Vivaldi's Four Seasons has become arguably the most popular piece of classical music in the world with more performances and recordings than even Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. This achievement is further magnified when you consider that this music lay forgotten on a library shelf for two hundred years. It was not until 1950, when a recording of the Four Seasons appeared, that the piece gained notice. The success of The Four Seasons is an extraordinary journey for a piece of music that had lived so long in utter oblivion.

The popularity of The Four Seasons also points out how much Antonio Vivaldi's music owes it's current acclaim to the world of technology for without audio recordings, it is doubtful that Vivaldi's music would have gained its current wide renown.

By now everyone has heard at least one of the movements from The Four Seasons. You may not have known the piece’s title but its most popular movements, especially the "Spring" Allegros, are quite ubiquitous in our culture having been used hundreds of times in national and regional commercials, movies, TV shows, as background music in restaurants, music-on-hold messages, not to mention constant radio play on classical music stations. If you’re not sure that you’ve heard a movement from The Four Seasons please listen to this recording from the UniqueTracks royalty-free classical music site. You can hear all 12 movements here but if you’re in a hurry, just listen to the first movement, you will undoubtedly recognize the piece.

The addictive rhythmic vitality of so much of Antonio Vivaldi's music has led to its rebirth and great popularity amongst classical music lovers and the general public as well. Much like the music of today, Vivaldi's music, especially his opening movement Allegros, have a driving rhythmic vitality and are brimming with energy (The Italian word "Allegro" is a tempo indication meaning "lively" or "fast"). Vivaldi’s melodies are simple, and easy to listen to. The tempo Adagio slow movements evoke a warm and beautiful sensibility ("Adagio" means slowly).

Vivaldi was a master violinist and it is thought that he wrote the Four Seasons as a performance vehicle to showcase his own virtuosity. The violin part is quite challenging indeed even by today’s standards.

An often-overlooked compositional force in The Four Seasons is its programmatic basis. In music, the term "programmatic" refers to a composer consciously trying to represent something non-musical, like a story or an image, in the composition. This type of composing is called tone-painting; the composition is a tone poem.

In the Four Seasons, Vivaldi takes four poems titled Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter and transforms various passages directly into music. He is quite literal. When the poem speaks of birds, we hear bird calls in the music. Throughout the movements you can hear musical depictions of streams, thunder, lightning, a dog barking, even drunkards that have fallen asleep. These images can be found painted musically throughout the piece.

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