A View of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins - 1725 Words

Antonio Vivaldi is a famous Italian baroque composer, known by most Suzuki violin students who study his concertos or by audiences everywhere who have heard and love his composition of the Four Seasons. Having grown up as students of the Suzuki Violin Method, we recognize this composer and have experience performing his pieces. In addition to his many concertos written for solo violin, Vivaldi composed many concertos intended to be performed by two solo violins, accompanied by a small orchestra. Because we are both violinists, we chose to analyze the second movement of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins in A minor, RV 522, included in his L’Estro Armonico works. According to Michael Talbot, of Grove Music, as well as the liner notes†¦show more content†¦This concerto is made up of three movements, with the second movement entitled Larghetto e spiritoso in between two Allegro movements. Originally intended for two solo violins, violin I, violin II, viola, ce llo, and bass, this piece has been transposed in various forms and is now commonly performed with two solo violins and piano. While the other two movements are lively and exciting, the second movement provides a great contrast. It is in a different key and has a completely different feeling, one of heaviness and melancholy, though its chord progressions and harmonies make it appealing to audiences. This composition in its entirety gained Vivaldi his greatest popularity as it spread throughout Europe and became a standard for 18th century composers. In his compositions, as with this work, Vivaldi often borrowed chord patterns and structure from his other pieces. Unlike the other movements, which are in A minor, the second movement changes key to D minor. In this way there is a modulation between movements, however, within the movement there are no modulations. There are several variant qualities of the leading tone and dominant triads; both normally appearing in the same measur e throughout the piece. Examples of these variant qualities are in measures 2, 6, and 10. Interestingly, several times throughout the piece, the violin will play a C# against a variant quality dominant triad in the piano. An example of this is in measure 10. In the