Artist Biography by Richie Unterberger

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Although they were one of the very biggest rock & roll groups of the 1960s, the Four Seasons -- unlike, say, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, or the Byrds -- don't excite automatic respect from listeners and critics. A big factor is their most distinguishing trademark, the high falsetto vocals of their lead singer, Frankie Valli. Many also found their material -- romantic tunes with tightly arranged group harmonies that updated the doo wop ethos into the '60s -- a little too clean-cut. Whatever your feelings about the group, though, there's no denying their considerable importance. No other white American group of the time, save the Beach Boys, boasted such intricate harmonies, though the Four Seasons were much more firmly in the Italian-American doo wop tradition. Their uptown production values were contemporary and, in certain respects, innovative. The R&B influence in their music was large, and some of their early singles enjoyed success with the R&B audience. They were immensely successful, making the Top Ten 13 times between 1962 and 1967 with hits like 'Sherry,' 'Big Girls Don't Cry,' 'Dawn,' 'Rag Doll,' and 'Let's Hang On.'

Four Seasons Classical Music Youtube

The Four Seasons. The Four Seasons (Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a set of four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. Composed in 1725, The Four Seasons is Vivaldi’s best-known work, and is among the most popular pieces in the classical music repertoire. Library of Great Arts - Vivaldi - The Four Seasons The Rumanian State Orchestra $12.99 Set of 2 Cassettes: Piano by Candlelight and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons(30120).

The Four Seasons had been around for a long time before they had their first hit in 1962. Frankie Valli had made his first record way back in 1953, and in 1956 made a little noise with the Four Lovers' 'Apple of My Eye.' The Newark, New Jersey group also included future Four SeasonTommy DeVito on guitar and Nick Massi on bass, and in subsequent years Valli would record flops for RCA, Decca, Cindy, and Gone, sometimes as a soloist, sometimes with groups. In the early '60s, the group, now known as the Four Seasons, were doing backup vocals for other artists.

Philadelphia producer Bob Crewe started working with the Seasons in 1962, and his contributions would be inestimable in the following years. Not only did he produce all of their big '60s hits, but he would write much of their material in collaboration with group member Bob Gaudio. It was Valli's near-soprano, though, that dominated their number one hit 'Sherry,' as it would on the rest of their hits. 'Big Girls Don't Cry,' 'Walk Like a Man,' and 'Candy Girl' all followed within the next year -- big smashes all, the first two (like 'Sherry') featuring stomping, almost martial handclaps. 'Candy Girl' offered evidence of versatility, with its samba-like rhythms and glissando flourishes.

The British Invasion did little to diminish the Seasons' fortunes, at least initially. In 1964, they moved from Vee-Jay (which also, for a brief time, had rights to the Beatles) to Philips. Their production became more sophisticated and dramatic while remaining unabashedly pop, and in 1964 they had several of their biggest hits: 'Dawn,' 'Ronnie,' 'Rag Doll,' 'Save It for Me,' and 'Big Man in Town' (as well as a B-side gem, 'Silence Is Golden,' which would be a hit in 1967 for the Tremeloes). The Four Seasons' influence, oddly, was also felt on a couple of tracks by the biggest British Invasion bands: the Beatles' 'Tell Me Why' and the Rolling Stones' 'The Singer Not the Song' both launched into ear-straining falsettos at points, whether as a satire, tribute, or both.

The Seasons' winning streak continued through 1967, although they would never again be as huge. 'Let's Hang On,' 'Working My Way Back to You,' 'Opus 17,' 'I've Got You Under My Skin,' 'Beggin',' and 'Marianne' were all big hits, though, working in some mild soul influences. Just for kicks, they released a couple of silly singles under a pseudonym, the Wonder Who?, that even pre-teens quickly identified as the Seasons in disguise. The Wonder Who?'s 1965 Top 20 hit, 'Don't Think Twice,' easily qualifies as the most incongruous Dylan cover ever to hit the Top 40.

