Analysis and other activities inspired by study of the slow movement of Summer from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

The structure of the 2nd movement of Summer is all about a slow melody with thunderous interruptions.

• Have a look at this:

• What is it?
• What’s missing?
• Copy it out correctly either through listening to a recording (tricky option!), or by looking at the score (easy option!).

• How about this…what is it?

  

• It’s a beautiful melody – why not learn to play it on your instrument – you may need to transpose it to fit the register.
• What’s missing from this one?

• What’s missing? It’s the thundery interruptions.
• Compose some thundery interruptions of your own, and surround this melody with them.

The melody also has some beautiful harmonies, as Vivaldi gently passes through the tonic of G minor to the relative major, Bb major, and back again.

• Find these chord sequences in the 2nd movement:

1. Bb   Bdim7   Cm   C#dim7   D   Gm   Ab   D7   D9   D7   C#dim7   D   Gm
2. Gm   D7   D   Gm
3. Gm   Dm   Cm   D7   C#dim7   D   Gm
4. Gm   Adim   F7   Bb   Eb   Bb   F   Bb

• A lovely idea would be to compose a melody of your own using this lovely chord sequence.

Here’s the sonnet that inspires this 2nd movement:

• I think this sonnet directly affects the structure, texture and tempo changes in this movement.
• What do you think?

You can find the whole series of activities relating to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons here.