi spent all his time writing music and teaching. He taught at an orphanage for girls, and wrote a lot of music for the girls to play. People came from miles around to hear Vivaldi's talented students perform the beautiful music he had written.
Many people think Vivaldi was the best Italian composer of his time. He wrote concertos, operas, church music and many other compositions. In all, Antonio wrote over 500 concertos. His most famous set of concertos is The Four Seasons.
Follow the links below to learn more about Antonio Vivaldi. You can listen to radio shows about the composer, learn about his works, and see pictures of his home and compositions. There''s more biographical and historical information along with listening samples of his music.
The Classics for KIds sites has produced several informative and entertaining radio shows that you can listen to.
For more listening examples the Classical Music Pages site offers some great excepts of The Four Season, one of Vivaldi's best know works, along with some pictures and bibliography.
The Essentials of Music site has a more in depth biography and the Classical Net site offers a list of all the composer's works.
Finally check out Wikipeada's site for all sorts of information about the the composer along with several live performances of his work and still more links.
To learn more about the orchestra and live performances of classical music, check out these sites...
San Francisco Symphony for Kids
The New York Philharmonic for Kids
NPR Performance Today
Finally check out what kids around the country are doing with classical music. The NPR podcast Classicool Kids is taken from highlights from the NPR radio show From the Top, which showcases young musicians and artists.
If you wish to subscribe to the weekly podcast (it's free) click here.
To see an RSS feed and play episodes through you web browser or down load to you desktop click here.
Or find out when and where you can list to the radio broadcast of From the Top.
