Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
9 questions No timer
44 free Vivaldi's Four Seasons trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Vivaldi's Four Seasons trivia quiz covers the most famous set of violin concertos ever written and the Venetian priest who composed them. The easy questions ask how many concertos there are, which instrument takes the solo, why Vivaldi was called the Red Priest, where he was born and what the goatherd's dog is doing in the slow movement of Spring. Then it moves into the details of the score: the sonnets printed alongside the music, the three-movement plan, the keys, the larger Opus 8 collection they belong to, and the Amsterdam publisher who issued them in 1725. The hard end is for people who own more than one recording: the count the set was dedicated to, the opera Spring borrows from, Bach's cantata quotation, Rousseau's flute arrangement, the first electrical recording of 1942, Louis Kaufman's Carnegie Hall session, I Musici, Neville Marriner's gold record, Nigel Kennedy's pop-marketed blockbuster, Max Richter's 75-per-cent recomposition, Piazzolla's Buenos Aires answer, and the movements that turned up in Windows 3.0, on The Weather Channel and in Frozen mash-ups. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on The Four Seasons, Antonio Vivaldi, Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione and the recordings named before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our classical music, Baroque composers and Venice quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 44 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which instrument takes the solo part in The Four Seasons?
Violin
Violin takes the solo line in every concerto of the set, which is scored for solo violin, strings and basso continuo and showcased Vivaldi's own virtuosity.
Q 02In which city were The Four Seasons first published, in 1725?
Amsterdam
Amsterdam, then Europe's leading centre of music engraving, saw the set appear in 1725 alongside eight other concertos in the same twelve-concerto collection.
Q 03The Four Seasons form the first four concertos of a set of twelve whose title translates as what?
The Contest Between Harmony and Invention
The Contest Between Harmony and Invention is the usual rendering of Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, the twelve-concerto set of 1725 that opens with The Four Seasons.
Q 04What opus number carries The Four Seasons?
Op. 8
Op. 8 is the twelve-concerto set of 1725 that opens with The Four Seasons; its other concertos include 'La tempesta di mare' and 'La caccia'.
Q 05Unusually for the period, Vivaldi published each concerto alongside what?
A sonnet
A sonnet accompanies each concerto, describing its scenes line by line; the poems' author is unknown, though many scholars believe Vivaldi wrote them himself.
Q 06How many movements does each of the four concertos have?
3
Each concerto has 3 movements in the fast–slow–fast pattern standard for Vivaldi's concertos, and the accompanying poem is divided to match them.
Q 07In the slow movement of Spring, while the goatherd sleeps, which instruments imitate his barking dog?
The violas
The violas play the insistent two-note figure that Vivaldi marked 'il cane che grida' (the barking dog) beneath the soloist's lullaby-like melody in the Largo.
Q 08Because they depict creeks, birds, storms and drunken dancers, The Four Seasons are an early example of what genre?
Program music
Program music depicts scenes or stories without words; The Four Seasons, with score markings for birdsong, a thunderstorm and a barking dog, are a celebrated early example.
Q 09While court chapel master in which city did Vivaldi compose The Four Seasons?
Mantua
Mantua was where Vivaldi served Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt as maestro di cappella da camera from 1718 to 1720, the years in which the concertos are usually dated.
Q 10In which key is the Spring concerto, RV 269?
E major
E major is the key of the Spring concerto, RV 269, whose bright opening ritornello is among the most recognisable passages in eighteenth-century music.
Q 11In which key is the Winter concerto, RV 297?
F minor
F minor is the key of the Winter concerto, RV 297; its opening Allegro non molto, with shivering repeated chords under a soaring solo, is the set's darkest music.
Q 12To whom did Vivaldi dedicate the set containing The Four Seasons?
Wenceslas, Count of Morzin
Wenceslas, Count of Morzin, a Bohemian nobleman and imperial chamberlain, received the dedication; Vivaldi's preface notes the count had already known the four concertos for some years.
Q 13Which publisher's workshop issued The Four Seasons in 1725?
Michel-Charles Le Cène
Q 21At what age was Vivaldi ordained a priest?
25
He was 25 when ordained in 1703, ten years after beginning his training for the priesthood at fifteen while still living at home.
