Quote of the day:

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
—H.L. Mencken

I only know Vivaldi from his Four Seasons concertos, and of those I couldn’t really pick out which season was which, except I think I could figure out that the storm music must be a summer storm.

But the Red Priest wrote more than 500 concertos, so I thought I should investigate some of his other works.

At one time it was believed that Vivaldi had written 600 concertos and Luigi Dallapiccola is alleged to have claimed that Vivaldi was “the composer not of six hundred concertos but of one concerto written six hundred times over.”

But Bach was greatly influenced by his work, so I think he was a better judge of the quality of Vivaldi’s output.

In any case, I’ve been listening to many of his concertos during the past few days, and I’ve found a lot to admire over and above the Four Seasons. 

For example, here is the Concerto for Lute and Two Violins, RV 93: