Antonio Vivaldi, The Four Seasons, and the Caricature of Wealth
Despite his death almost 200 years before the premier of the first modern film to feature an accompanying score, Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) is credited as part of the music department for 70 films and on the soundtrack of 439 films. At least 95 of those soundtracks feature the “Spring” movement from his 1723 cycle of violin concertos entitled “The Four Seasons.”
Vivaldi and other composers of the Baroque period have had their music featured in many films, often as stock music meant to evoke a sense of bourgeois excess, fancy tastes, or extreme wealth. Vivaldi intended each concerto in “The Four Seasons” to evoke emotions of a particular season and serves as an example of pre-19th Century programmatic music. The playfulness and lighthearted nature of “Spring” indeed reminds one of the first sublime day of the new year, when children may doff their winter coats and play in the rolling meadows. However, “La primavera” (Spring), the first concerto in Vivaldi’s set, is most often used in modern films as an auditory cue that coincides with visuals of expensive dinnerware, resplendent mansions, and stately chandeliers.
The first film to credit Vivaldi was Les Enfants Terribles in 1950, and the first to feature “Spring” was A Metafisica dos Chocolates in 1967. The most recent to feature “Spring” was 2016’s The Secret Life of Pets. It is perhaps the most instantly recognizable piece of Baroque music to the general public, even if few could accurately identify it. It is unfortunate that Vivaldi’s intent for the music to cause the listener to reminisce about the spring season has been forgotten and replaced by an almost instant association with fabulous, outrageous wealth. It is a harmonic and melodic caricature, one that tells us that the wealth we are seeing is to be mocked, made fun of, even hated for its flamboyance. Much like Alex is forced to associate Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with violence and sex in A Clockwork Orange, we have been conditioned by our exposure to (and sometimes hatred of) extreme wealth in films and the near-ubiquity of Vivaldi’s “Spring” as accompaniment to that wealth.
Perhaps Vivaldi would be happy with this state of affairs. After all, there are many, many other Baroque composers whose work has been forgotten over the last 200 years. It is useless to speculate on whether or not he would approve of the use of his music to portray extravagant wealth and privilege. However, it is likely that he would at least understand the use of “Spring” in this context, for art music has always been elitist, reserved for the intellectual and wealthy, and often both. Buying expensive season tickets to concert halls to listen to music that requires study and patience is an activity that invites the most snobbish of patrons. Music, like so many other cultural artifacts, is reflective of the struggle between classes. This is as true today as it was in 1723, so perhaps it is not so surprising that a piece of art music created by and intended for the upper class has endured as an icon of the rich and powerful.
