The Composer and the Text

Whether or not he had been much exposed to vocal music previously, Vivaldi became immersed in it from his teenage years onwards. He trained as a priest from 1693 to 1703, and this experience must have left him with a thorough knowledge of both canto fermo (plainsong) and canto figurato (figural music – the catch-all term for composed sacred vocal music). His work as a jobbing violinist alongside his father, Giovanni Battista Vivaldi (c.1655–1736), must have introduced him to countless sacred and operatic works; his first known public appearance as a violinist was at Christmas 1696, when he was engaged as a supernumerary player at the ducal church of S. Marco. Giovanni Battista, if he is identical with the Giambattista Rossi who composed a short dramatic work, La fedeltà sfortunata, in 1688, may even have possessed a composer's understanding of vocal music himself. It cannot be stressed enough that until the 1710s – perhaps, more exactly, until the publication of Antonio's L'estro armonico concertos in 1711 – Giovanni Battista was the ‘senior partner’ of the two in status as well as in age. He must have been a massive formative influence. His loyalty to Antonio's interests – with which, of course, his own and those of the whole Vivaldi family were bound up – caused him later to serve his son almost until his death (which occurred not many years before Antonio's own) as a diligent and reliable copyist, and perhaps also as an accompanist and partner in performances.