Guitar-oriented, more socially conscious rock and soul had been making inroads into the Four Seasons' audience for a while, but the times really caught up with them by the end of 1967. The group would only make the Top 40 one more time before their mid-'70s comeback. In the late '60s, Valli, while maintaining his position in the Seasons, had kicked off a solo career that went straight for the heart of showbiz pop with his biggest single, the number two hit 'Can't Take My Eyes Off You.' The Four Seasons did attempt to address social concerns of the day on the late-'60s album Genuine Imitation Life Gazette, but it was not generally well received.

The Four Seasons struggled into the '70s; by the time they signed with a Motown subsidiary in 1971, Valli and Gaudio were the only original members left. They briefly returned to the top of the charts in the mid-'70s with 'Who Loves You' and the nostalgic 'December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)'; at the same time, Valli had a resurgence as a soloist, reaching number one with 'My Eyes Adored You' and making the Top Ten with 'Swearin' to God.' It couldn't last, though; they couldn't turn back the clock to December 1963, when they reigned as the most successful white rock group in the world, unaware of the oncoming invasion of the Beatles. Still, Valli's full-time solo career was given an enormous boost when he was chosen to sing the newly written Barry Gibb title song for the movie version of the Broadway musical Grease; the single rose to number one in August 1978.

Sporadic Four Seasons reunion tours followed in the '80s and '90s, some with Valli and some without. The group also recorded, releasing Streetfighter in 1985 and Hope + Glory in 1992, both of which contemporized the group's sounds.

During the 2000s, Valli and Gaudio were involved in developing the Four Seasons story into a Broadway musical, a stage biography based on the lives and careers of Valli, Tommy DeVito, Massi, and Gaudio. Jersey Boys became the hit of the 2005-2006 season, winning the Tony Award for best musical. The show, and its inevitable film version released in 2014, helped revitalize the group's career. Tommy DeVito died on September 21, 2020, due to complications from the COVID-19 virus. He was 92 years old.

For the similarly titled work by Antonio Vivaldi, see The Four Seasons (Vivaldi).

The Seasons (German: Die Jahreszeiten, Hob. XXI:3) is a secular oratorio by Joseph Haydn, first performed in 1801.

History[edit]

Haydn was led to write The Seasons by the great success of his previous oratorio The Creation (1798), which had become very popular and was in the course of being performed all over Europe.

Libretto[edit]

The libretto for The Seasons was prepared for Haydn, just as with The Creation, by Baron Gottfried van Swieten, an Austrian nobleman who had also exercised an important influence on the career of Mozart (among other things commissioning Mozart's reorchestration of Handel's Messiah).^[1] Van Swieten's libretto was based on extracts from the long English poem 'The Seasons' by James Thomson (1700–1748), which had been published in 1730.

Whereas in The Creation Swieten was able to limit himself to rendering an existing (anonymous) libretto into German, for The Seasons he had a much more demanding task. Olleson writes, 'Even when Thomson's images were retained, they required abbreviation and adaptation to such an extent that usually no more than faint echoes of them can be discerned, and the libretto often loses all touch with the poem which was its starting point. Increasingly during the course of the oratorio, the words are essentially van Swieten's own or even imported from foreign sources.'^[2]

Like The Creation, The Seasons was intended as a bilingual work. Since Haydn was very popular in England (particularly following his visits there in 1791–1792 and 1794–1795), he wished the work to be performable in English as well as German. Van Swieten therefore made a translation of his libretto back into English, fitting it to the rhythm of the music. Olleson notes that it is 'fairly rare' that the translated version actually matches the Thomson original.^[3] Van Swieten's command of English was not perfect, and the English text he created has not always proven satisfying to listeners; for example, one critic writes, 'Clinging to [the] retranslation, however, is the heavy-handed imagery of Haydn's sincere, if officious, patron. Gone is the bloom of Thomson's original.'^[4] Olleson calls the English text 'often grotesque', and suggests that English-speaking choruses should perform the work in German: 'The Seasons is better served by the decent obscurity of a foreign language than by the English of the first version.'^[5] Van Swieten's words also show some inconsistency in tone, ranging from the rustically humorous (for instance, a movement depicting a wily peasant girl playing a trick on her rich suitor) to the uplifting (as in several large-scale choruses praising God for the beauty of nature).^[6]

Composition, premiere, and publication[edit]

The composition process was arduous for Haydn, in part because his health was gradually failing and partly because Haydn found van Swieten's libretto to be rather taxing. Haydn took two years to complete the work.

