Customer Reviews

The Four Seasons (Dover Miniature Music Scores)

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This book, which is a combination of music/text/pictures, is an excellent way to experience Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." Many people are familiar with the music, but how many know that sonnets were printed along with it, to help give imagery to the concertos as they're heard? This book takes that idea one step further, adding prints of paintings from artists who were active during Vivaldi's lifetime. All of these prints depict scenes from the various seasons, and all can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The aforementioned sonnets appear alongside the prints, and are listed in both English and the original Italian verse.

A few notes: the music comes in the form of a CD, and it is encased in plastic on the inside back cover of the book. One should be careful when removing the plastic, because if you remove too much of it, you won't have a place to store the CD. I cut a slit a few inches down so that I can remove the CD but also return it there when finished. There is no "jewel case" for the CD. On a positive note, an extra concerto was included on the CD, which is not part of "The Four Seasons." Vivaldi's "Concerto for Mandolin" etc. (RV 425) can be found at the end of the CD, an unexpected bonus!

Four stars. A nice little combination to be experiecned together - listen to the music, read the sonnets, and view the paitings. This makes an excellent inexpensive gift for a music lover (or even for yourself)!

This is truely a beautiful piece of music, is a pleasure to play

This book from the Metropolitan Museum of Art is so cute!
It took awhile to get to me but well worth the wait! Aside from the rich pictures of 18th century scenery and people, this book can also be used as a picture book for children.
With the sonnets for each season, the pictures lets your imagination go back in time. The 4 seasons are wonderful concerti and the pictures helped imagine the music on another level.
The only thing that was lacking was the CD that went with it. I did not find it to be the best recording, but good nonetheless.