Explanation:
Handel was an especially prolific composer of opera, but in 1742 (after the debut of his epic composition called Messiah, which was an oratorio) he mainly focused on religious styles (Norton/Grove 342).
An oratorio is kind of like an opera but without the acting, costumes, or secular themes. The lyrics to oratorios are always religious. Handel’s most famous oratorio was Messiah, which is a piece that is so famous that it may even be familiar to those that have never given “classical” music more time than the two seconds it takes to turn it off.
(Messiah is the one that goes “alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia,” and is often sung in church.)
To get a sense of the scale and scope of Messiah, consider that it has fifty-three movements organized into sixteen scenes and three parts. If this all means nothing to you, then think of Messiah as a concept album containing fifty-three songs. It takes about three hours to perform (“Messiah (Handel)” par. 34).
When it came to vocal music, Handel had no rival. His compositional genius was even attested to by the foremost of all musical masters—Beethoven—who praised Handel’s skills by saying the following: “…Handel is the greatest, the most solid of composers; from him I can still learn something…” (Goulding 204).
Part of Vivaldi’s job description was to provide new instrumental works for all of Venice’s recurring festivals. This means that Vivaldi was constantly producing new orchestral works and having his outstanding all-orphan-girl orchestra perform these works.
Because of his heavy output, Vivaldi massively influenced instrumental music, particularly concertos, and especially violin concertos. A virtuoso violinist himself, Vivaldi focused on this genre and wrote some 230 concertos for the violin. One of these, his most famous, and perhaps one of the most famous classical pieces on Earth, is “The Four Seasons,” which is a set of four concertos from a larger collection of such pieces called Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione that was published in 1725 (Goulding 445).
Vivaldi’s take on the concerto became much imitated by his contemporaries, especially after his publications spread to northern Europe. To get a sense of Vivaldi’s influence here, consider that Johann Sebastian Bach, perhaps the most sublimely gifted musician ever witnessed by mankind, studied Vivaldi’s model for the concerto (Norton/Grove 867).
