Antonio Vivaldi's 'The Four Seasons' is a pioneering example of program music, originally published with poems to tell a specific story.

Published in 1725 as part of 'Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione' (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention), Vivaldi's 'The Four Seasons' remains the most famous early example of program music. Program music is instrumental work intended to evoke images or convey a specific narrative. Vivaldi broke tradition by accompanying the sheet music with four Italian sonnets, likely written by himself, which provided a literal script for the auditory experience.Technically, Vivaldi used specific musical devices to achieve realism. In 'Spring' (La primavera), high-pitched violin trills represent birdsong, while the violas play a repetitive, rhythmic figure to mimic a barking dog. In 'Summer' (L'estate), the music uses rapid, descending scales to simulate the onset of a sudden hailstorm, a common occurrence in the Italian countryside during harvest season.Historians note that Vivaldi went as far as writing descriptive cues directly into the musical score. For instance, in the second movement of 'Spring,' he labeled the viola part 'Il cane che grida' (the barking dog) to guide the performer's articulation. This level of literal storytelling was revolutionary for the Baroque era, where music was typically abstract and focused purely on form rather than external imagery.The work's enduring legacy is supported by its structural innovation. Vivaldi utilized the ritornello form, where a recurring theme returns between solo passages, to create a sense of time passing. This allowed him to balance the demands of a formal concerto with the fluid needs of a story, forever changing how composers approached the relationship between sound and literature.