At the beginning of my new book The Echoes of Love, my heroine, Venetia, and hero, Paolo, are weaving their way through the crowds celebrating the Venice Carnival, and what better music to be stirring the revellers than that of Antonio Vivaldi?

Vivaldi (1678–1741) was born and bred in Venice, and he grew up to become a composer and a violinist. To this day, he’s revered as one of greatest Baroque composers, and his works have been hugely influential in European culture and in the inspiration of musicians who followed in his footsteps.

Here are some little-known facts about the great composer:

• He was known as il Prete Rosso (the Red Priest) for the vibrant shade of his hair!
• He was ordained as a Catholic priest, but due to ill health he had very few duties in the Church.
• For many years of his life Vivaldi worked as the ‘master of violin’ at the Republic-funded Ospedale della Pietà orphanage in Venice. The aims was to do more than shelter homeless children, but also to educate them. With that in mind, boys learned a trade but girls were members of the Ospedale orchestra and choir, which gained quite a reputation for its quality with Vivaldi at the helm. Many of Vivaldi’s works (more than 60, in fact) were thus written for girls at the home.
• He wrote his most famous work, The Four Seasons, in Venice. It comprises four violin concertos, each conveying the mood of a single season.
• Although today Vivaldi is a household name, and so was the case (in the houses of the cultured and rich, at least) in his time, the composer fell out of favour by the time of his death, and his renaissance as a celebrated musician only began in the 20th century.

To get a feel for Vivaldi, there is no better starting point than The Four Seasons. Here is a video covering the entire work:

The Allegro in ‘Spring’ is particularly popular for weddings, as is the following, ‘Concerto in D Major, Largo’, which is wonderfully lulling and romantic.

If you are interested in the life of Vivaldi, you may search out a copy of the 2005 film Antonio Vavaldi: Un Prinse à Venise. It was an Italian-French co-production, though, so you may struggle to find an English-language version. But if nothing else, the cover is wonderful – see the image with this post.