Q 22The Spring concerto borrows motifs from a sinfonia in which contemporaneous Vivaldi opera?
Il Giustino
Il Giustino, staged in Rome in 1724, has a sinfonia sharing its opening material with the Spring concerto; the direction of borrowing between opera and concerto is debated.
Q 23Vivaldi himself re-scored the Spring Allegro as an opening sinfonia and chorus for which of his operas?
Dorilla in Tempe
Dorilla in Tempe, first staged in 1726, opens with a sinfonia and chorus built from the Spring Allegro, a year after the concerto had appeared in print.
Michel-Charles Le Cène, son-in-law and successor of Estienne Roger, issued the twelve concertos of Il cimento from the Roger firm's workshop in 1725.
Q 14Roughly how long does a performance of all four concertos take?
About 40 minutes
About 40 minutes is typical: Spring runs roughly 10 minutes, Summer and Autumn about 11 each and Winter about 9, though tempos vary widely between performances.
Q 15By what nickname was Vivaldi known?
Il Prete Rosso (The Red Priest)
Il Prete Rosso (The Red Priest) was the nickname Vivaldi carried from his years as a newly ordained priest, and it followed him through his long career at the Ospedale della Pietà.
Q 16Vivaldi's nickname referred to the colour of what?
His hair
His hair was red, a family trait said to be shared with his father Giovanni Battista, and it earned the young priest-composer his lasting nickname.
Q 17In which city was Antonio Vivaldi born in 1678?
Venice
Venice was his birthplace, on 4 March 1678; he was baptised at home at once by the midwife, probably for poor health, though legend blames an earthquake that day.
Q 18What kind of institution was the Ospedale della Pietà, where Vivaldi worked for decades?
A home for abandoned children
A home for abandoned children, the Pietà took in foundlings and schooled them; Vivaldi taught and composed there on and off from 1703 until 1740.
Q 19Vivaldi's lifelong 'tightness of the chest' is now usually interpreted as which condition?
Asthma
Asthma is the modern reading of his 'strettezza di petto'; the complaint kept him from wind instruments and was his stated reason for giving up saying Mass.
Q 20In which city did Vivaldi die, impoverished, in 1741?
Vienna
Vienna, where he had gone hoping for imperial patronage, is where Vivaldi died on 28 July 1741 in a house owned by a saddlemaker's widow, and was given a simple burial.
Q 24Which Enlightenment philosopher published a flute version of the Spring concerto in 1775?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, himself a composer, issued 'Le printemps de Vivaldi' for unaccompanied flute in 1775; Nicolas Chédeville had arranged the set for hurdy-gurdy in 1739.
Q 25Nigel Kennedy's blockbuster 1989 recording of The Four Seasons was made with which ensemble?
English Chamber Orchestra
English Chamber Orchestra accompanied Kennedy on the EMI recording, which was marketed like a pop album with a promotional single, billboards and TV and radio advertising.
Q 26Which violinist made the first American recording of The Four Seasons in the last week of 1947?
Louis Kaufman
Louis Kaufman recorded it with Henry Swoboda conducting, then tracked down the rest of the set and became the first to record all twelve concertos, in Zürich in 1950.
Q 27Where was the 1947 American recording made, rushed through before the 1 January 1948 recording ban?
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall in New York hosted the sessions in late December 1947; the result won the 1950 Grand Prix du Disque and later joined the National Recording Registry.
Q 28Which Italian ensemble, starting with Felix Ayo in 1955, has recorded The Four Seasons most often?
I Musici
I Musici first recorded the work with Felix Ayo in 1955 and returned to it repeatedly, with soloists including Roberto Michelucci, Pina Carmirelli and Federico Agostini.
Q 29Which soloist featured on the Academy of St Martin in the Fields' first gold record, Marriner's 1969 Argo recording?
Alan Loveday
Alan Loveday, New Zealand-born and closely associated with the Academy in its early years, was the soloist on Marriner's Argo LP, among the best-selling classical records of its day.
Q 30Max Richter said he discarded roughly what share of Vivaldi's music in his 2012 'Recomposed' Four Seasons?
75%
75% was Richter's own estimate of how much Vivaldi he threw away, keeping about a quarter of the original notes, which he phased and looped in minimalist style.