To his contemporaries, he was il prete rosso—not for any revolutionary proclivities but for his flaming red hair. Yet Antonio Vivaldi did revolutionize the baroque, opening doors through which Bach and others would walk. His musical geography has yet to be thoroughly navigated by the musicologists, so we cannot make valid comparisons. He was virtually forgotten for centuries—there was no Mendelssohn for him as there was for Bach—but it may be that as we become more familiar with his music we will find in him a genius of towering proportions.
Vivaldi it was who took the concerto grosso out of the church and gave us the opera-oriented solo concerto. This great contribution to musical art was linked to a development of orchestral color, of dynamic variety, and of striking contrasts in mood and tempo from which the classical, the romantic, and the post-romantic all profited. It is notable, moreover, that though he pushed out the boundaries of music, his art was always governed by a strict sense of form. It is that form which in its flowering so delights us—as the liberties taken by the so called romantics also delight.
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