Like The Creation, The Seasons had a dual premiere, first for the aristocracy whose members had financed the work (Schwarzenberg palace, Vienna, 24 April 1801), then for the public (Redoutensaal, Vienna, 19 May).^[7] The oratorio was considered a clear success, but not a success comparable to that of The Creation. In the years that followed, Haydn continued to lead oratorio performances for charitable causes, but it was usually The Creation that he led, not The Seasons.

The aging Haydn lacked the energy needed to repeat the labor of self-publication that he had undertaken for The Creation and instead assigned the new oratorio to his regular publisher at that time, Breitkopf & Härtel, who published it in 1802.^[8]

Forces[edit]

The Seasons is written for a fairly large late-Classical orchestra, a chorus singing mostly in four parts, and three vocal soloists, representing archetypal country folk: Simon (bass), Lucas (tenor), and Hanne (soprano). The solo voices are thus the same three as in The Creation.

The orchestral parts are for 2 flutes (1st doubling on piccolo in one aria), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons and contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 1 alto trombone, 1 tenor trombone and 1 bass trombone, timpani, percussion, and strings.

However, some of the key early performances at the Tonkünstler Society in Vienna were for much larger forces (as was the fashion at the time); Haydn led performances for both large and small ensembles. Material surviving from these large-scale Viennese performances indicates the use of tripled wind (arranged into three separate groups, each one similar to the Harmonie wind ensembles of the time), doubled brass and as many as ten horn players, backed up by at least eighty string players and similar numbers of singers.^[9]

In addition, a fortepiano usually plays in secco recitatives, with or without other instruments from the orchestra.

Musical content[edit]

The oratorio is divided into four parts, corresponding to Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, with the usual recitatives, arias, choruses, and ensemble numbers.

Among the more rousing choruses are a hunting song with horn calls, a wine celebration with dancing peasants^[10] (foreshadowing the third movement of Beethoven'sPastoral Symphony), a loud thunderstorm (ditto for Beethoven's fourth movement), and an absurdly stirring ode to toil:

The huts that shelter us,

The wool that covers us,

The food that nourishes us,

All is thy grant, thy gift,

O noble toil.

Haydn remarked that while he had been industrious his whole life, this was the first occasion he had ever been asked to write a chorus in praise of industry.

Some especially lyrical passages are the choral prayer for a bountiful harvest, 'Sei nun gnädig, milder Himmel' (Be thou gracious, O kind heaven), the gentle nightfall that follows the storm, and Hanne's cavatina on Winter.

The work is filled with the 'tone-painting' that also characterized The Creation: a plowman whistles as he works (in fact, he whistles the well-known theme from Haydn's own Surprise Symphony), a bird shot by a hunter falls from the sky, there is a sunrise (evoking the one in The Creation), and so on.

The 'French trash' episode[edit]

There is some evidence that Haydn himself was not happy with van Swieten's libretto, or at least one particular aspect of tone-painting it required, namely the portrayal of the croaking of frogs, which is found during the serene movement that concludes Part II, 'Summer'. The version of the anecdote given below is from the work of Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon.

In 1801, August Eberhard Müller (1767–1817) prepared a piano version of the oratorio's orchestra part, for purposes of rehearsal and informal performance. Haydn, whose health was in decline, did not take on this task himself, but he did look over a draft of Müller's work and wrote some suggested changes in the margins. Amid these changes appeared an off-the-cuff complaint about van Swieten's libretto:

NB! This whole passage, with its imitation of the frogs, was not my idea: I was forced to write this Frenchified trash. This wretched idea disappears rather soon when the whole orchestra is playing, but it simply cannot be included in the pianoforte reduction.^[11]

Robbins Landon continues the story as follows:

Müller foolishly showed the passage in the enclosed sheet, quoted above, to the editor of the Zeitung für die elegante Welt,^[12] who promptly included it in support of his criticism of Swieten's wretched^[13] libretto. Swieten was enraged, and [Haydn's friend] Griesinger reported that His Excellency 'intends to rub into Haydn's skin, with salt and pepper, the assertion that he [Haydn] was forced into composing the croaking frogs.'^[14]

A later letter of Griesinger's indicates that the rift thus created was not permanent. Imovie free video editor for mac.

