Vivaldi Inspires – Sedoka/Haiku – July 5,2014

The Four Seasons by Vivaldi is one of my favorite pieces by this composer!  This is Summer …from Carpe Diem’s Haiku Kai Special for this lovely musical prompt.  I decided to write not a normal haiku or tanka for this post but a sedoka with a haiku.

Summer

humid haziness
sun drenched morning dawns brightly
changeling northern Italy
sudden thunder-storms
swallows spiral in the wind
inconstant summer nature

teeming life
sun bursts through dark clouds
rain drenched bees

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Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice the fourth of March 1678 and died on the 28th of July 1741.  He was the son of a barber, who loved music and taught his son to play the violin when he was very young.  He showed an early aptitude for music.  He is now considered a master of Baroque composition, unfortunately in his day though he had a certain amount of success, he died in poverty.

Two points struck me when I looked into Vivaldi’s life:

The first being that there are no biographies of Vivaldi before the 20th century, because after his death his music fell into obscurity to only be revived in the 20th century!

The second is that he was an ordained Catholic priest though this really shouldn’t have surprised me, most of the lower class children were sent to the seminary when they showed special talents which their family couldn’t afford to develop.  For more about Antonio Vivaldi follow this Wikipedia Link.

Here’s another musical link to a piece by Vivaldi, maybe less know, but very beautiful.  I think you’ll enjoy it: