Violin Concerto No 1 in A minor, BWV 1041
     [Allegro]
     Andante
     Allegro assai

From 1717-23, Bach was in charge of secular music for the Court of Cöthen, but the 13-member instrumental ensemble available to him there fell short of what we would consider a modern orchestra. As a result, his orchestral pieces of those years stand with one foot firmly planted in the realm of chamber music. In 1723 he moved to Leipzig, where his time was largely given over to composing and directing sacred music. But from 1729 through 1741 (with two years’ sabbatical) he also found time to direct the city’s Collegium Musicum, a society of university students, interested amateurs, and a few professional musicians who met most Friday evenings to play music for their own pleasure as well as for the delectation of members of the public who cared to drop by. Scholars have traditionally maintained that Bach’s solo-violin concertos were composed in Cöthen and revived for the Leipzig Collegium Musicum. The assumption is based on slender evidence, and recent thought favors the likelihood that they actually originated in Leipzig around 1730. There is no doubt that Bach’s keyboard arrangements of these pieces date from his Leipzig Collegium Musicum years, when he turned the A-minor Violin Concerto into his G-minor Harpsichord Concerto (BWV 1058). The piece continues to be heard in both versions—as a concerto for violin and as a concerto for harpsichord. Both are accepted as authentic Bachian settings, but there is little question that, no matter when it was written, the violin version came first.

Densely concentrated and contrapuntally involved, this concerto betokens purposeful seriousness in its outer movements, while Bach provides greater relaxation in its central Andante—though even there not without a measure of tension.

Adagio in E major for Violin and Orchestra, K. 261
Rondo in C major for Violin and Orchestra, K. 373

Both Bach and Mozart were acknowledged as among the finest keyboard virtuosos of their eras, but both were also accomplished violinists. Mozart’s catalogue includes 33 sonatas and two sets of standalone variations for violin and piano, five violin concertos, plus his Concertone for Two Violins and his Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola. There also survive three standalone movements for violin and orchestra: the Adagio in E major, Rondo in B-flat major, and Rondo in C major.

He wrote the E-major Adagio on request from the Neapolitan-in- Salzburg violinist Antonio Brunetti as a replacement slow movement for his Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major (K. 219). It’s hard to figure out why Brunetti didn’t care for the original slow movement— perhaps he found it too long—but the replacement is lovely. Mozart differentiates the tone-color of the soloist from that of the orchestral violins by having the latter play with mutes. Today it would be rare for a violinist to employ the substitute Adagio in a performance of the full concerto, which leaves the E-major Adagio as a beautiful orphan in search of special programming opportunities.

In 1781, Mozart finally reached the limit of his frustration in Salzburg and left to seek his fortune in Vienna. The break was messy and involved Mozart getting kicked on his backside as a parting shot from his employer’s chief steward. It was in the midst of this turmoil that he composed his C-major Rondo (K. 373). Like the E-major Adagio, it was written expressly for Brunetti. It’s a charming, thoroughly entertaining movement (marked Allegretto grazioso) that would make a first-rate finale for a violin concerto—although not one of Mozart’s since he didn’t write any in C major.

Le quattro stagioni (The Four Seasons)

Concerto in E major, Op. 8, No. 1, La primavera (Spring)
     Allegro
     Largo
     Allegro

Concerto in G minor, Op. 8, No. 2, L’estade (Summer)
     Allegro non molto
     Adagio
     Presto

Concerto in F major, Op. 8, No. 3, L’autunno (Autumn)
     Allegro
     Adagio molto
     Allegro

Concerto in F minor, Op. 8, No. 4, L’inverno (Winter)
     Allegro non molto
     Largo
     Allegro

Antonio Vivaldi doubtless wrote these concertos to reflect his own technical facility, but they were also destined for a distant patron, the Bohemian Count Wenzel von Morzin, whom he served in absentia for many years as Music Master in Italy. These are the first four concertos in a collection of 12, published in Amsterdam as Vivaldi’s Op. 8, the entire collection being presented under the title Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (The Trial of Harmony and Invention) and bearing an ornate letter of dedication to the Count. “Pray do not be surprised,” he writes, “if, among these few and feeble concertos, Your Most Illustrious Lordship finds the Four Seasons which have so long enjoyed the indulgence of Your Most Illustrious Lordship’s kind generosity.” Those four concertos were clearly not new when they were published; the Count would have known them from manuscript copies Vivaldi had sent previously. The composer continues by noting that he has updated them by adding “sonnets, a very clear statement of all the things that unfold in them, so that I am sure they will appear new to you.”

It seems obvious that the music came first and the sonnets later. As literary specimens of Italian Baroque sonnets, they are not very impressive. That, combined with the fact that they display some linguistic usages that point to Venetian dialect, suggests that Vivaldi may have written them himself. Even without the sonnets attached, it would have been evident that the four concertos were illustrative, since their character shifts on a dime, often many times within an individual movement. In the original edition, the sonnets appear at the beginning of the solo violin part and lines from them are interlaced within the musical notation to show exactly which poetic descriptions relate to which musical phrases.