The term 'Frenchified trash' was almost certainly not a gesture of contempt for France or French people; Haydn in fact had friendly relationships with French musicians (see, e.g. Paris symphonies). Rather, Haydn was probably referring to an earlier attempt by van Swieten to persuade him to set the croaking of the frogs by showing him a work by the French composer André Grétry that likewise included frog-croaking.^[15]

Critical reception[edit]

Although the work has always attracted far less attention than The Creation, it nonetheless has been strongly appreciated by critics. Charles Rosen calls both oratorios 'among the greatest works of the century', but judges The Seasons to be the musically more successful of the two.^[16]Daniel Heartz, writing near the end of a massive three-volume account of the Classical era, writes 'The Hunting and Drinking choruses first led me to study Haydn's music more extensively beginning some forty years ago .. no music has elated me more in old age than The Seasons.'^[17]Michael Steinberg writes that the work 'ensure[s] Haydn's premiere place with Titian, Michelangelo and Turner, Mann and Goethe, Verdi and Stravinsky, as one of the rare artists to whom old age brings the gift of ever bolder invention.'^[18] Opinions vary as to the nature of the relationship between The Creation and The Seasons – whether they are two separate works or an enormous religious diptych. Van Swieten, at any rate, was certainly keen to follow up on the former's success with another large-scale pictorial work in a similar vein,^[19] and some authors have seen the two oratorios as constituting the first and second act of a metaphorical 'vast sacred opera'.^[20]

Notes[edit]

1. ^Richard Drakeford, notes to Philips recording 464 035-2 (1999).
2. ^Olleson (2009:357)
3. ^Olleson (2009:357)
4. ^Bernard Holland, writing in the New York Times, January 23, 1988.
5. ^Olleson (2009:357)
6. ^Drakeford (1999).
7. ^Clark (2005:xvi)
8. ^Jones (2009:25)
9. ^Paul McCreesh, in notes to Signum Records CD SIGCD480, Haydn: The Seasons (2017).
10. ^This chorus ('Juhe, der Wein ist da', 'Huzzah, the wine is there') contains the so-called 'drunk fugue', described by Humphreys as 'a riotous fugal chorus in which the voices drop the subject halfway through the entries (as in a drunken stupor) while the accompanying instruments are left to complete it.' (Humphreys 2009: 111)
11. ^Cited from Robbins Landon (1959, 197)
12. ^German: 'Journal for the elegant world'
13. ^It is not clear whether this is Robbins Landon's opinion or the journal editor's.
14. ^Robbins Landon (1959, 197)
15. ^Dies (1810, 187)
16. ^Rosen (1971, 370)
17. ^Heartz (2009:644 fn.)
18. ^Steinberg's words appeared originally in program notes; they are quoted here from Heartz (2009:644)
19. ^Karl Schumann, notes to Philips recording 464 034-2 (1999).
20. ^Marc Vignal, notes to Philips recording 464 034-2 (1999).

References[edit]

Four Seasons Classical

• Clark, Caryl (2005) The Cambridge Companion to Haydn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Dies, Albert Christoph (1810) Biographical Accounts of Joseph Haydn, Vienna. English translation by Vernon Gotwals, in Haydn: Two Contemporary Portraits, Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press.
• Heartz, Daniel (2009) Mozart, Haydn, and Early Beethoven: 1781-1802. New York: Norton.
• Humphreys, David (2009) 'Fugue,' article in David Wyn Jones, ed., Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Jones, David Wyn (2009) 'Breitkopf & Härtel,' article in David Wyn Jones, ed., Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Olleson, Edward (2009) 'Seasons, The', article in David Wyn Jones, ed., Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Robbins Landon, H. C. (1959) The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn. London: Barrie and Rockliff.
• Rosen, Charles (1971) The Classical Style. New York: Norton.

Four Seasons Classical Music

External links[edit]

Vivaldi Four Seasons Classical Guitar

• Haydn: The Seasons - complete recording from the Internet_Archive
• German libretto.
• English translation.

Four Seasons Classical Music Vivaldi