Vivaldi Concerto for Two Violins & Cello Op. 3 No. 2

One interesting thing about this concerto is that it has four movements - the first and third are slow and the second and fourth are allegro. The authors of our music history textbook use it as an example of Vivaldi's work shortly after writing that he most often wrote his concerti in three movements and began and ended them with Allegro movements and put the largo movement in the middle. Huh.The first and third movements bore me. If I had to guess why I'd say that it's because this music is almost three hundred years old and in that time we've come to expect a lot more complexity than Vivaldi used. I am not very familiar with early-eighteenth century music, but it seems that largo movements later became more legato and intensely expressive - Vivaldi's work has a lot of disconnected chords.

The second and fourth movements are interesting, but mainly because they're preceded by the other movements. It's sort of like when I stand next to eleven-year-olds to try and look tall.As far as cadences go, it seems as though every phrase ends with an authentic cadence. In longer phrases, one could say that there are half cadences where subphrases end, but the music is fairly predictable and always returns to tonic.